SAAGNY And PPAI Terminate Promotions East Agreement

Lantor, Ltd. and www.Lenticularpromo.com, as a supplier member of PPAI (PPAI member 234581) and SAGNY, attended this year’s Promotions East Show in Atlantic City NJ. We have launched our New Lenticular Promotional Visor as the newest product addition to our Line of 3D Lenticular Promotional product lines.

Today, www.Lenticularpromo.com has learned PPAI and SAAGNY have ended their cooperation 1 year early than the original contact. According to ASI publication PROMOGram, the Specialty Advertising Association of Greater New York (SAAGNY) and Promotional Products Association International (PPAI) have announced that they have mutually agreed to terminate their collaborative management of SAAGNY's Promotions East trade show. The two sides agreed to end their partnership with one year left on the contract.
"The board just felt that they needed a different focus," said Walter Schatz, executive directory of SAAGNY, in an exclusive interview with Counselor this afternoon. "The board wants to focus on a show and event that they can control more of. The show has become smaller and what has happened is that the involvement of our volunteers was reduced to almost nonexistent and our organization is very much volunteer driven. There wasn't a role for them in that structure and we needed that focus back."
The most recent Promotions East show, held earlier this month in Atlantic City, attracted 3,500 attendees, which was down 17% from last year's 4,200 attendees. While Schatz says that SAAGNY will continue as a PPAI affiliate, the feel of the Promotions East show changed too much for members once PPAI became involved and took control of everything from marketing and advertising to sponsorships, group sales and logistics.
"It was a different experience for our folks and our attendees and our exhibitors, than we had in the past," says Schatz, whose own contract with SAAGNY runs until July 2009. "PPAI is very much staff driven with very little volunteer participation, while SAAGNY is very much volunteer driven with strong participation and a much more even distribution of responsibility," he says. "We just felt that volunteer commitment to the future of the show was critical."
In a statement, Steve Slagle, president and CEO of PPAI, said that he believes the Promotions East show is now in good enough shape for SAAGNY to operate it on its own. "PPAI and SAAGNY have put programs and systems in place that will allow SAAGNY to move forward on its own in delivering a positive show experience," he said. "We look forward to on-going participation in Promotions East and wish SAAGNY and all the co-sponsors of the show continued success."