LEXINGTON, KY - Dick Hurst, was among the many crowding an Embassy Suites ballroom on the morning of September 19, 2006 for a Commerce Lexington breakfast focused on the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games (WEG). The owner and president of Hurst Office Plus had come to pose a question. "We are really wondering what the attitude of the FEI Games (will be) toward local business. Will there be an effort to work with small, family-owned, quality businesses?"
Business Lexington
In statements concerning Lexington's role as host of the 2010 Games, WEG officials had been assuring business owners like Hurst that the event will provide local businesses with unique opportunities to market their brands and services. "I think the opportunities for local businesses here in Lexington to support the event will be huge," FEI Secretary General Michael Stone said in a interview published at the time.
But the process of taking advantage of those opportunities was unclear to many and remained so for years.
Business Lexington
In recent weeks, has been contacted by a number of local business owners raising the concern that with less than six months remaining before Opening Day, they still had not heard of opportunities to bid for WEG contracts. A common theme emerged around concerns about what level of investment should be considered to finance any additional staffing and inventory, all in anticipation of servicing a crowd now estimated at 250,000, spread over the 16 days of the Games.
Visitors to Lexington and the central Kentucky region will include teams and entourages associated with some 850 competing horses from more than 60 nations.
We raised the concerns of local businesses with Jamie Link, who succeeded Jack Kelly and in an interim role, John Long, as World Games Foundation CEO in early 2009. "We just haven't really bought much, other than for the test events," he said. "We had two test events in July, two in October and then we have test events incorporated with the Rolex in April. We have a relatively small offering at these test events because they're not big. And those are small procurements. We went to two or three providers and got quotes and then made the selection and moved on. There was short lead time. We had to move quick and get them done."
Now, however, according to Link the pace is quickening. "Right now we have a link on our website called 'Supplier Registration.' We've been working with National Diversity Solutions to get vendors registered so that they can be notified of bid opportunities, keeping an eye toward minority and women-owned business participation, as well," he explained. "We're renaming that link 'Business Opportunities.' Every procurement opportunity, every request for a bid or a proposal will be placed on that in a PDF format. We'll send out an e-blast and issue a press release to make everyone aware of this process and where the link is to give everyone an equal opportunity to view what bids are out and for them to submit either a bid or a proposal, depending on what we issue."
Foundation spokesperson Amy Walker said the new link was expected to become active by next week.
Link said his office is contacting the state's three major urban chambers of commerce - Commerce Lexington, Greater Louisville Inc. and the Northern Kentucky Chamber - to ask that they disperse information about the site update to their members.
While the Foundation explores the possibility of establishing an RSS feed that would allow registrants to receive instant e-notices of RFPs as they are posted on its website, Link suggested that interested businesses bookmark the site and make a check for updates part of the daily routine.
He noted, however, that not all calls for bids will appear online.
"Because of the speed with which we'll need to move, we may have to just solicit verbal quotes. We try to plan for everything. But things are going to come up. Things are going to break, or something. When we've got to move quickly we'll just call three vendors and request quotes. Those would most likely be local businesses because we would need a quick turnaround on things."
Link added that it's his goal to give everyone the opportunity - especially local, Kentucky and minority businesses - to participate. "But I also have a budget to manage. We'll give everyone the opportunity to compete, but at the end of the day we'll have to make selections based on the best interest of the Games primarily from a budget standpoint."
How has Hurst Office Plus fared? General Manager Tom Gormley said the locally owned business has had an account set up to handle World Games business but to date has not heard from the organization. Gormley was pleased to hear of the plan to update the Foundation's site and said he would be among those checking it frequently for opportunities to win a piece of the event's estimated $167 million economic impact.
Note to Mac and PC users who don't use Internet Explorer
The link from the National Diversity Solutions page on the WEG Foundation website accommodates Internet Explorer only. NDS spokesman Gene Travers said a tiny percentage of users have encountered the issue and the company is working to accommodate multiple browsers. In the meantime,he suggested that anyone having trouble registering contact NDS directly at (859) 225-1131 or info@supplynds.com