Expo West
Expo West 2024 Reflections from Petra and Elan
Elan: Between reconnecting with some of my favorite people on this planet, getting stuff done at AHPA board meetings and watching my excellent sales team do what they do best, I think I have said this out loud at least 26 times before, but this latest Expo West was the best one yet. What made it even better than the previous 26 of them was stepping on stage at the AHPA breakfast meeting to introduce the winner of their Herbal Insight Award, my father, our CSO and founder, Sidney Sudberg.
I identify as a marketing guy with a chemistry degree and while I have been working hard to commercialize Alkemist Labs, Sid has spent the last 27 years in the background playing rhythm guitar for quality for nearly every reputable brand in this industry. His concern for ingredient quality has been foundational to the success of the dietary supplement industry. His eyes and the eyes of his mentees have assessed over a million chromatographic fingerprints of herbal and fungal raw ingredients and finished products.
To the perpetuators of ‘testing by input’, it’s time to put your calculators away. Because of Sid Sudberg, HPTLC methods exist to find botanicals in gummies and are being regularly deployed by this industry’s top companies. Sid Sudberg doesn’t make the products this industry sells; he helps to make them safer and more effective one test at a time.
His award is sweet validation of his/our tireless efforts to help improve the safety and efficacy of this highly regulated beloved industry.
Petra: Elan was certainly right when he described the highlight of Expo being his presentation of Sidney’s AHPA Herbal Insight award. It was an emotional moment for all of us Alkemist die-hards – not just us Alkemist employees – in the audience. As I will celebrate nine years working with Sid and Elan in just a few days, I find myself reflecting what is truly different and special about our company. It always comes down to this: our foundation is the fervent belief that HERBS WORK and we help ensure high quality product so that consumers can experience that truth themselves. It’s so gratifying to have Sidney recognized for his role and legacy.
In the midst of that busy week, with so many fun social and work events, was a deeply personal highlight. I celebrated my long-time friend and mentor Mark Jost’s birthday in person on his actual birthday! How often do we get to do that with work friends we just see at trade shows? At my previous job, Mark became my boss upon my return from my maternity leave 15 years ago, and we’ve been close ever since. It was a great night, joined by Amber Bennett, Rob Wildman, Jane Wilson, and Elan, celebrating Mark’s birthday and election to the AHPA board.
Another gratifying part of Expo for me personally was having several women seek me out for help connecting with Women in Nutraceuticals, and the Science committee on which I’m active in particular. Our committee has collected a passionate group of industry leaders on the science side. We are together on a mission to connect and support women in STEM and advance much needed scientific research specific to women’s health. It is a true pleasure to work as the Marketing chair within the group. As with all of WIN’s endeavors, it’s not for women only, and we embrace diversity. If there is anything that I can do to offer connection or guidance, please let me know!
A Few of Petra's Favorite Things...About Expo 2023
When your feet hurt, when in long lines, when your feeling tired… simply remember your favorite things! I can just hear Julie Andrews singing this to get me through the long week of Expo. Now that we are all back to the office and hopefully recovered, it feels fitting to do just that!
Favorite Thing #1: Lab Tours
Natural Products Expo West is a unique event for us because it is local to our office, only seven miles from the convention center. That makes it super easy and convenient to host Expo travelers for a tour and lunch the first few days of Expo week. This year we were so pleased to have Larisa Pavlick of CHPA and Bill Chioffi with Nammex each visit separately for a lab tour and meetings. In 2024, we would love to have you – yes, you dear reader – visit us pre-Expo! Put it on your calendar now!
Favorite Thing #2: More Alkemites
The other great thing about Expo being a local show is that we can have many of our Alkemist colleagues attend. Typically, there are just four of us traveling to Vegas for SupplySide West but this year at Expo we had 13 of our staff members attending various events and/or walking the show floor! It’s such an eye-opening educational experience for our staff to be immersed in Expo, even if only for a few hours. And it makes them even more dedicated to our work as industry quality gatekeepers.
Favorite Thing #3: Like Minds
Last, but not least, one of the best ways to see many of my favorite people is through the gathering of like minds at the trade group events that Expo offers, several of which we co-sponsored. Alkemist was there for the AHPA members meeting and reception, ABC Celebration, Coconut Coalition Reception, NPA meeting, UNPA meeting, and WIN networking event. A highlight was seeing our self-confessed AHPA-holic Elan Sudberg re-elected to the AHPA board.
Elan's 2022 Expo West Recap
Congratulations to the amazing team at Informa Markets and New Hope! Natural Products Expo West was a hit, and I didn’t catch Covid. In all seriousness, I do appreciate the delicate balance they offered in their efforts to keep us all safe.
Many from the industry cautiously attended Supply Side in October and said, “OMG it’s been so long since we have seen each other!!!”, and while I didn’t say that so much, ”IT WAS SOOOOO GOOD TO SEE YOU ALL AGAIN!!!!” in Anaheim. The mood was decidedly upbeat, and people were doing business.
My first major event in Anaheim was the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) board of trustees meeting, on which I proudly serve. I attended with the agenda of appealing to my fellow trustees that we, AHPA, need to charter a committee on Psychedelic plants and fungi. With the emergence of legal psychedelics being professionally used to address major mental health issues, and research finding significant benefits in that context, it’s crucial that the category be developed with experience and deliberation. Given that AHPA’s mission is to promote the responsible and sustainable commerce of herbal products to ensure that consumers have informed access to a wide variety of safe herbal goods, it’s entirely appropriate that AHPA’s expertise be utilized to help that sector grow responsibly. I pitched the idea, and it was voted in with no opposition. Big things ahead!
As if that day was not good enough, I concluded it with an epic and memorable dinner with some of my closest industry friends which made me re-realize how many good people drive this industry and how I really never want to leave. Not that that is a discussion, I just feel grateful to work in such a wonderful industry alongside so many really great people.
In true form, What’s Up with Supps threw another extraordinary after party. As a sponsor we were offered a spot on the DJ’s video wall and per usual, my animation guy crushed it! The energy was palpable. People really needed this event.
We debuted our stunning new booth at the show as we launched new services! In case you missed the news in the hectic run up to Expo, we now offer purity testing, specifically heavy metals, solvent residue, and pesticides, in addition to our legendary identity and potency testing services. Consumer friendly C of A’s are also available for the growing number of companies sharing that info to support their quality. Call your rep if you want to add those services.
All in all, this year’s successful Expo West was inspiring and reminded us how much we love being in this industry.
Elan's 2019 Expo West Recap
It’s that time of year again… Post show triage where we frantically dig out from a colossal pile of hot emails received while at the show, sort through stacks of new business cards and try to recall who was what and why we were supposed to follow up, and hope in vain that the 85,000 hands you shook didn’t turn into a nasty head cold. My family and I are almost over the nasty head cold, but I’m still working on the emails.
2019 EXPO West was another great show! The gone-but-not-forgotten ingredient pavilion had displaced many who were used to sticking to their own booth, so they roamed about the show floor. There was good news for those people and companies; the first trade association to take cannabis under its wing, the American Herbal Products Association, is still tirelessly working to offer guidance to this new category of sort-of-legal-sort-of-not-legal ingredients to make sure it doesn’t have a quick, terminal end like Hoodia or other formerly exciting ingredients.
Just before the show, we strategically dropped two significant announcements: (1) our amazing new 4-day standard Turn Around Time and (2) ‘Next Generation Transparency’ in the form of our Partnership with Ingredientsonline.com to improve industry transparency. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and we all had fun riding the wave of excitement.
- Numerous colleagues approached me to share how disruptive our new 4-day TAT will be to their operations. They ranged from small internal labs to the biggest labs in the industry and all had the same story; Alkemist Labs is faster than their internal lab and likely more cost effective. Sorry, not sorry. While I certainly don’t mean to be disruptive… actually, that’s a lie, I love it, and am happy to know that our efforts to optimize our operation is inching closer to proving Alkemist Labs is the best option for plant ID testing in the industry, with no exceptions.
- I heard from a number of companies that they want to emulate the high-level quality assurance Ingredientsonline.com offers via testing with Alkemist Labs and making the results visible on their website. It was music to my ears, because you’ve undoubtedly heard me say that this industry fails, every day, to monetizing quality via bragging rights about your reputable lab partner and the effort$ you take to ensure quality. Quality is so often just another expense on the P & L, but I believe it should be celebrated and marketed when companies have key lab partners like Alkemist Labs. The momentum is starting to build as more companies get on board with Next Generation Transparency!