When the Fluid Power Distributors Assn. holds its 30th annual meeting April 25-28 at The Wigwam Resort in Phoenix, the opening session will be entitled "Fluid Power: An Industry in Transition."

It is not a phrase that was arrived at loosely. FPDA president Brian Kundinger looks forward to the gathering, but does not display the almost traditional rose-colored outlook that precedes most resort meetings. The president of Kundinger Controls in Auburn Hills, Mich., points to some 2 million jobs that he estimates were lost in the United States during the last four years to explain why he takes the word "transition" literally, but realistically.

"There's an overcapacity of distributors and manufacturers in relation to the amount of business in this country, or that is still left in this country," he says. "Manufacturing has contracted substantially. So if you have the same number of distributors, but that many fewer customers, either we all cut back and are smaller, or people are going to go out of business."

In association surveys, FPDA members have weighed in that among their chief concerns is the shift in manufacturing and competition for jobs from overseas, explains Kathleen De Marco, FPDA's executive director. Consequently, several sessions scheduled for Arizona will address these concerns.

Steven Gold, vice president of the National Assn. of Manufacturers, will address this issue at one of the first day's sessions ("Supporting the North American Manufacturing Base"). Gold also is the executive director of NAM's Coalition for the Future of Manufacturing.

"He'll talk from that organization's point of view about what needs to be done and what NAM is doing to shore up its domestic manufacturing base," DeMarco says.

A representative from the U.S. Department of Commerce will speak as well. The department has recently issued a report on manufacturing and overseas competition.

"[Commerce] will do an overview and hopefully talk about what our government is doing to help manufacturers stay in business in our country," DeMarco says.

Programming for the meeting will be based on what DeMarco calls "strategic planning sessions" that FPDA held last summer. The resulting plan, finalized this past fall, found "four or five focus areas," she said. Each area will be the program theme for the upcoming meetings, starting with the Arizona event. "Understanding markets and customers" is the focus in Arizona and the majority of the sessions will concentrate on this.

Another timely session is "Defining Your Market," to be given by John Monoky of Monoky Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in marketing, sales and territory management. He will discuss why it is important for FPDA members to segment markets and the criteria they should use in doing so.

Monoky also is slated to discuss how specialty distributors can serve multiple market segments and the potential pitfalls for those who do not segment their markets.

"Distributors need to find what customers want, what they are willing to pay for and concentrate on those areas to differentiate themselves," says DeMarco.

As a follow up to Monoky's session, Tom Janis from Dun & Bradstreet's Sales and Marketing Solutions will speak on how to use market segmentation and how to find the necessary data in their markets ("Identifying Growth Industries").

Janis will address what it might cost FPDA members to use (and not to use) this data. The session will also look at what data is important and how it can be effectively applied. How a small business can tap into this will also be discussed. This session reflects the "transition" phase of the fluid power industry and FPDA's attempts to give members ways to address it.

"Most of us are family-owned businesses, and we've enjoyed a very good living for a lot of years," Kundinger says. "But the globe has shrunk. Our competition now isn't from down the street or in neighboring towns. It comes from Shanghai or Poland or wherever. So we have to start thinking on a global basis."

"Value-added" is a term heard more and more among FPDA members and associates. It will be a key topic at the Arizona gathering, DeMarco says.

"A lot of our members are realizing that they can't just be product movers," she says. "They need to add value, and get paid for adding that value, if they want to stay in business." Examples she cited include "services, additional engineering, for example; a whole laundry list."

Along these same lines, Kundinger asks, "What do we need to do as an industry to convince people we can handle their needs with traditional fluid power products, but also marry those with newer technology to meet their needs?"

Kundinger will be making a presentation that will look at FPDA as it observes its 30th anniversary this year. He will look back at how far the fluid power industry has come, he explains, as well as look at its future—one he sees as potentially bright, if proper adjustments and decisions are made.

"Our industry has been in a declining phase the last three to four years," he admits. "We've hit the bottom, I think, but how much growth can we see in the future? There are new technologies coming out that are replacing fluid power. And there are fewer customers that all of us are fighting for."

There is confidence that the Arizona meeting will jump-start the needed changes and live up to its theme: "Transforming for the Future."

Says DeMarco, "We hope distributors walk away with the knowledge that they need to understand the markets they're serving now and the markets that they could potentially serve in the future. And feel they are armed and ready to move forward with that."

Visit the calendar section at www.inddist.com for a schedule of events at the FPDA show.