Robbie Thain
Founder, CEO
AI-generated illustrative image. Not an official campaign image.
An analysis of Informa Markets' 1.2 million square foot Natural Products Expo West campus, highlighting how CPG brands must adapt staffing and footprint flow.
On September 10, 2026, TSNN published an interview with Informa Markets executive Jeff D’Entremont outlining the massive operational footprint of Natural Products Expo West. As the senior vice president of Informa Markets’ Health and Nutrition Portfolio, D’Entremont detailed a physical campus scaled to house exactly 3,300 exhibitors. The sprawling event drew an astonishing 75,000 attendees to the Anaheim floor. Operating at this intense volume required Informa to command 1.2 million square feet across the entire convention campus.
The strict logistical reality of managing a space this large demands absolute precision from organizers and exhibiting brands alike. A venue of this immense size operates less like a traditional exhibition hall and more like a highly structured temporary metropolitan center. Brands must navigate these massive corridors with surgical operational intent to avoid getting lost in the crowd.
Managing a temporary city requires serious logistical force and highly disciplined floor execution. TSNN reported that more than 200 people directly service thousands of exhibitors across the massive show. D’Entremont himself manages a dedicated internal team of 155 people to keep the complex ecosystem running smoothly. The sheer physical volume of participants creates complex operational realities for everyone involved in the physical activation.
New Hope Network released detailed post-event reporting for the four-day March 2026 event. They recorded more than 3,200 exhibiting brands and 66,000 registered attendees walking the floor. The distinct gap between the 75,000 attendees cited by Informa and the 66,000 registered attendees reported by New Hope highlights a crucial metric. It exposes the vast difference between total operating scale and registered visitor counts.
The physical exhibition footprint is only half the modern operational equation. Digital product screening now begins months before the convention center doors ever open to the public. According to New Hope, Beacon Discovery tracked more than 20,000 exhibited products long before the show began. Platform users proactively generated more than 140,000 product interactions during the 90 days prior to Expo West.
The most widely found classification among those tracked products was the USDA Organic certification. This specific pre-show data proves that initial product screening happens long before physical floor traffic ever materializes. Brands must secure their digital positioning early to drive actual physical booth traffic later.
This immense operational scale forces consumer packaged goods and beverage brands to completely rethink their physical marketing strategy. Relying purely on chance encounters in a sprawling 1.2 million square foot facility is a fundamentally flawed operational plan. D’Entremont noted a crucial industry shift away from strictly tech-heavy event formats. He stated that modern event production depends heavily on creating serendipitous moments while fiercely maintaining authenticity.
Event organizers must evolve alongside changing audience preferences rather than just blindly deploying new technology. We agree completely with this highly practical approach to live event management. In our direct experience, those seemingly serendipitous moments require intense operational discipline behind the scenes. A crowded trade show space simply does not automatically translate into qualified retailer meetings or actual pipeline growth.
Marketing leadership teams must design their live footprint for rapid and clear product comprehension. Retail buyers face tens of thousands of complex choices across the Anaheim convention campus. You have to capture their raw attention and immediately direct it toward a highly specific business outcome. Every physical interaction should effectively pull a targeted visitor deeper into your commercial sales funnel.
We deeply understand the precise mechanics of scaling these specific large footprints. We designed and managed a 40 by 20 foot trade show environment for Glanbia at Natural Products Expo West 2025. This highly coordinated space effectively brought think!, Isopure, Optimum Nutrition and Amazing Grass together under one roof. We handled the entire concept, daily operations, floor staffing and structural breakdown. Our dedicated team successfully recorded more than 14,000 product samples distributed across the active demonstration stations. That level of controlled execution is what separates measurable Return on Investment from pure vanity metrics.
The temporary massive campus model drastically changes how field marketing directors must approach onsite staffing. Brands can no longer populate a sprawling physical space with generic brand ambassadors and hope for favorable outcomes. The direct involvement of hundreds of Informa service personnel proves the immense operational complexity of supporting these events. Exhibiting physical brands must closely mirror that rigid discipline by assigning clear and highly specific floor roles.
You need dedicated venue greeters, specialized product demonstrators, senior subject-matter experts and highly trained lead qualification staff. We are also tracking a rapid industry shift toward highly curated formats to help specific buyers cut through the overwhelming noise. Informa recently announced Karl Heitz as the new group event director for their broader natural-products portfolio. Informa described his executive remit as directly involving event operations and measurable business impact across Natural Products Expo West, Organic Produce Summit and Newtopia Now.
The recent Newtopia Now format represents a distinct operational pivot toward significantly smaller and highly controlled buyer interactions. Informa reported that Newtopia Now successfully connected more than 435 brands with active retail buyers, investors and commercial partners. The highly specialized event managed to facilitate exactly 1,500 curated meetings during its recent live edition.
Informa also explicitly noted that more than 60 percent of Newtopia Now exhibitors were absolute first-time participants. The seasoned organizers deliberately used highly immersive, retail-style environments to successfully encourage natural commercial connections. This directly proves that bridging trade shows with high-conversion roadshows or curated meeting spaces is quickly becoming a permanent operational standard. Savvy physical brands must actively construct secure environments that cleanly isolate and hold valuable buyer attention.
TSNN boldly characterized Expo West as the absolute Super Bowl of health and nutrition in its September coverage. The prominent publication accurately described the massive convention as a vital launch environment for physical products. These are the exact same items later seen rapidly scaling at major physical retailers such as Whole Foods and Sprouts. The commercial stakes for precise floor execution remain incredibly high for emerging food and beverage brands today.
Informa actively utilizes specialized physical exhibition formats like CPG Innovation Day, Snack Lab and regional SupplySide Connect events. They strategically use these smaller formats to heavily supplement the massive flagship show experience. These careful venue variations allow smart operators to successfully scale brand activation across markets with vastly different operational footprints. Matching the right trained staff and structural footprint to the specific buyer intent is the absolute only way to generate measurable ROI.
The harsh reality of managing a 1.2 million square foot campus means that passive marketing simply no longer generates commercial results. Your pre-show digital targeting strategy must consistently connect seamlessly to your physical floor operations. Every single interaction across your footprint should lead directly to a measurable sales follow-up or highly accurate CRM record. Relying on sheer volume without a capture plan burns through experiential budgets rapidly.
As you rigorously review your live event calendar for the coming year, clearly evaluate your true logistical capabilities. Are your physical brand activations designed to just passively collect simple badge scans, or do you truly possess the rigid operational control required to turn massive campus foot traffic into verified commercial pipeline?
Trade show coordinators managing massive 1.2 million square foot campus activations need total supply chain command to turn raw venue traffic into trackable pipeline. When scattered attention and poor booth flow threaten your conversion rates, Makai provides rigid operational execution. Under our Consumer Events capability, we design memorable live experiences that bring brands and people together through interaction, emotion, and engagement. Request a proposal
30 Years Experiential & Retail Activation Partner for CPG & Beverage Brands | Multi-Market Demos, Roadshows & Costco/Club Programs That Actually Sell
