SAGE Show, SAGE’s second annual online tradeshow and one of the industry’s largest online events, wrapped up a few weeks ago. With over 2,500 attendees, more than 150 virtual booths, popular and exciting live sessions and on-demand education, a product pavilion showcasing the industry’s hottest products, and so much more – we’d say it was a huge success!
If you missed out on all the fun at this year’s SAGE Show, don’t worry. Not only did we record all the Main Stage sessions for you to view at your convenience, but we’re also presenting you with this recap to help banish your FOMO once and for all!
This industry-leading three-day online event was packed full of great information, so strap in. Here’s your SAGE Show recap for 2021:
Wednesday, August 18
On Wednesday morning, SAGE Show kicked off at 10:00 am CT with a collaborative live discussion featuring industry leaders David Natinsky, MAS, SAGE President, Jonathan Strauss, PPPC President & CEO, and Bob McLean, PPAI Executive Vice President. In this session, moderated by SAGE’s Sr. Sales Manager Ryan Hanchey, they discussed the last year for the promo products industry and how businesses have fared and rolled with all the changes. They also discussed the future of the industry and where they see things going from here.
You can watch a recording of The Who, What, Where, When, & Why: Industry Updates and Insights here.
Then, at 11:00 am, the show floor opened to much fanfare! Attendees began three days of perusing virtual booths, connecting with top suppliers, and networking with peers, all from the comfort of their homes or offices. Though booths were only staffed during typical show hours, this year, the show floor and on-demand education were both available to view at distributors’ convenience, after-hours!
Anup Gupta, AG PrintPromo Solutions 
Brad Gooch, Ideal Incentive 
Margot Engle, Artina Promotional Products
That afternoon, SAGE Sales Development Manager Terri Sparkman, MAS, sat down for a virtual roundtable with industry distributors Brad Gooch from Ideal Incentive, Anup Gupta from AG PrintPromo Solutions, and Margot Engle from Artina Promotional Products. Together, they discussed various strategies for selling and managing company stores and what works for them in their businesses.
Watch a recording of Let’s Talk Company Stores here.
We wrapped Wednesday up with an exciting and genuinely thrilling happy hour event featuring magic and illusions from America’s Got Talent veteran Hart Keene!
Thursday, August 19
On Thursday, the show got off to a great start with a live session on the Main Stage from Cliff Quicksell, MAS+, Owner of Quicksell Associates. In this session, Cliff covered ways to add additional value for your customers with creative packaging, fulfillment, and distribution options. You can view all of Cliff Quicksell’s innovative and valuable resources here.
View a recording of Packaging, Fulfillment and Creative Distribution here.
In the afternoon, we had another showstopper of a session, this time from Jay Busselle and Jessica Gibbons-Rauch, both Managing Partners at FlexPoint. Their extensive session covered tons of information and helpful tips for making the most of your online presence, especially on LinkedIn. We know social media is a hot topic and can be tricky, so don’t worry: we recorded this session too!
Catch up with a recording of Leveraging LinkedIn for Leads here.
Friday, August 20
To close out the last day of SAGE Show 2021, there were two final live education sessions chock full of great info. First, Danny Rosin, CAS, President of BrandFuel, and Roger Burnett, Founder of Social Good Promotions, teamed up on the Main Stage to talk about corporate social responsibility and how you can incorporate doing good into the core of your business. The PromoCares founders explored ways to focus on making your brand both profitable and purpose-driven and covered why it’s so important these days.
Learn all about how to Develop a Profit & Purpose-Driven Business in a recording of the session here.
The week’s last session was arguably one of the most important, covering a hot-button topic for our industry: cybersecurity. With ransomware attacks taking place every eight minutes in the U.S., protecting your business from online security threats is integral. No one knows that better than this session’s presenters: Eric Natinsky, SAGE CEO, Brian Pritchard, SAGE Director of Information Technology, Chris Alfano, AIA Corporation SVP, Business Technology, and Neal Maguire, Investigations Manager at the Verizon Threat Research Advisory Center.
See what our superstar panel had to say about Cybersecurity for Promo Businesses in the recorded session here.
SAGE Show might have ended at 3:00 pm CT that Friday, but the benefits of attending are long-lasting. Aside from all of the fantastic live education sessions outlined above, attendees racked up 42,862 booth visits, 23,897 live chats, and 53,618 product views. That’s a lot of SAGE Show!
As SAGE President David Natinksy put it, “We couldn’t be more pleased with the success of our second year of SAGE Show being completely online. We couldn’t do it without all of the distributors, suppliers, and our sponsors – so thank you for making this possible. The future looks bright for the industry, and we look forward to seeing what it holds.” We’d have to agree with that!
You can catch up on recordings from the show here, and to learn more about SAGE Show, please visit www.sageshow.com.
