Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM MARCH 2021 50 Dennis Shields is executive director of TRIB Group, the nation's largest owner/member buying cooperative serving the rent-to-own retail channel. For more information, visit www.tribgroup.com. M aking New Year's resolutions is most common in the U.S., thought it's also practiced elsewhere around the world. Those who aren't in the habit of making resolutions may still write down and pursue conscious goals. This particular new year (and decade!) has kicked off with a special urgency, due to the recent experiences that have demanded that we set clear resolutions for ourselves, personally and professionally. I share the sentiment of many friends and industry peers who are collectively saying that we're happy to leave 2020 behind and embrace a new year. While the calendar restarted on January 1, many of us will unfailingly be working to complete existing projects for weeks and months into 2021. To say that we've experienced difficulties in 2020 is a gross understatement, particularly for independent businesses, many of which don't have access to collective industry resources. With quarantine practices and social distancing guidelines driving our buying and business activities online, it's been vitally necessary to exercise our creativity and quick-turn pivots to navigate these unprecedented circumstances. Each of our businesses likely started and ended 2020 with very different goals, challenges, and experiences. U.S. News & World Report has found that 80 percent of New Year's resolutions fall by the wayside by February. While the stats are daunting, they shouldn't prevent us from setting and attaining new goals based on the improvements that the pandemic forced upon us in 2020. As we grow more comfortable with the changes and adopt them as a new normal, be sure to give yourself and your team members a pat on the back for making it this far! Let's keep in mind the many successes we were fortunate to witness in 2020 for our rent-to-own industry. May we each continue to strive to improve our businesses for growth and sustainability. Let's also be ambassadors of business to each other and share our experiences that can help set a new foundation for success for us all. While the conditions have brought many economic and societal challenges, our industry has surmounted each hurdle and has come away with business survival skills that have made us stronger. It's with a confidence to embrace new opportunities by design that TRIB Group will present our annual spring convention digitally this year: the TRIB Group Plugged In 2021 Virtual Convention & Buy Fair. Slated for March 22-26, the event has been planned with our members' businesses in mind. Their feedback and experiences over the last year have directly impacted how the engagement for this event was conceived. The goal of the virtual event is to offer our remote attendees a multitude of benefits, whether they are actively working in-store or in other business operations while caring for customers and accounts. This event is just one of many resolutions by TRIB Group in 2021. Another is to provide an elevated level of access and engagement to our members, many of whom are juggling the challenges of in-store customers and new online processes while maintaining normal business operations. Our team members have developed individual goals to offer additional benefits, including straightforward and focused member meetings, discussions with actionable takeaways, and worthwhile buying opportunities. We recognized the untapped talent of our RTO industry this past year, in the many ways we shared fresh ideas and resources in the hours of need, in our ability to redirect and pinpoint our focus under pressure, and in the resilience of America's backbone of small and local businesses. We very much look forward to finding solutions to the challenges that 2021 may bring. RESOLUTIONS: A TRADITION TO FOLLOW ALL YEAR LONG Resolution (noun): The act of analyzing a complex notion into simpler ones RO Dennis Shields Rent-to-Own Trends TRIB Group has resolved to move its annual springtime event online.

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