The past year has been full of change and excitement for PPPC. We’ve had the opportunity to host and attend the largest industry trade shows, hold popular chapter events and engage with professionals from around the world.
PPPC’s first event of 2019 was participation in The PPAI Expo in Las Vegas—a huge accomplishment for PPPC. Our Canadian reception attracted an excellent turnout and we have another party planned for Expo 2020 with even more space. Thank you to all who traveled to attend Expo. The participation of our members is what we count on to continue to grow and strengthen the industry.
TOPS+ 2019, in Q1, brought PPPC a larger-than-budgeted surplus with the show floors buzzing in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and in our return to Calgary. All venues grew in attendance from their previous year’s numbers and all booths were sold out or nearly sold out. Our suppliers connected with a lot of members and their customers, business opportunities were everywhere and attendees had an excellent time.
The 10th annual Women’s Empowerment Event (WEE) took place in May 2019. Women of the industry gathered at Hockley Resort in Ontario to learn, grow and plan for the future of promotional products. These strong and powerful women are exactly the type of people I want to see at the forefront of our industry. The 2020 WEE event will take place on May 29-30 at White Oaks Resort in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
We switched things up by moving our national convention, Natcon, to September in 2019 at the International Centre in Toronto, Ontario. With the trade show’s new two-day schedule, daily traffic increased by 36 percent compared to average daily attendance at the 2018 convention. PPPC’s Image Awards were also presented during Natcon. The National Distributor of the Year Award was bestowed upon Genumark, while Debco took home the Gold Supplier of the Year. PPPC received a lot of positive feedback and excellent points to build on for Natcon 2020. Natcon will again be hosted at the International Centre from September 14-17, 2020.
Undoubtedly, 2019 presented us with challenges; we overcame them. 2019 also presented us with new opportunities, and we took advantage of them and grew from them. I am grateful for the countless invaluable connections I was able to make with members and stakeholders and would like to thank all who supported PPPC in 2019. I can confidently say that 2020 will only bring more success, more opportunities and more growth to PPPC.
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Jonathan Strauss is the president and CEO of the Promotional Product Professionals of Canada (PPPC).
