consumerreturns.wbresearch.com/

Pros: Venue and location. Mix of retailers, manufacturers and vendors. Roundtables. Interactions with stakeholders. Recommendations: More ice breakers and ways for all participants to meet each other. More case studies and solutions. More round table interactions. Bigger mix of manufacturers and focus on their problems. Need a wider representation of industries other than C.E. with more small and mid market players.

overall the conference was a great place for networking more retailers at the event would be ideal - less of the hounding by sales people

The size of the conference makes it easy to network and have productive discussions and meetings. However, the keynote speakers and the presentations felt like blatant sales pitches and most of them did not bring original or unique perspectives to share.

The chairperson and most of the speakers were dry. Would be great to have just a little bit of energy up on stage. With the conference title "Consumer Returns" I thought I would be getting more content focused on solutions for the retail customer, but the content was heavy on sales and asset recovery. Might have been a good forum for the OEM and service providers, but as a Retailer, it felt more like an aggressive sales event than a collaborative space to take Returns to the next level. I skipped all the networking events aka sales opportunities to have quiet meals with like minded retailers. If the conference gets a refresh, I might be willing to bring some of my team members from Walmart again.

The show has gotten stale. The format, Paul Baum's constant bloviating, the overly sugared-carbohydrate snacks - while the venue and location changed, not much else did. Content I think it was OK. But, with Paul Baum giving some huge spiel before every presentation and taking the panel discussions off-track it gets tiring. To often the interesting content is cut-short due to schedule changes. Venue Good. Love Austin. Food Seriously, has no one ever heard of protien? Every snack it seemed like was a sugar-loaded carb. I appreciated the nut bars, but the please understand that people eat differently now. Networking I don't understand why you don't build-in some sort of structured networking at these events. This is why everyone comes to this event and you continue to run it back. As usual, great part of the event, but it is entirely up to the individual to take part in it. With a lot of organizations having to choose b/t RLA and this show, a structured networking would be a great distinguisher.