The First Drop: Great Show. Except…

One thing about the past couple of years that’s been as painfully apparent for people in the events business as it has been for those in the beverage business is that when it comes to just plain getting people together – be it in a factory, a concert hall, a store or a conference room – there are several added degrees of difficulty.

That’s true for BevNET, which produces BevNET Live, NOSH Live, Brewbound Live, and other peer knowledge and networking conferences, and for New Hope Network, which puts on the Natural Product Expo West and East shows. There’s been a lot of shared pain – because of COVID-19, we both canceled two years’ worth of gatherings, moving what had been joyous affairs onto Zoom, which, well, you can dress it up, but it’s still Zoom.

So we were almost as happy to see Expo West happen in March as we were to return to our own Live events last December. As our publisher would state, you see old friends and new. For our team, it’s a reporting bonanza, with innovation and investment mixing with brand maturation and insider-y things like people taking new jobs, entrepreneurs saddling up for another ride, and people dreaming big around product types – natural, organic, sustainable – that are growing faster than any other part of the CPG industry.

Yes, there were some situations where the outside world gave us some pause around the good vibes that the 60,000 or so attendees were celebrating: your hotel room’s TV brought constant updates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the pandemic isn’t over and vendors from other parts of the world, like Hong Kong, brought tales of continued lockdown. Yes, masking rules seemed to fade the second we all hit Anaheim, as vaccination, testing requirements and slowing infection rates created the illusion of group immunity.

People got down to business – the kind of in-person, rapid transaction, fill-an-order and sign-a-distributor business. And with new brands on the floor, trying to push their way from online to store shelves, and existing companies feeling the opportunity to release new products, and the overall continued success of better-for-you food and drink, there was a familiar, renewed hum in the air.

Then it happened. On the last day of a four-day event, the reports started circulating online, then on to the Expo floor. Claims from at least two women who were brave enough to speak up, to make it clear that men were harassing, threatening, and improperly touching them; that they were being treated like any success they found might be due to their sex appeal alone; that, as with so many places and experiences, they were being targeted because they were women.

Carlotta Mast, who runs the show as SVP and Market Leader of the New Hope Network, who should have been enjoying a victory hike and a well-earned salt scrub, instead had to deal with questions from a reporter about how New Hope plans to keep women safe from this kind of classless, brainless toxic masculinity.

Here’s a better question, and I say this as the reporter whose job it was to bother Carlotta: why the heck should she, or New Hope, have to fix this?

And yes, we ALL believe the women. We’ve seen it happen too often. Don’t blame the victims. Don’t do the “whatabout” crap or make excuses about drinking. Members of my team have experienced it, too. Friends of mine. Women who otherwise have the power to make or break a company through investment or to greenlight products for retail. I’ve seen it, I’ve tried to stop it in the past, I’ve put people in cabs, I’ve been the friendly escort home, but like so many of us, I haven’t done enough.

So I’m using this column, which is my biggest soapbox, to say it: All we can do, guys, is be an ally against the sexist gaze, the grabby hands, to try to upend our stupid, ages-old entitlement. Call it what you want: call it bro culture, the patriarchal underpinnings of capitalism, or just plain infantile douchebaggery. You wouldn’t be wrong. Call it unlawful and you wouldn’t be wrong either.

It should be clear that this garbage isn’t merely the purview of the natural products business, or that there aren’t industries where this is more pervasive. Trade shows on the whole have sordid reputations and the vendors themselves have, for decades, tried to use attractive models to help hawk products. That’s changing – gradually – but the kind of behavior we’ve heard about – and seen – at Expo doesn’t have the luxury to evolve. You need to change now.

There’s a lot that’s good about the natural products industry, and there were a lot of ways that it showed beautifully upon its return to Anaheim. Yes, it would have been great if we’d worn our masks more. But it turns out that for some, the danger from a novel coronavirus wasn’t anywhere near the danger from a much older contagion: the attitudes of the men who are supposed to be their co-workers. So, folks, we have to improve. We have to police each other, we have to police ourselves, we have to recognize that on the floor and off it, hawking a Paleo diet doesn’t give you an excuse to act like a Neanderthal.