The Arizona Promotional Products Association (AzPPA) held its 2018 AzPPA Expo August 27-28 at the Mesa Convention Center in Mesa, Arizona. PPAI President and CEO Paul Bellantone, CAE, and Public Affairs Director Anne Stone joined the trade show to deliver a keynote luncheon presentation on strategic foresight in the promotional products industry

Nearly 200 Arizona-based distributors and approximately 75 of their clients attended the AzPPA Expo this year. The trade show featured 66 exhibiting companies representing 100 product lines, and opportunities for peer-to-peer networking.

Bellantone and Stone’s keynote looked to the future of the promotional products industry and highlighted emerging trends to help the audience position their businesses to take advantage of or prepare for the disruptions they may bring.

"Strategic planning and sorting out how to align to your customer's needs is one of the best efforts you can make in your business,” says Marshall Atkinson of Atkinson Consulting, who attended the session. “The PPAI Strategic Foresight Playbook gives any distributor an easy-to-grasp road map for success that is tailored to their individual level or experience. The presentation by Paul and Anne was funny, intriguing and definitely on point."

Attendee Molly Ginish Nazzaro of Imagery Impressions powered by Halo Branded Solutions adds, "Strategic foresight and planning is a must for future success in our industry, and it can be applied by distributors at all levels. Stone and Bellantone's knowledge, along with firsthand experiences and passion for our industry delivered a most informative, motivating and humorous presentation.”

Mark Shinn, MAS, of Incentives West, who was also at the session, says, “Using a Strategic Foresight Playbook will help our members bring some practices from ‘Fire, Ready, Aim,’ to a focus on how to ‘Ready, Aim, then Fire’, as they go about their efforts in our competitive marketplace."

Bellantone and Stone will deliver the Association’s Strategic Foresight presentation to the Houston Promotional Products Association on September 12. They will also be speaking on the same subject at The PPAI Expo 2019 on January 14. More information on strategic foresight is available here, and the Strategic Foresight Playbook is available for download here. Regional associations or members who want to learn more about the presentations can contact Anne Stone at AnneS@ppai.org.