The Canadian Health Food Association holds an annual convention to showcase new, exciting natural products and companies available in Canada. The CHFA holds this conference once on the West Coast (in Vancouver), and once out East. CHFA Expo West (Vancouver) is the largest trade event in Western Canada for the natural products and the organics industries. It provides industry professionals with a two day conference/tradeshow and allows for incredible networking and education opportunities to learn more about the best products currently available.
I was given the chance to attend this year and I jumped at the offer. I’ve been to many tradeshows before, but nothing quite like this.
I was able to sample hundreds of natural and organic products and learn all the ins and outs of countless products on the market. It was a great opportunity to meet many company founders and speak directly to the people responsible for developing all of these health care products. It’s one thing to phone a company and ask a customer service rep questions about the product line and ingredients. But to be able to talk with the owners face-to-face was a whole other experience. The knowledge and passion of all these people, all under one roof, was phenomenal.
The highlight of the weekend for me was visiting the Sequel Naturals booth. Vega Whole Food Health Optimizer is a product line under the Sequel umbrella company. I used some Vega products regularly during my 4-month rollerblade journey across Canada. Although Vega had sponsored me, I had never been given the chance to meet the founder of the company, Brendan Brazier… until now!
Brendan Brazier is a fantastic athlete (triathlete, specifically) and role model. So I used this opportunity at the CHFA to talk with him one-on-one and pick his brain a bit. He was a great guy, down to earth and willing to chat about anything I had to ask. I couldn’t take up too much of his time since there were so many other people he needed to be speaking with. But it was very inspirational to finally meet with and talk to him.
By the end of the weekend, my shoulders were starting to get a bit sore from the bags and bags of take-home samples. I have a lot of product information and samples to try out over the next while. I’m looking forward to finding the best items so I can let my clients know what’s going on in the industry and where they can look for these products. I’ll be testing out various vitamins, supplements, fish oils, vegetarian EPA/DHA supplements, health & beauty lines, and a seemingly endless supply of food product samples.
