CLEVELAND — CLEVELAND – ECRM hosted a record number of participants at its October 2021 Global Market: Fall Experience, the company said Wednesday. More than 3,700 buyers and sellers from 68 countries gathered virtually for product discovery, face-to-face meetings and thought leadership.

Greg Farrar

“ECRM’s 2021 Global Market platform continues to grow in reach and scope,” said Greg Farrar, CEO of ECRM. “The Fall Experience spanned categories and geographical borders, and has been embraced by retail, foodservice and CPG buyers and sellers around the world.”

The 2021 Global Market: Fall Experience combined RangeMe’s immersive digital product discovery platform with ECRM Connect, ECRM’s virtual meeting environment, for brands to showcase relevant products to buyers from retailers and foodservice operators of all sizes and locations. Categories covered included food, beverage, foodservice, baby, household, housewares, pet, school and office, toy, seasonal, camping, beauty, health care and personal care. Buyers engaged in more than 2,200 supplier meetings around the clock during the weeklong experience.

“My team and I have been using RangeMe and ECRM for years to find new, innovative and emerging brands,” said Emma Padden, supplier development manager – Community Marketplace, UNFI. “Being able to choose which suppliers you want to meet with really allowed us to customize our approach and gain the contacts we were looking for. With our new Community Marketplace by UNFI, we are expanding our category offerings and were able to meet with suppliers that may not have approached UNFI in the past. The ECRM Connect platform is very user friendly and intuitive, making the whole process seamless. We look forward to the next Global Market.”

During the Global Market: Fall Experience, buyers explored participating brands on RangeMe between August 23 and October 18, and with the click of a button, selected those brands with which they wanted to meet virtually. Scheduled meetings were 15 minutes in length and ran 24 hours a day during the week of October 18 to accommodate global participants.

“ECRM’s Global Market was quite the experience for us,” said Todd Kite, VP of Sales for Zot Organic. “We ended up with six buyer meetings, and of those six we have deals already with two smaller retailers and are in discussions with a larger chain. In addition, I learned more from Kevin O’Leary’shour-long presentation at Global Market than I’ve learned in the past 20 years.”

In addition to Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary’s presentation, the 2021 Global Market: Fall Experience featured a dynamic content lineup that included keynotes by Ahold-Delhaize USA, CVS, Petco, Sam’s Club, Walgreens, Walmart, and WSL Strategic Retail’s Wendy Liebmann, as well as interactive workshops led by industry leaders.

ECRM will continue its Global Market programming with a Spring, Summer and Fall Experiences in 2022, in addition to its existing lineup of more than 100 category-specific sessions.