A Record Breaker

SIGMA signatures, including networking and education, abounded in the windy city with boosted receptions and parties thanks to the Official Sponsor of SIGMA’s 48th Annual Meeting: BP Products North America, Inc. and platinum sponsors Marathon Petroleum Company, LLC and McLane Company.

Tours and Education
Experts and analysts provided insight and advice to all eager meeting attendees, who packed the rooms to learn more about their industry’s trends. SIGMA, in conjunction with education alliance partners NPN Magazine and OPIS, featured a series of educational sessions divided into retail and wholesale tracks that addressed the industry’s hottest of topics including biofuels, market outlooks, real estate development and financial guidance through acquisitions.

SIGMA also offered marketers a choice of tours in Chicago: the Motor Fuel Outlet Tour, one of SIGMA’s best industry trademarks, and a newcomer on the SIGMA scene, a Chicago Board of Trade Tour. The Motor Fuel Outlet Tour, sponsored at this event by MPSI Systems, Inc., provided marketers with an opportunity to learn a couple new things from Chicago's most innovative gas stations and convenient stores.

Highlights included a book of market and demographic information about the eight sites featured on the tour, including two BP locations, two Marathon locations, and a Speedway, CITGO, Thornton’s and Gas City site.

FCStone also arranged for 40 SIGMA attendees to tour the Chicago’s Board of Trade (CBOT). The CBOT is a leading futures and options on futures exchange.

The tour began with a trip to the CBOT’s visitor’s gallery, where attendees watched the flurry of trading activity that accompanies the close of trading at 1:15 p.m. while a representative from FCStone explained what was going on. They watched as multiple trade pits sold and bought corn futures. Traders used phone stations, headsets, hand motions, slips of paper and lots of yelling and screaming to convey their messages across the pits. During the last few minutes, it looked like a fight was going to break out as the traders rushed to close their final deals! After the market closed, the tour participants watched a short movie on the CBOT’s history, complete with an explanation of how the exchange operates and who uses it.

When the movie ended, the participants went onto the closed trading floor, where each person took the chance to be a pit broker during a 20 minute “mock” trading session.

The company gave a brief description of how to buy and sell stocks along with the correct hand motions and cards to fill out with prices. After the “mock” trading session, FCStone awarded a prize to the best trader, who ended up with $3000.00. Additionally, FCStone also awarded the worst trader, who lost $1000.00, a prize as well.

FCStone followed the tour up with an educational session at the Fairmont that addressed risk management strategies—from conservative to aggressive—that would protect retail margins and teach marketers how to “buy better.” Financial topics ruled the roost at the 48th Annual Meeting by garnering the best marketer turnout. The Successful Acquisition: A How-To Guide: a financial services program packed the room with marketers and financial service suppliers alike, all wanting to learn about how best to ready their business for whatever may come down the pike from a financial standpoint.

Blues Night Out with Buddy Guy
On Friday night, BP Products North America, Inc. hosted attendees to the first formal networking opportunity at the Welcoming Reception, which featured a jazzed-up Chicago “hometown welcome” complete with saxophone ice sculptures piled high with shrimp and city-skyline décor with architectural abstract art. Afterwards, those brave enough to traverse the elements enjoyed a Blues Night Out private-party showing with legendary blues musician Buddy Guy at his very own nightclub, closed for the special event, called Buddy Guy’s Legends. Meeting attendees sported VIP passes to enter the club and enjoyed a 90-minute set with once-in-a-lifetime crowd interaction by one of Chicago’s best. Buddy came into the crowd to sing and play to the SIGMA ladies and some SIGMA members, including Graham Baughman, even got dragged on stage to play some guitar of his own! According to one SIGMA marketer, “Buddy Guy was a home run!”

For those not familiar with the Chicago blues scene, Buddy's a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a chief guitar influence to rock titans like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck and Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago's fabled West Side sound, and a living link to that city's halcyon days of electric blues. As a blues club, Legends is distinguished for its innovative scheduling of local, national, and international blues acts. In the seventeen years that Legends has been open, the stage has been graced by some of the world's most talented musicians including Van Morrison, The Rolling Stones, Greg Allman, and The Pointer Sisters just to name a few. While the Legends' stage has played host to a myriad of true blues legends, the walls themselves talk, filled with pieces of Buddy's and the blues history. Buddy adorned his club for blues fans at heart and those who walked around found original art work painted on the wall, records, rare photos and Grammys, along with personal items from some of the world's most influential performers.

For example, Koko Taylor's evening gown from 1957, two of Buddy Guy's actual Grammys and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame statue and a world-renowned collection of guitars found over the main bar, including B.B. King, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, as well as Jimmy and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Old friends pose for a picture at the Annual Meeting