Shared Services for Parent Club National Specialties

By Lisa Dube Forman

During a conversation with a national show chairperson, they mentioned they were ‘plumb tuckered out’ and were planning to resign their position after the national specialty. While I was sympathetic, having served in such capacity twice before, I threw out an idea best described as ‘enhanced parent club shared services.’ Specifically, what I have in mind are related breed’s hosting their national specialties together while sharing services. Sure, today there are several related breeds holding their regional specialty’s together besides one or more regional areas with advertised “combined specialties.” However, after reviewing the latter event it appears many times it is a combobulation of various, unrelated breeds. Likewise, many of our low-entry and ‘rare’ breeds often hold their national specialty in conjunction with a well-known, all-breed circuit. This often results in building major points for their rarely seen breeds but at the end of the day, there is nothing ‘special” about the show. It’s just another breed being judged at an all-breed dog show. Like-kind group breeds such as English and American Foxhounds, Harriers, Black & Tan’s, Treeing Walkers, Redbones along with the others deserve an annual specialty celebration. The same is said for many of our terrier and field hunting breeds, all of whose numbers are precipitously low. Combined national specialty’s placing several of these endangered breeds in the limelight could be their celebrated event of the year. Similar to Montgomery County but not as large or generalized.

Currently, Parent Club’s conduct independent national specialty’s across the country incurring sometimes excessive costs for just one to two hundred entries. We should consider combining several of these national specialties, holding them simultaneously at the same time realizing cost reductions for each parent club. All-breed circuits have been doing a similar version for years now banding together to increase entries while reducing equipment and site costs. First, the clear savings is labor. The aforementioned show chair and others like them, work tirelessly to organize such events, sometimes with limited assistance from other fanciers. Let us consider several related breeds e.g., the Scottish Deerhound, Irish Wolfhound, Greyhound, and Borzoi whose recent breed statistics reveal a combined total of 513 entries in competition at their recent national specialties. For these breeds individual modest entries, the clubs had to spend money and labor independently of one another with four different show chairperson’s doing all the same work. These show chair’s negotiated, scheduled, supervised all the same responsibilities for each of their independent national shows. A combination of shared services would be advantageous for these national clubs to consolidate and divvy up the work between themselves. One breed show chair may focus on the hotel(s), another focuses on RV parking and vendors, another agrees to oversee equipment and tent rentals, and so on. It is a huge, labor saver.

The second easily perceived benefit of such alliances is economics. Shared services does exactly what it says, it shares services but also costs. Let’s face reality, everything is getting more expensive. Particularly, equipment rentals, hotels, banquet and club meeting room rentals, and associated professional fees with none of them decreasing. The cost savings can be compelling. Individual tents, indoor hall and equipment rentals can consume a large portion of the pie compared to group rentals and sharing costs of such. Today, hotel discounts may depend on how many rooms are booked in a blocking or the club may not receive discounts in other negotiated areas. Similarly, club dinners hosted at headquarter hotel’s typically require a set number of people to pre-register or the club has to ‘eat the difference.’ Today, attendance at club dinner or banquet events has markedly decreased. The disinterest and subsequent poor attendance at such dinners may be due to boredom, stale company, or often mediocre to poor quality of food such as cheap buffets or convention quality meals. On the other hand, think about if we were to join ranks. Using the example of the aforementioned hound breeds, there could be one combined dinner event for everyone instead of four independent dinners in different locations of the country with different hotel requirements. Think about the interest this dinner event would create with the exciting prospect of meeting new people from other breeds. I envisage the opportunity for respectable debates, discussions on the various breeds’ health and anatomy issues, or simply obtaining valuable advice. Alternatively, fancy the increase of interested buyers for the diversified items available for auction or raffles. Think about the added number of show vendors if there was multi-breed, multi-day national specialty events for them to sell their breed related wares. Case in point, while attending the multi-day Scottish Deerhound National Specialty, a vendor was selling handmade, high quality leather goods and I spent nearly $300 on new leather leads though we do not own Scottish Deerhounds. Though today we do see some fanciers from other breeds spectating at other breed specialty’s, this number pales in comparison to how many people would be in attendance if we united our national specialties together. As an additional benefit, consider the number of foreign visitors and aspiring judges who may attend for the collaboration is marketed as the event of the year for these highlighted Group breeds. Consider the extraordinary marketing appeal of a multi-breed, multi-day national specialty’s event for the breeds you are keenly interested in? All together in one spot!

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Posted by admin on Oct 20 2012. Filed under Current Articles, Featured, The Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.