ISPA Sustainability Conference in Review With ISPA President Ryan Trainer

How successful was the first-ever ISPA Sustainability Conference held Nov. 16-17 in Charlotte, North Carolina? So successful that ISPA President Ryan Trainer is already planning the next one. Look out for a survey in your inbox to give us feedback and help shape the conference next fall.

Transcript

Dave Perry
Hey, it’s Dave Perry. Welcome to “Take 5 With Dave.” And I am with my boss, the head of the International Sleep Products Association, Ryan Trainer. Ryan is smiling and he is smiling, I think, because we just had a fabulously successful sustainability conference. Ryan, how did it go?

Ryan Trainer
It was great. The industry support was fantastic. The sponsor support – couldn’t beat it. It far exceeded my expectations and the expectations of the whole team. We’re just really gratified that the industry has a strong interest in this topic. I think it was something that there was really a need for, for this kind of discussion, and we couldn’t be happier with the turnout and with the content.

Dave Perry
And what was the turnout? May I ask?

Ryan Trainer
The turnout was 195 as of this morning. So we’re just elated with that.

Dave Perry
Yeah, I think you’re already talking we’re already talking about another conference. So what’s the kind of the preliminary thinking?

Ryan Trainer
The preliminary thinking is this was kind of a 101 level of sustainability.

Dave Perry
Are we going to go to 201?

Ryan Trainer
We’re going to go to 201 next year. So if you missed out on this one, we will still try to bring you along. But we’re planning to have our next conference probably in September or October of next year. As soon as we catch our breath from this one, we’ll begin planning that next week and hopefully, we’ll have some more details to provide shortly.

Dave Perry
Yeah, well, speaking of that, one thing that we’re going to be doing is sending out a questionnaire to those who were here. So what do you want to learn from the attendees here?

Ryan Trainer
We want your feedback. Everybody who is here would really like to know what did you think of the conference? But more importantly, what do you need from the conference next time? Do you want to get into more technical detail? Do you want to get into more marketing information? What kind of information would be useful for you? What kind of information would be useful for your customers?

Ryan Trainer
Our main goal here is to raise the level of awareness of sustainability issues, to provide a common vocabulary for people who are active throughout the supply chain so we can communicate better amongst each other. And also just to inspire people, we want to use these events as an opportunity for companies to move forward, move their companies forward with their products forward, but also move the industry forward.

Dave Perry
What were a couple of your key takeaways, Ryan?

Ryan Trainer
I think the first takeaway was there is such a strong interest in sustainability here. It’s demonstrated by the people who attended today, they stayed for the full program. I think that was really big. There’s a hunger for sustainability ideas, so we are a very innovative industry. I think that the suppliers and the manufacturers just really need to talk about what their capabilities and their needs are.

Ryan Trainer
And I think we can really build on this level of enthusiasm to make the industry better.

Dave Perry
Well, I want to say on my end, the engagement level was really, really strong. Every speaker had lots of questions. And this was a highly engaged audience. And it tells me we had a topic that they really want to learn more about.

Ryan Trainer
Couldn’t agree with you more. I think that’s really true. And I think that we can we can really build on this in the future.

Dave Perry
We can. And as we go out, I want to just say that on behalf of the ISPA team, we appreciate your leadership. I know you had a lot to do with this. You had the vision and it’s got to be a great feeling to see that vision to be realized.

Ryan Trainer
It just came together and we had a couple of little technical hiccups, but otherwise it just flowed very well. I couldn’t be happier.

Dave Perry
Yeah, I couldn’t be happier either. So, Ryan, great job. All right. Congratulations. Appreciate it. Thank you.