It's always difficult writing about the KBSA. We have an ongoing debate with them about whether it is our job, as the industry's main magazine, to support them. It's a difficult question and the answer is tricky because what they're really asking is should we support them regardless.

My answer, and it might vary between editors, is an uneasy but firm no. The KBSA is there to support its members and our job is to make sure that it is doing so, to hold it to account where necessary and, yes, to praise it when it's doing a good job.

To support it regardless of whether or not it's doing a good job is not even the role of its members let alone the trade press.

Which brings me to last week's reconvened AGM. When the first AGM in Swindon went off half-cocked and only had 24 retail members when it needed 25 to vote it wasn't exactly the KBSA's finest hour. It summed up everything that had gone wrong with it in the last five years - put simply, its members simply didn't want to know and once you've lost their confidence, well, what's left?

So to Coventry and the second chance. According to the official press release "Members turned out in force to support the KBSA at the national meeting."

Force? You know how many retailer members they got to turn up this time? 31.

Apparently six people is the thin line between disaster and success. There were about 50 people there altogether so the press release trumpets that this is the first time there were more retail than corporate members at an AGM.

Hardly a fact to be proud of after over 20 years.

The truth is that they were lucky to get 31 to stick around for what was quite an interminable afternoon. If you want busy people to give up a day to come to an event like this you have to at least make it worth their while and I'm not sure what most people in the room would've have gained from it to justify the time. Especially as they gave the same two presentations from the Swindon event so anyone who was there had heard it all before, virtually word for word.

Apathy

So what's the problem? Well, it's a combination of many things but the blame cannot be placed totally with the KBSA, the truth is they're a high profile victim of something that blights the whole industry - most people just can't be bothered.

Most retailers in particular simply don't see themselves as part of a wider industry; they know their patch and just get on with it. There are no benefits in getting involved in the bigger picture as it's nothing more than a drain on their time and resources and, well, the X Factor doesn't watch itself you know.

The KBSA, for all its faults, is the only organisation open to kbb retailers but most of them simply couldn't give a monkey's. Even their own members, the ones that actually pay the fees every year, can't be bothered to play any part in it.

Graham Ball is changing things for the better at the KBSA and he's introducing some tangible, solid, benefits for members that will genuinely help them run their businesses but getting the message out is a thankless task that I suspect is impossible to complete - doubly so if the KBSA can't raise their presentational game.

This industry is somehow, infuriatingly, getting more and more isolated and backward. It seems in so many ways to be self destructive in ways that, say, the motor or restaurant industries aren't. Business is terrible at the moment, and it's only going to get worse and rather than circling the wagons and defending its position with strength of numbers it's panicking and running off in every direction.

This may come as a surprise to hear me say this, but I feel quite sorry for the KBSA and really hope it's got the stamina and perseverance to see this battle through - I suspect though that it's a war no one can win.

andrew@kbbreview.com