Charles Dominick’s NLPA Now Part Of Certitrek????

In this hyper-connected world of ours, it is hard for anyone to sneeze without everyone saying God bless you.

Here I am sitting at my desk when I received the following message via Skype at 10:23 PM.

“Hey, Jon – sorry for the late message. Did you know that the Next Level Purchasing Association was acquired?”

Charles Dominick sold his beloved NLPA????

Like salt AND pepper, thunder AND lightning, macaroni AND cheese; I am on a roll, but you get my drift, Charles AND Next Level Purchasing Association is synonymous one with the other.

What was even more surprising, is that there was no announcement, no fanfare. One day out of nowhere the NLPA brand is up on the Certitrek website.

“No . . . I knew that Megan left after many, many years working with Charles.
Who bought them?”

Perhaps discovering on LinkedIn that Megan Nicol, who I always considered to be the Dr. Watson to Charles’ Sherlock Holmes had left NLPA should have been a sign that something was up.

When I reached out to Megan last week to congratulate her on her new position, she responded by saying that it was “a very difficult decision to leave the NLPA. But, sometimes we need to stretch ourselves and experience new challenges.”

Beyond the initial surprise, what does it all mean?

“It was a combination of shock that Charles would be so quiet and surprise that anyone would buy them.”

According to my late night source, Certitrek’s acquisition of NLPA  is “a little like buying a buggy whip factory, because they believe that “Professional associations are not long for this world.”

The above assessment regarding the future of professional associations is ironic in this case given that Charles was a member of a guest panel on an early PI Window On The World segment titled Is The Traditional Association Model Dead? If memory serves me, Charles had some definite opinions regarding the show’s central theme.

Whether Charles saw the inevitable writing on the wall or believes that becoming part of the Certitrek family of associations is the means through which he will elevate his vision to a new level, one thing is sure; the procurement world as we know it is changing.

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