The PPAI Expo 2015: Highlights From The World’s Largest Promotional Products Show
One Million Square Feet, Hundreds of Thousands of Promotional Products, More Than 20,000 People, Jeffrey Tambor and Jeremy Gutsche, Under One Roof in Las Vegas!
The PPAI Expo, the world’s largest and most attended promotional products trade show, brought more than 11,250 distributors from more than 3,900 companies together for the five-day event, January 11-15, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The PPAI Expo featured more than 150 education and networking events, 1,350 exhibiting supplier companies in 3,185 booths presenting hundreds of thousands of products occupying one million square feet of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. With more than 20,000* participants from the U.S. and 38 countries, the overall non-gaming economic impact of The PPAI Expo 2015 is estimated at $26,280,000 by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The PPAI Expo 2016 will be held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, January 10-14, 2016.
“Not only is The PPAI Expo the industry’s premier event, but through planned growth, integration and strategic partnerships it has become the ‘big-tent’ show of the year,” said PPAI President and CEO Paul Bellantone, CAE. “Expo is the industry’s think tank where the industry as a whole comes together in meetings, at parties, in sessions and on the show floor to unite around and advance the promotional products industry. We are extremely proud of the show’s success and our efforts to empower leaders, enhance outcomes and create momentum in the year to come.”
The single most important gathering of the year in the promotional products industry, The PPAI Expo provides industry stakeholders a clear vision and direction for 2015, and what’s to come in product design, decoration, technology and thought leadership.
The PPAI Expo Highlights
Veteran actor and Golden Globe winner Jeffrey Tambor’s hilarious and inspiring presentation, Performing Your Life, motivated attendees to discover the artist within themselves. Part one-man show, part seminar, part question-and-answer session and endlessly entertaining, Tambor’s empowering lessons promoted introspection among attendees.
In a high energy, high speed presentation, “Better & Faster – The Proven Path To Unstoppable Ideas,” Jeremy Gutsche led his audience toward blockbuster innovations. But he began his session with an admission: He was an inveterate promotional products buyer. Key chains. Bottle openers. Key chains that were bottle openers. He uses them all!
Serial entrepreneur Troy Hazard addressed attendees at the keynote luncheon, titled “Revenue Through Relationships,” and explained how building relationships with yourself, your friends & family, & your customers is the only way to get to the next level in any endeavor. Hazard then used experiences from his 23 years in business as owner of 11 different companies to teach listeners how to engage people.
Hosts Mark Graham, co-founder of commonsku and president of RIGHTSLEEVE, and Bobby Lehew, Chief Branding Officer and CEO of ROBYN, led a thought-provoking live PromoKitchen live interview with two of the promotional products industry’s foremost leaders, Jo-an Lantz, MAS, executive vice president for Geiger and Marty Lott, founder and president of Sanmar.
Once again, the RPI Annual Conference co-located with PPAI’s brand. The strategic alliance creates the only international conference and expo specifically designed to promote engagement and interaction between promotional products professionals and incentive, recognition and engagement practitioners/providers.
Pre-show events began on Saturday with skucon, commonsku’s first annual user conference with education tracks highlighting business management, marketing, sales and service and technology and the SAGE Conference on Monday, drawing a record-breaking crowd of more than 700 distributors and suppliers.
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Editor’s Note: Photos available upon request.
* Preliminary unaudited results.
Contact:
Kim R. Todora, PPAI
972.258.3063
Founded in 1903, the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI) is the world’s largest and oldest not-for-profit association serving more than 10,800 corporate members of the $19 billion promotional products industry which is comprised of more than 33,800 businesses and a workforce of nearly 500,000 professionals. PPAI represents the industry in Washington, D.C., and advocates on its behalf. PPAI operates the industry’s largest trade show, (The PPAI Expo is held each January); leading promotional products safety and compliance program, more than 50-year-old professional development and certification program; and industry trade journals and periodicals. The multi-billion-dollar industry includes wearables, writing instruments, calendars, drinkware and many other items, usually imprinted with a company’s name, logo or message. For more information, visit PPAI.org and find us on Twitter @PPAI_HQ, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest.
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