C-Store 2008 draws new stores

The C-Store 2008 trade fair was held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre over two days at the end of July. The mornings were devoted to a series of seminar presentations by keynote industry speakers, and a trade show was held in the afternoon. A total of just under 2,000 suppliers and retailers attended the event and 126 companies took exhibition stands.

Some 300 delegates attended each of the industry seminars with another 260 at the C-Store 2008 Cocktail Reception. The event featured a major prize draw for a Suzuki SX4 soft roader plus $2,000 in leisure equipment, won by Suzie Bekker of the Dardanup General Store in regional WA.

“It's the first significant prize I have ever won after many years of lotto, local and national raffles, so it shows you should always keep trying! I found the C-Store trade fair very interesting and came away with several good ideas, product lines and certainly many contacts for us to further develop our business,” said Suzie.

As part of this promotion, which was run in partnership between Convenience & Impulse Retailing (formerly Australian Convenience Store News) and Campbells Wholesale, there were also ten prizes of $1,000 worth of stock drawn every hour during the event.

"Retailers visiting C-Store 2008 were split fifty-fifty between convenience stores that also sell fuel, as opposed to convenience stores without fuel,” said the organiser, Keith Berg. “Each year, we see more and more operators of stand-alone stores at C-Store and just over half of the retailers visiting C-Store 2008 had more than one store.

“C-Store 2008 also reflected the rapidly changing make-up of the retail petroleum industry. Visitors who are operators of convenience stores that also sell fuel outnumbered conventional service stations by a factor four to one,” he said.

The C-Store event has been staged in Sydney and Melbourne every second year since 1992.

For further enquiries contact the organiser on 02 9555 1355.