The North American Leadership Conference & Product Safety Summit

This week saw PPAI's North American Leadership Conference and first-ever Product Safety Summit in Denver. We worked closely with PPAI staff to coordinate some exclusive interviews with key players at both conferences, so for those of you who may have missed something, here's a quick recap of some of the week's events.

Promo Marketing Interviews North American Leadership Conference Keynote Speaker Annie Xu: Annie Xu, general manager for Alibaba.com, gave the keynote speech at the North American Leadership Conference on Monday, and after she spoke with Michael Cornnell. They discussed the company's objectives and Xu's thoughts on the current global marketplace and the state of e-commerce in this Q&A.

PPAI Unveils Promotional Products TurboTest: Our editorial director Nichole Stella sat in on an preview of PPAI's new product compliance tool last week prior to its unveiling Tuesday. The program will allow distributors to easily identify what laws, such as CPSIA and various state regulations, apply to a particular product and help to make sure you're compliant and that you, and your clients, are covered.

Podcast: Geiger and Prime Line CEOs Discuss the PPAI Product Safety Summit: On Wednesday I spoke with Rick Brenner of Prime Line and Gene Geiger of Geiger, the co-chairs of the inaugural Product Safety Summit. In this podcast we discussed how the PSS was formed and what the promotional product community is doing to accomodate changing laws and regulations. Gene and Rick were also on the committee that developed TurboTest, and they touch upon where they think it fits into our industry.

One last related note: this Sunday, August 14, marks the third anniversary of the passing of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, and the beginning of the 100 part-per-million lead limit on children's toys. Next week, I'll try to put something together discussing CPSIA's history and its impact on promotional products.