The Disneylandification of Expo West

In Anaheim, there’s this magical place where you take kids and take pictures of mascots that are placed in specific areas, interact with characters of all shapes, and sizes, post selfies with your favorite people, and pay an exorbitant amount of money to gain access to happiness and love.

This is known as Natural Products Expo West.

Every year, Expo West shares a fantastic show that burns the soles, tastebuds and retinas of the show’s 70,000 attendees. But many complain that Expo West has lost some of its homeliness and has now become this showy event that everyone must go to. It’s becoming more and more mainstream.

We keep on forgetting Expo West is owned by one of the biggest events company in the world, Informa and though we all like to tout the show is inclusive, this is definitively not Informa’s business model. The parent company leads the highly exclusive Canne Liones Festival that I hear about all the time from the rich millionaires from the Pivot podcast. You know, the company that has Facebook and Spotify renting beaches to advertisers. In fact, Expo West isn’t even listed as a prominent conference compared to the mega conferences that Infroma operates.

Like Disneyland, Expo West’s ability to deliver a premium experience to dreamers is really good. Their whole business model, whether intentional or not, is to get brands to the Anaheim convention center in exchange for fun and potential riches and being an international and huge company, they don’t really have your best interest at heart.

Despite this, people will still go and people will still love it. It’s not that Expo West is bad, it’s just changed and if you are a fledgling CPG brand, not recognizing the intent of Expo West now might kill your company if you choose to spend the money to go to the happiest place on Earth for CPG.

Raising Prices

Expo West did an experiment this year: raise its prices to shut out the freeloaders and third party people (like me) and gain more exclusive networking between brokers and exhibitors. In my opinion, this is a good thing. Being on both the freeloader and exhibitor side, I can see why this change mattered. For me, being an exhibitor was grueling and though we aimed to please everyone by giving samples of hot, fresh dumplings, we were really after meaningful buyer relationships.

Disneyland too, has raised its prices. Not maybe to the level of $1500-$4500, but it did raise its prices because they can. Disneyland justifies it as the rising cost of everything. I think at least Expo West’s justification for improving the exhibitor experience is a bit more transparent.

Right now, about 10% of the world’s population is spending 50% of the goods in the United States and Disneyland and Expo West cater to this specific demographic: you have to be wealthy to play. This trend doesn’t seem to be stopping and it looks like it will keep on going. Capitalism is great.

A ticket to Disneyland including flight, hotel, kid stuff, and the park itself can add up to $5000 dollars. Sound familiar?

There are plenty of examples of families who blow everything to go to Disneyland in hopes to make their family happy. In hopes that it will be worth it even if they are drowning in debt Sound familiar?

I feel like Expo West saw the energy and the feedback of this year as successful and will most likely keep the price tag or even increase it. I personally think it is a better strategy to do this as it weeds out the people who won’t hustle to find a way in.

Still A Magical Place

I personally love Expo West. I find it energizing, I see people I’ve known throughout the whole world at this one place. I go to dinners, I go to networking events, I crash parties, eat their food and leave. I am fortunate to have gone there in all facets of my career.

Most of the entrepreneurs I talk to experience FOMO when they can’t go. I think every founder or food scientist should go to Expo West. It’s an extremely motivating conference and at the end of the day, I never regret going. It’s a fantastic show with caring staff and I get to eat so many great products.

Like Disneyland for kids, you never really truly lived as a young CPG company until you go to the most popular event in CPG. I will always recommend people to go to the show because it does truly show the best kind of energy in the sector.

However, there are adults who go into debt because of Disneyland and there are companies that get decimated when they see a gigantic negative ROI for Expo West. A good business is always diligent when it comes to expenses and the decision-making process to attend Expo West is something you need to consider. There are tons of opportunities to get into Expo West at a reduced discount and the good entrepreneurs, get in for free.

Just like Disneyland, Expo West will always be there. Do not use Expo West as a hail-mary excuse to save your company.

What Happens Now?

10 years ago, Expo West used to be a place where barefoot hippies could share their tinctures and granola. Now, it’s a ticket for the biggest brands all over the world to tell the United States retail market “I’m here and you should have me in your stores”.

One of the biggest complaints this year was the lack of innovation. Innovation has a cost and right now, that cost is very risky and cuts through the bottom line. The ticket price that squeezes out the innovation of the younger brands causes this heavy fog that obscures some very special gems. As much as I love mocktails, prebiotic soda and another protein bar, I feel like Expo West is slowly shrinking its ability to find great food trends. The myriad of LinkedIn posts about what they found at Expo West was ….boring

But this is how business works and though many complain that the rising prices will kill innovation, there are those that find opportunities in problems.

My prediction is that a well-capitalized new player will grow their own Expo West as it continues to narrow the focus on who can go to the show and it will pick up steam as both Expo West and Fancy Food show become more and more exclusive. I think this will take a while, but I can imagine in the next decade, StartupCPG will do it.