We got tickets to Natural Product Expo West and had such an amazing time! It was Anthony & my first trade show and I will be honest, it was a little overwhelming at first for our small PetPax Co. team!
Day 1: Totally overwhelmed - we must have walked 10 miles and swa hundreds of booths across a couple of the different halls. We were lucky enough to see one of our mentors and Advisory Board members, Yash, with his company Tru which had an awesome booth that was completely empty by the final day!!
We walked too much and took too many samples, which slowed us down. I literally have bruises on my shoulders from carrying hundreds of lbs of water and drink products... that was the first mistake. Next time, I will grab all teh bag swag that is available and use those to carry specific samples of drinks that I like... my fridge is currently home to hundreds of cans of probiotic waters and adaptogenic waters and more.
Day 2: We got to see our SKU family, notably pi00a where we saw Melody, Taysia & Rylan who were making pizza's, handing out slices and even won a Nexy award!!! We also saw our friend, Mehek with her delicious indian inspired snacks from her company NIRAMAYA FOODS!
We paced ourselves on day 2, taking WAY less samples and focusing on talking to potential buyers and distributors. We brought hundreds of samples with us of PetPax Co. ZenMelts & DentalMelts to give out and gave away almost all of them!
Day 3: Grab & Go! We had a mindset to visit all of the co-manufacturers and raw ingredient suppliers on the final day to talk with them, see what other materials are out there that could be used in our upcoming products, and gave out more samples!!
This was a much more relaxed day and so we decided after speaking with the vendors to check out all the food and eat our way out of the Expo 😆
So the learnings are this: pace yourself, don't grab every sample (be selective), and network with every person you see! Did anyone else go to the expo who I missed?
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Nathan Ruff-Williams
- Co-founder and CMO at PetPax Co. :)