When Dave Bears started out in business 55 years ago, his father told him one of the first things he needed to do was join the North West Commercial Travellers Association.
"He said if you want to be a businessman you have to be a member," Bears, 76, said this week at a monthly NWCTA networking event.
Clif McJannet (from left), Dave Bears and Terry Carruthers have been associated with the NWCTA for a long time.
The former senior sales executive for the likes of Sherwin Williams and Zenith in Canada is now a director of the NWCTA, the little-known Winnipeg-based organization that is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.
But what was true for Bears and fellow director Clif McJannet, 64, an independent personnel recruiter -- whose fathers' were both members -- is not the case anymore.
Once an exclusive fraternal organization where membership was restricted to those who sold products at less than retail -- even the likes of insurance and used-car salesmen were not allowed -- it is at an important crossroad, trying to establish relevancy in a much-changed commercial world.
The organization, which, along with the Hudson Bay Co., is the only surviving original member of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, provides a whole range of negotiated discounts for its members for the low annual membership fee of $105.
In its heyday in the late '70s and early '80s, there 13,000 members.
That number has been falling steadily since then to about 5,000 today. Membership is no longer quite so exclusive -- virtually anyone can join now -- and while its legacy is with travelling salesmen, its future will depend on some other group entirely --maybe the home-business operators.
Terry Carruthers, the longtime general manager of the organization, said back in the day the companies would direct their newly hired salesmen to the NWCTA offices as soon as they were hired.
But with out-sourcing of the sales function and on-line discounts and mass customization that lets just about anyone with time and a high speed Internet connection secure all manner of discounts, its traditional allure is no longer quite so attractive.
"We are trying to go after the independent business person," Carruthers said. "But they are harder and harder to find and contact. They are not connected with a company and they may or may not be part of an industry association."
Carruthers and the NWCTA's new marketing director, Gordon Dmytriw, make no bones about the fact they are not sure which direction to go in.
"The whole notion of joining an organization only for the preferred pricing is probably not on for the long term," Dmytriw said. "We need to repurpose the organization in a way that will be meaningful for the next generation. But frankly, we don't know what that is yet."
In 1993, the Maritime Commercial Travellers Association merged with the NWCTA to make it a truly national organization. A couple of years ago it became the third party benefits provider for members of the Canadian Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and it continues to seek out other specialty organizations whose members may need some of the services NWCTA provides.
Carolyn Rickey, a member since the late '90s, is typical of the business person that may represent the future. Rickey was laid off from MTS in the mid-'90s and started her own public relations firm, Cedars Communications Services.
After being cut loose from the security of a corporate employer, with all the benefits that went with it, she needed to find a new source for insurance benefits. She first went to the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, but it was not interested in cutting a deal with a new micro business operator and she thought its fees were too high.
She was familiar with the NWCTA because her brother, a pharmaceutical salesperson, was a member. While she doesn't travel, is not a sales person, per se, and doesn't really need hotel or airport parking or auto repair discounts, she really did need the insurance.
"I think it is a very worthwhile organization," she said. "I think it would make sense for all sorts of small business organizations to use it."
Benefits like life and health and disability insurance are essential to business people like Rickey. What might not be on the top of the list is mortuary benefits, a quirky feature of NWCTA membership since 1891.
That coverage began in those early days when sales people were sometimes out on the road for weeks at a time and, on occasion, would succumb to an untimely passing, away from home, leaving widows with the onerous expense of transporting the body back for internment.
Eligibility for a modest payout -- $160 to $1,600, depending on the age of the member when they joined -- is included in the annual NWCTA membership fee.
The fund to cover off that benefit sits at close to $7 million. That money in the bank as well as some real estate holdings is giving the NWCTA the time it needs to figure out how to survive, if not flourish, for the next 125 years.
martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
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