Expo West 2025 Vibe Check + Expo West Playbook

We made it! Expo west is here and we will all gleefully descend upon Anaheim, California in just a few short days.

This post is mostly going to be my Expo West playbook that I have shared in the past, but I also wanted to add a bit of context around the overall vibe of the show.

From a distance it might seem like this show is going to be rocking with positivity and that the CPG landscape is on fire after a handful of huge exits and necessary liquidity events that will hopefully trickle down to everyone.

Simple Mills, Alani Nu, & Spindrift have all had massive exits recently while OLIPOP fetched a $1.85B investment from their recent Series C.

These are awesome wins not only for the company, but for the space as a whole.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe it represents the overall vibe that brands will have when they hit the show floor in 2025.

Having started WeStock in 2019, I have come up with a few other brands who started around the same time and several, sadly, have announced they are closing down. These were previously strong brands with great trajectories making this difficult decision.

Even with many brands going out of business over the past 2-3 month, I don’t think the mood will be negative, but I do think it will be slightly nervous given the unknowns.

The unknowns of a new administration that is promising ingredient restrictions and future tariffs. The unknowns of an investment community that is being more rigorous in their funding decisions. The unknowns from retailers who are battling increased prices and customer pushback.

As a brand all these factors can leave you in a state of paralysis. It’s hard enough to run a business in good macro conditions, but when the conditions are unknown and turbulent, it makes it even more difficult.

My main hope for Expo West is we can be a bit less guarded with each other. This is a melting pot event with thousands of industry leaders and being able to have open and honest conversations about how the unknowns are effecting us would be a net positive for everyone involved.

Alright…after that quick vibe check, here is my Expo West playbook. Enjoy!

The one thing I genuinely love about Expo West is the tangible excitement everyone has.

Most people who attend, love this industry and are passionate about their roles and companies. This often leads to everyone exclaiming how wonderful the show was by the time the scavengers are asking if they can take the rest of your samples home on the last day.

You hear about all the amazing meetings that brands had and the positive buyer conversations they hosted at their booth, but how much of that is actually translating to new business after the show?

Everyone is intoxicated after Expo West, not only from the cocktails at the Hilton lobby bar but from the pure energy that the show brings which makes it difficult to understand if the show was valuable, leaving a lot of brands dropping the ball post-Expo.

Expo West is one of the most expensive weeks of the year for a brand, and although everyone leaves feeling positive about the experience, very few brands will feel the same way if you follow up with them a few months later.

Today is all about approaching Expo West to get the biggest ROI (return on investment) from the show.

I still remember my first time attending Expo West in 2018 when I sent buyer follow-ups at the end of each day. I obviously got automatic responses for every email I sent, but I thought I was being proactive and that it was the best way to approach outreach after the show. In hindsight, it was an amateur move, and this issue is all about avoiding amateur moves.

Let's talk first about brands that have a booth.

You did it, you sprung for the corner booth in the North Hall. Your backdrop is killer and you have enough product samples to feed half of Disneyland. You are ready for a huge show that is going to result in a parade of purchase orders.

But you forgot the important part, the prework that needs to go into Expo West to make it successful. Way too many brands feel like they can just show up, have a great booth, and let the buyers come to them.

I want you to change this mentality and instead look at your booth as a meeting place that just happens to have samples of your product. Your goal for the month leading up to Expo West is to book as many meetings at this place before you take off for Anaheim.

You can't just rely on buyers to stop at your booth. You don't want to be that salesperson afraid to use the bathroom because you heard the Wegmans buyers are finally walking your aisle.

Instead, make your hit list of potential new accounts and current accounts that you need to connect with at the show.

Create your outreach list and start connecting with key decision-makers ahead of Expo. You are equipped with a sales tool that you don't usually have, you're going to be in the same place as that buyer, and it's hard for a buyer to say no to a friendly email proposing you both connect in person.

Your Expo West experience will be significantly better if you are scheduling meetings ahead of time with buyers, claiming time on their calendars, and doing the work before the show. Even if a buyer can't commit to a time or misses your meeting when they do eventually stop at your booth, it will feel more formal and you will be able to skip the wasted 2-3 minutes of introducing your brand. You have moved past the awkward hand-flagging and rambling introduction phase you usually have to make in the moment, to a more relaxed and planned approach.

Now, let's fast forward and picture that you have just come off an amazing three days at the show. 70% of your scheduled meetings ended up showing and you had positive interactions with multiple buyers.

On my tombstone, it will say, "here lies a salesperson who followed up."

99.9% of sales success is in the follow-up. It sounds trivial, but it is maddening how many brands don't prioritize following up after the show. Following up does not mean one or two emails, it means five to seven emails to that decision-maker after the show.

Here is what you are going to do. You are going to send the first email the Wednesday after Expo West. This gives the buyer enough time to recover from the show while still having you follow up in a timely manner. Your drip campaign to the buyer is going to have five total emails (minimum) and they should trigger five to seven days after the previous one.

Your emails should be casual and personalized. Do not mass enroll all your buyer contacts into one drip campaign, but instead create personalized ones for each buyer that is filled with nuggets from your conversation.

The call to action in these emails is simply to put some time on the calendar to meet. I don't care how good your face-to-face was at Expo West, that buyer is not sending a P.O off an email and most likely needs a refresher on your brand after the show.

Do not be afraid to follow up multiple times. I have never had a buyer email me asking me to stop emailing them, instead, most of them are appreciative of the constant follow-up. You need to sit down the Monday after the show, go through your show contacts, and prioritize your follow-up plan.

I would definitely suggest that you spring for the scanner option so that you can collect all the contacts easily who stop at your booth. Another creative option that I would implement at my booth if I was running a brand today is having a QR code for potential buyers to scan to enter their home/office information which would then trigger a care package being sent to them after the show. This way you have samples being sent to their home/office and you already have the conversation starter set for your follow-up email sequence.

I wouldn't stress about loading up your booth with sell sheets for the buyer to take away. Whenever a brand hands me a fistful of paper to take with me at a show, I am always reminded of this Mitch Hedberg line.

The priority for Expo West is to deeply understand the cost of the show for your brand and what you need to do in order to break even. It might be one major retail P.O. or a handful of smaller P.Os, but you want to know that number and you want to come back to it in six months. If you didn't hit that, then your not getting the bare minimum ROI you need from this show.

This show is very much a peacocking show for fast-growing brands that want to eventually be acquired versus an order-writing distributor show. As an emerging brand, you need to understand what your ROI needs to be and if you're justified in attending the show in the coming years.

If you don't have a booth at Expo West, I still would follow the same action plan and just set up shop in one of the various seating areas. Fill your backpack to the brim with samples and have your buyer meetings right there in the lobby. You have to be resourceful as a founder and honestly, a lot of brands I talk to who just walk the show and schedule meetings are much happier than the brands who are also managing a booth.

I hope some of these tips were helpful for the brands that will be in attendance and if you are going to be at Expo West and want to connect, let me know! It would be great to see some of my connections in real life. Let's all have a great 2025 show.