MI Innovations Buying Show

A Lively and Fulfilling Event

MIRA’s 35th Annual Innovations Buying Show was well-attended and provided a festive evening for its members. It featured dozens of vendors and hundreds of attendees at Andiamo’s in Warren.

Vendors from all different types of industries set up booths for the show. Tobacco, alcohol, insurance, meat, lottery, drink, ice, and many more services and products were present and busy teaching customers about their products.

The event was lively and fulfilling for everyone in attendance. Throughout the day, MIRA raffled off various prizes to those in attendance.

Some newer vendors joined MIRA within the last three years. Because of COVID-19, they were unable to attend any events, often because their companies wouldn’t allow them to. Now, however, they’re making up for lost time with connections and sales.

“This is our first show,” said Janell Evans-Olsey, who works with Canopy Insurance Group. “We’ve definitely made some connections that will be useful,” she said.

“People have been very pleasant,” Jim Mattison added, who is also with Canopy.

Kowalski, a meat processor and distributor that has mainly served grocery stores up to this point, is in its first year as a MIRA member.

“I’ve met some new customers that didn’t know we were around,” said Steve Kowalski. “We’re breaking into the convenience store business.“

Juul Labs has been a member for much longer. Dan McDermaid commented that the show’s setup, in Andiamo’s large banquet hall, gave vendors and customers a lot of space to work with. He also appreciated that the event didn’t have too many vendors and that Juul Labs was able to get a lot of visitors, especially as the evening went on and the post-5 p.m. rush arrived.

Ricki Wines, who works in business development for MIRA, manned the MIRA booth. “This is our first spring show in a few years,” she said. “It’s nice to be able to get back to it.”

Wines said businesses are still facing staffing shortages and some vendors had to pull out of the show for that reason. “We hope that doesn’t discourage people from exhibiting in our holiday show,” she said.

Jessie and Dawn Jones drove three hours from Moorestown, Michigan to attend MIRA’s trade show. “The store has been in our family for over 100 years,” Dawn said. “We’ve been making some changes and we enjoy coming here, trying new products, and making relationships,” she said.

At last year’s event, the Jones family met Tank Traders, a propane tank service they found was much cheaper than their current propane company, Blue Rhino. Since then, they’ve switched to Tank Traders for the better price.

The trade show featured some of MIRA’s own new programs, including one it launched the day of the event. Orders To Go, MIRA’s in-house delivery service, offers merchants a much lower transaction fee on their delivery sales.

Using third-party delivery services, merchants could pay up to 30% in a transaction fee. MIRA’s new delivery service limits its transaction fee to 4.9% for all types of payment.