During his president's address on the final day, Steve Mister delivered a bold call for unity and convergence, emphasizing the need for the trades to rally their energy and resources to respond as one super trade to address existential threats.
“It's a call for convergence in the industry, which is the theme of the conference,” he said. “Typically I use the speech to just talk about the things that CRN has been doing over the last year, and I felt like this year, it really needed to be a moment in time to say, we need to get together as an industry. There are some issues that are so big that the industry has got to get together to figure out how we're going to handle them.”
Some of the issues top of mind for CRN include age restrictions on supplements because of their potential to spread to other states and categories.
Mister also took the time to reflect on the last two decades, noting that it was exactly 20 years ago that he interviewed for his current position at CRN. Some highlights include the "Life…Supplemented Campaign", the provision of a series of multi-year grants to the National Advertising Division to increase monitoring of dietary supplement advertising, and the CRN board’s decision to adopt a voluntary program around melatonin that includes child deterrent packaging for flavored melatonin formats.
“Those are the moments that have really sort of stayed with me over the last 20 years,” he said. “It's when the board has stood up and said, we're going to do something because it's just the right thing to do.”
To hear more on Mister’s call for industry convergence, his thoughts on DSHEA and when we can expect the results of CRN’s consumer survey, watch the full interview.
