PPAI Rebrands Annual Product Responsibility Summit

Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), Irving, Texas, the not-for-profit association for more than 500,000 industry professionals and 11,000 corporate members of the $19.8 billion promotional products industry, yesterday announced it has changed the name of the association’s long-running Product Safety Summit. Going forward, the event will be rebranded as the PPAI Product Responsibility Summit to more accurately reflect the event’s scope. This three-day corporate responsibility and compliance event will be held September 28 to 30, 2015, in Bethesda, Md.

“Rebranding PPAI’s Product Responsibility summit highlights our evolution, over many years, of championing product safety and other industry compliance and regulatory issues,” said Paul Bellantone, CAE, PPAI president and CEO. “Our steadfast commitment to industry-wide corporate responsibility and our dedication to delivering best-in-class education and resources has transformed Summit from a product safety-only focus to a well-balanced program that addresses all five pillars of a robust responsibility program.”

The PPAI Product Responsibility Summit will begin with tours of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) testing lab on Monday, Sept. 28. Participants will witness first-hand how products are analyzed and scrutinized by the CPSC. In addition, PPAI will offer a series of introductory product safety sessions to ensure everyone in attendance will be fully able to participate in the event offerings. Product Responsibility Summit registration information is available here.

"A key change for Summit 2015 will be a greatly expanded focus on social responsibility," said Anne Lardner-Stone, PPAI director of public affairs. "As buyers increasingly demand greater transparency on social responsibility, it is PPAI’s responsibility to deliver the knowledge, tools and resources for industry practitioners to comply with those demands. With PPAI’s Product Responsibility Summit, our strategy remains consistent, focused and targeted to create significant opportunities to learn, invest and grow from the experience."

The summit will feature subject matter experts addressing topics, such as the five pillars of a product responsibility program and the role demographics play when evaluating the relative importance of each pillar; guidance as to how to set up a robust compliance program; and discussion that addresses the challenges of establishing a social compliance program from creating an internal checklist to responding to corrective action plans.

In addition to exploring the legal and ethical issues currently affecting the industry, as well as the business implications and challenges faced with compliance in these areas, all summit attendees will receive a social compliance manual created with the specific needs and challenges of the promotional products industry in mind. All Summit attendees who have not already done so will earn the Product Safety Aware designation required to gain access to the PPAI marketplace.

For more information on PPAI, visit www.ppai.org.