Sasine: Packaging suppliers are learning the language of Walmart, and they are learning to engage and discuss packaging with Walmart buyers and merchants in a way that in those early years was much more difficult for them.
Parvis: My perspective is that their message is becoming more and more focused. One of the things we are really pushing is clear communication, especially around anything related to our sustainability clients. the process we implemented for a third-party review of the client. [In 2009, potential exhibitors were required to submit their exhibit materials for audit by a third party to review sustainable packaging claims.]
GP: Do you think there is a change at all in the type of exhibitors that you are getting or in the products they are offering?
Sasine: I was at the first expo, and I can tell you there was not a lot of elbow room. In many ways, it almost felt like a science fair where everybody had their stuff and lots of people came through and wanted to see it. As the meeting grew and the opportunity for suppliers grew, it took on a much more substantive and developed feel. So it's been good growth, and I think we are all pleased with it.
Parvis: Last year, we had slightly fewer booths but keep the same number of attendees. We are really happy that even in the down economy, we are keeping the number of attendees the same. We expect this year we will be able to do the same thing—keep the attendance the same or even hopefully grow it. But the event has definitely grown from the first expo we did. The first expo, which we had five years ago, was actually in the Sam's Club auditorium, which was basically a large meeting room at our home office here (in Bentonville, AR).
GP: Can you compare last year's attendance with that of previous years? Is the show growing? If so, to what do you attribute that growth?
Parvis: In the past, we have had academic representation. We have had some representation from trade association and NGOs. We have also had some booth exhibitors from internal organizations, like our Walmart Transportation or our Walmart - Sam's Club Logistics.
GP: Besides packaging suppliers, what other types of exhibitors should attendees expect to see at the show?
Sasine: Each year, we develop a curriculum for those presentations based on what we think were the most useful and most successful topics in the prior years. We intend to have anywhere between nine and 15 presentations. We are still developing the sessions for 2010, but that is a good estimate of where we think we will land.
GP: Do you know around how many educational sessions might be offered at the event?
In the past, we have had very good information around toxics as they impact packaging, and on environmental labeling regulations. We try to provide a balance of the commercial with the educational, so that our Walmart associates come out of this meeting these two days with a really a good sense of what the state-of-the-art in packaging and packaging sustainability is.
Our goal at the expo is to expose our own Walmart people to the packaging world and sustainability as it impacts packaging. It's also to provide a good deal of educational information, where packaging supplier organizations will come and present detailed—yet not excruciatingly detailed—information about what's going on with their specific products and in their specific industry classification. So we will have a presentation on paperboard or corrugated packaging, for example.
Sasine: We tend to have represented somewhere between 150 to 175 exhibitor companies that come to Arkansas for the opportunity to meet both with our own Walmart associates and with representatives of the supplier companies that provide product to Walmart. So in an ideal situation, an exhibitor would come to Arkansas and spend two or three days with us here and have the opportunity to see their immediate customer, who is here as a supplier to Walmart, as well as the Walmart people who are involved in that same product category.
GreenerPackage.com: How many exhibitors do you expect will attend this year's event?
In this exclusive interview, Ron Sasine, senior director of packaging – Private Brands for Walmart Stores, and Robert Parvis, Sam's Club manager of House Brands Packaging, spoke with GreenerPackage.com managing editor Anne Marie Mohan about the upcoming event.
Walmart will be hosting its fifth annual Sustainable Packaging Exposition April 6-7 at the John Q. Hammons Convention Center, just miles from Walmart's Bentonville, AR, headquarters. As the show has grown over the years, Walmart and Sam's Club have increasingly raised their expectations for exhibitor claims in an attempt to stamp out greenwashing, including audits of exhibitor materials. The show has also evolved to include educational conference sessions, in addition to the tradeshow floor, to increase the knowledge of sustainable packaging by both packagers and Walmart buyers.
Learn from Walmart's Ron Sasine and Sam's Club's Robert Parvis the goals of this year's expo, including the role of GreenerPackage.com in providing a complementary virtual trade show available all year long.
Posted by Anne Marie Mohan, Managing Editor, GreenerPackage.com, January 18, 2010 |
Details of fifth annual Walmart sustainability expo explored
Details of fifth annual Walmart sustainability expo explored | Greener Package
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