With its trade show space growing by more than a quarter and hundreds of end buyers registered to join their distributor hosts, Promotional Products Professionals of Canada concluded an expanded National Convention (NATCON) in Toronto on Wednesday.

The 66th annual event – Canada’s largest promo trade show – facilitated visits to area suppliers, featured an opening keynote from Heidi Reimer-Epp of Botanical PaperWorks aimed at promoting sustainability conversations, and celebrated more than 40 award winners.

  • Attendees came from all over Canada, joined by dozens of industry pros from the U.S. on hand to exhibit and conduct business.
  • A PPAI contingent led by Board Chair Andrew Spellman, CAS, and Interim President and CEO Dawn Olds, MAS, was also on hand to support its partner association and meet Canadian pros with joint memberships in the two organizations.


PPPC President and CEO Jonathan Strauss noted that booth space was up roughly 25% compared to last year, with roughly two dozen more exhibiting companies. Many suppliers also increased the investment in their presentations, he said.

The event welcomed more than 1,000 distributors, and over 900 end buyers joined their distributors hosts on Wednesday, both registering as post-pandemic high marks.

“I think last year was that first full year coming out of Covid. People were like, ‘OK, is this real? Do we make the investment?’ And it was real,” Strauss says. “There’s a number of suppliers who went from a 10×20 booth to a 20×20 booth, or from one booth to two. Not only did they go bigger, but we’re seeing suppliers spend more to promote what they’re doing. There’s an LED video wall here for the first time, for example. And the distributors are coming.”

  • Headlining the PPPC Awards on Tuesday night was the enshrinement of David Lewenberg, executive vice president and COO of Genumark to the PPPC Hall of Fame.
  • Major company awards were also doled out, including Promotional Source taking home large distributor of the year honors. HPG’s Debco was named the large supplier of the year.


Kate Plummer, Debco director of sales, says the company has leaned into its Canadian roots. For HPG, the No. 6 supplier in the PPAI 100, Debco is the company’s “seat” in Canada, according to Plummer.

“We take a lot of pride in that,” Plummer says. “Our history is Canadian, our people are Canadian, and it really matters to us that we’re looking at products not from the American eye of product development, but from the Canadian viewpoint – what works well here, what sells well here – because they can be very different. The trends I see in Canada may not be the trends I see in the U.S.”

Among the trends Strauss says was noted to him by an end buyer was that sustainability was on full display at the show. “It’s the expectation, not the exception,” he says.

Through PPPC’s reciprocal membership relationship with PPAI, Canadian firms are able to take advantage of benefits from both associations.

“We want the members to utilize what they’ve got available to them,” Strauss says. “We’ve been talking a lot about education. As PPAI revitalizes its certification programs, I think we’ll see more Canadians jumping into that. And the customers of the distributors are asking more ‘Why are you qualified to do what you are doing?’ And so education is one of our big pillars. It’s both education we can offer, and education that our partners like PPAI can offer.”