Communication
critical to mission

by Larry Meyer
MRA Chairman and CEO

Let’s face it—we’re all in sales. Not only retailers, but Michigan Retailers Association. And good communication is essential to selling.

I want to thank two excellent teams here at MRA: Communications and Governmental Affairs. Their work is as critical to MRA’s mission as that of any team here.

As the business world becomes more competitive, excellent communication becomes a valuable differ-entiator. MRA was one of the first organizations of our kind to recognize the high value added by a strong communications team.

They go beyond informing membership of the essentials—they watch the larger world of retail, business and government to deliver industry news and information that’s practical, interesting and occasionally inspiring.

In addition to Michigan Retailer, Mutual Interests (the newsletter for Retailers Mutual), our website (retailers.com) and award-winning printed brochures, this team is behind several of the MRA programs of which I’m most proud: Michigan Retailer of the Year Awards, the foundation scholarship program, the annual retail education conference and other seminars.

Let me add that my executive assistant, Kammy Johns, and Jim Hallan’s executive assistant, Amy Jolley, have excelled in their roles as event planners, working with Communications to organize events that are consistently rated excellent by those who attend. Kammy and Amy, thank you.

Eric Rule and his assistant, Kathy Wilson, have a challenging mission: communicating both with the legislators who affect our state’s business climate and with members who seek our advocacy on legislative or governmental matters.

In doing so, they juggle the concerns and interests of all our membership—from jewelers to tire dealers to chain drug stores, from major members to sole proprietorships. Not an easy task, but an interesting one.

So before I retire, let me officially express my appreciation of these intelligent, creative and dedicated people.

When I first came on board, MRA was saddled with much debt and was struggling to stay out of bankruptcy.

One way to get rid of debt was to sell off unprofitable businesses. Along with other parts of our business, we put the young merchant processing business (what we used to call bankcard processing) up for sale for approximately $15,000.

Then a young woman in the office who worked with bookkeepers came to me with some surprising news. Unbeknownst to me, she had been analyzing our books, and her analysis showed that merchant processing was covering every other payday and would soon be covering all payroll.

Obviously, we didn’t proceed with selling off the merchant processing part of the business. Today we process nearly $700 million anually in members’ transactions.

In those days, when we had a million-dollar month in merchant processing, we'd close down the office at 4 p.m. and have pizza. At our current rate, we'd be doing that about every four hours.