Expo East Education Programming Draws Applause

Expo East’s Education Day featured the same high-level education opportunities that The PPAI Expo is known for. Attendees at the show in Atlantic City in March had their choice of more than 50 education sessions in seven tracks—Strategies & Solutions, Corporate Responsibility, Industry Essentials, Marketing & Advertising, Decorate, Sales & Service and Technology.

Expo East Show Floor web

Thank you for your hospitality and for putting on what proved to be a very productive Expo East for me and my wife.

The presenters of the seminars I attended were terrific. Kathleen Booth [CEO of Quintain Marketing] was very well prepared and it became apparent very early on that she is an absolute expert in her field. The volume of useful information that she was able to communicate in a short period of time was quite impressive. This was a very worthwhile seminar.

I attended the CPSIA [Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act] presentation that Tim [Brown, MAS, PPAI product responsibility manager], Sue [DeRagon, UL-STR associate director of the toys and premiums group] and Mary [Poissant, Apple Imprints Apparel director of sales and marketing] put on. This is an extremely boring and confusing topic that nobody wants to deal with. The CPSIA website only makes it more confusing and unwanted. That being said, Tim, Sue and Mary were very well prepared and did an excellent job of explaining what our responsibilities are as distributors and the situations where we are viewed as manufacturers. They clearly identified what we should adopt as best practices and I left that seminar actually feeling confident that I have everything I need to be compliant with the CPSIA requirements for youth apparel. Every distributor and supplier should attend this seminar.

Michael Crooks' [vice president of U.S. operations for Weepuline, LLC] presentation on the promotional marketing agency was very thought provoking. He did not go into any great detail in any one area. However, he successfully got all of us in attendance to focus on the areas where large scale changes are taking place in the industry and how we can navigate our way through by adapting to and embracing these changes rather than cursing them.

I found all of the people working on behalf of PPAI in registration and throughout the show floor to be extremely professional and helpful, which reflects well on the Association and what it has accomplished.

Overall, this was a terrific event, and my wife and I look forward to returning next year.

Al Donius

Vice President of Sales

KW Textile, Inc.

Buffalo, New York

UPIC: kwtex

Opportunities Await Distributors Willing To Expand Their Services, Capabilities

In the March 24 article “Study Findings Hold Promise For Distributors Willing To Evolve,” PPB Newslink reported on findings from market research and consulting firm Technology Business Research, Inc., which highlighted how service providers with portfolios spanning the customer life cycle are best positioned to capture marketers’ entire spend.

I’ve been saying this for 39 years. This isn’t today’s news. I was taught this concept in the beginning by Russ Woodlief, Glen Holt, Ray Morgan, Bob Collins, Paige Millard, Jim Smith, Cliff Quicksell, Steve Slack, et al. It was true back then and it’s true now. I wish more people would ascribe to this article’s main points. It seems that there are those who now refer to our industry as "promos." They might as well say "trash and trinkets."

Unless we, ourselves, reward those who are creative and innovative in our industry by acknowledging the amazing promotions and marketing that’s being done by some companies, we will always be lumped in the shadow of this being a tchotchke business.

Bert Williams, MAS

CEO

Williams and Associates

Tucson, Arizona

UPIC: wawa

Excellent piece, and in the world where online distributors are thrown into the mix we would add “Speed Kills” to the Big Four Danny Rosin mentions!

Jim Franklyn

Vice President and Partner

Inkhead, Inc.

Winder, Georgia

UPIC: InkHead

Great insight. Frank Cespedes [a senior lecturer in Harvard Business School’s Entrepreneurial Management unit] alluded to margin opportunities a few years ago at the North American Leadership Conference in Boston. Rather than evolve, I would go with “change or die!”

Bruce Perryman, MAS+

CEO

Embroidery Unlimited, Inc.

Tempe, Arizona

UPIC: euinc

Editor’s Note: Find the PPB Newslink article at pubs.ppai.org/newslink and click on the March 24 issue.