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The Northwest of Us is always looking for ways to bring in new vendors to our organization. Their are several opportunities for presentation of your products at our on-going meetings. For many vendors the Northwest of Us has generated thousands of dollars in sales. To explore a relationship with the group please complete the form below and our representative will contact you to discuss and explore working together.
Our Mission:
To provide resources to our membership to help them get the most out of their Macs... whether it is to provide guidance as to the best hardware configurations for a specific personal or business user or to providing assistance in learning and/or properly applying various software applications.
Your Mission:
To help us with ours and in so doing increase both sales and product exposure to interested professional and home users of the world's best personal computer platform - Macintosh™ - in a convenient and inexpensive manner.
Who are we?TNWoU is a not-for-profit organization registered with Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, CA. We were established more than 16 years ago as an all-volunteer organization to provide support to Macintosh computer users in the northwest suburbs of the Chicago metropolitan area. Our current membership has grown to include individuals from Wisconsin, California, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Arizona and the State of Washington.
Membership generally runs between 400 and 500 families throughout the year. Meeting attendance is 100-200 people, making TNWoU the largest attended Mac User Group in the entire central USA, from the Mexican to Canadian borders!
What's our Influence?Apple recognized the influence of our user group in the Midwest, by holding a special version of the "Apple Road Show" at our meeting. To this meeting they brought two of the only 5 or 6 functioning iMac prototypes then in existence. iMacs were not yet in production. Attendance was over 350 people.
Members in our Group purchase or directly influence the purchase of, on average, $2 Million worth of hardware and software every year. One vendor brought in and sold more than $11,000 worth of relatively inexpensive software at just one recent meeting.
Our InterestsOur membership ranges from new Mac users to experts with more than 15 years of Mac experience.
- 40% in graphics business
- 40% in general business
- 10% in education
- 10% miscellaneous family memberships
Please visit our primary Website to learn more about us and our Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
Presentations to our GroupOur main meetings are held generally on the second Saturday of every month in Rolling Meadows, just 15-20 minutes from O'Hare Airport.
We typically allow only one or two featured speakers for a main meeting, which is held in a large hotel meeting/ball room. Given our attendance, many vendors find this an attractive means of promoting their product(s).
Promotions and GiveawaysAs a promotional advertising activity, many vendors find it effective to donate copies of new or existing products to our user group raffle. Reviews of raffle items are frequently published in our award winning monthly newsletter, an excellent means of increasing product awareness.
If you have product literature, we are willing to make that available to our members as well. We have a literature table at our main meetings for just that purpose. Sometimes, literature in conjunction with a special promotion flyer can be particularly effective. In considering how many copies to send us, plan for an attendance of about 200 and apportion the quantity up or down according to the expected interest level for your particular product(s).
A number of companies have provided promotional items. If you have T-Shirts, caps, yo-yos, coffee cups, pens, etc. which you think would help build name recognition for your company and its products, we can work with you to appropriately distribute these items.
Website and Newsletter advertisingWe also offer advertising space in our bi-monthly newsletter, on our Website and on the back of our meeting agenda. (We are a large usergroup with expenses to cover including the rental of hotel space for our regular monthly and Special Interest Group meeting rooms.)
Single shot, not for resale copies for our raffle, promotions or literature can be effective. However, it is our observation that marketing is even more effective when it is done more than once over a period of time. Combining approaches can also increase effectiveness (ie. an ad on the agenda, combined with a promotional flyer, or raffle, or both)
Our Website averages 3,000 visitors a month and our newsletter has a circulation of 600+.TNWoU advertising rates are very reasonable: Website Rates Newsletter Rates
2 or 3 birds,One stoneTNWoU will work with other Mac and Windows user groups in the area to assist vendors in scheduling time to visit with other user groups in order to make better use of their time and trip. Please let us know if you are interested in this and we can discuss the possibilities.