Elan’s 2019 EXPO West Recap

It’s that time of year again… Post show triage where we frantically dig out from a colossal pile of hot emails received while at the show, sort through stacks of new business cards and try to recall who was what and why we were supposed to follow up, and hope in vain that the 85,000 hands you shook didn’t turn into a nasty head cold. My family and I are almost over the nasty head cold, but I’m still working on the emails.

2019 EXPO West was another great show! The gone-but-not-forgotten ingredient pavilion had displaced many who were used to sticking to their own booth, so they roamed about the show floor. I’m sure that added to the traffic, as I noticed a more diverse mix of people looking for opportunities amid the many folks looking for CBD products, which were everywhere. There was good news for those people and companies; the first trade association to take cannabis under its wing, the American Herbal Products Association, is still tirelessly working to offer guidance to this new category of sort-of-legal-sort-of-not-legal ingredients to make sure it doesn’t have a quick, terminal end like Hoodia or other formerly exciting ingredients.

Just before the show, we strategically dropped two significant announcements: (1) our amazing new 4-day standard Turn Around Time and (2) ‘Next Generation Transparency’ in the form of our Partnership with Ingredientsonline.com to improve industry transparency. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and we all had fun riding the wave of excitement.

1. Numerous colleagues approached me to share how disruptive our new 4-day TAT will be to their operations. They ranged from small internal labs to the biggest labs in the industry and all had the same story; Alkemist Labs is faster than their internal lab and likely more cost effective. Sorry, not sorry. While I certainly don’t mean to be disruptive… actually, that’s a lie, I love it, and am happy to know that our efforts to optimize our operation is inching closer to proving Alkemist Labs is the best option for plant ID testing in the industry, with no exceptions.
2. I heard from a number of companies that they want to emulate the high-level quality assurance Ingredientsonline.com offers via testing with Alkemist Labs and making the results visible on their website. It was music to my ears, because you’ve undoubtedly heard me say that this industry fails, every day, to monetizing quality via bragging rights about your reputable lab partner and the effort$ you take to ensure quality. Quality is so often just another expense on the P & L, but I believe it should be celebrated and marketed when companies have key lab partners like Alkemist Labs. The momentum is starting to build as more companies get on board with Next Generation Transparency!