Special Event &
Education Highlights

Newtopia Now 2025 featured carefully curated events, education, and networking opportunities. These experiences were designed to foster meaningful connections between industry leaders, innovative brands, and purpose-driven buyers in the natural products space, delivering valuable learning experiences both on and off the show floor.

Click here for the 2025 agenda.

Community Experiences

Newtopia Now community experiences are unique offsite gatherings aimed to foster networking, community engagement, and exploration beyond the event venue.

We Don't Waste, Pack & Give Back Convention Center:

Fellow industry leaders joined together to give back to the community by assembling grocery bags filled with non-perishable food and essential household items for families in need. In partnership with We Don't Waste, this hands-on experience offered a meaningful way to connect with peers while making a tangible impact.

In Partnership with:

Plants with Purpose

Industry members immersed themselves in the beauty and wisdom of the Denver Botanic Gardens, where nature, wellness, and herbal traditions came together. In partnership with the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), this experience offered multiple exploration options including guided tours with expert herbalists and self-guided tours with informational materials.

Following garden adventures, a private reception space provided a relaxed setting where attendees connected while enjoying curated food and beverages. The experience was designed to inspire and foster connections through insightful discussions, plant knowledge discovery, and scenic surroundings.

In Partnership With:

Women in CPG Luncheon and Keynote

Back for its second year, the Women in CPG Luncheon was a powerful gathering designed to celebrate and uplift female leaders, entrepreneurs, and changemakers in the consumer-packaged goods industry. This event provided a dynamic space for mentorship, inspiration, and connection, fostering a strong community of women and allies shaping the future of CPG.

Attendees enjoyed a curated lunch and beverages in a welcoming roundtable format, designed to spark engaging conversations and forge meaningful relationships. A live DJ set the vibe, creating an atmosphere that balanced energy and connection. Whether participants were seasoned executives, emerging founders, or industry allies, this luncheon offered a space to share insights, explore opportunities, and champion the advancement of women in CPG.

This elevated experience included an inspiring keynote from mental health advocate Jenn DeWall, whose message resonated deeply with women navigating leadership in the CPG landscape:

Jenn DeWall
Mental Health Speaker

Connection Over Perfection: The New Rules of Rising Strong

In a world that often rewards polished perfection over honest presence, showing up as your authentic self can feel risky—or even impossible. But here’s the truth: real resilience, confidence, and success are built on authenticity and connection, not hustle and hiding. In this engaging, funny, and relatable keynote, Jenn DeWall explored what gets in the way of authenticity—like fear of judgment, burnout culture, comparison traps, and the unspoken pressure to “have it all together.” She guided attendees through the mental trip hazards that keep us performing instead of connecting, and reveal how embracing vulnerability and imperfection is actually the key to thriving.

Neighborhood Experiences

Conscious Beauty & Wellness Pitch Event

Attendees joined for a high-energy celebration of the industry's most innovative beauty, wellness and supplement brands—representing some of the fastest growing and most exciting categories in today's CPG landscape. They witnessed fast-paced pitches of next-gen products and compelling stories aimed to impress an elite panel of industry leaders—influential investors, key retailers and CPG pros—who could transform their trajectory and accelerate their growth. This was a chance to experience tomorrow's beauty and wellness innovations at Newtopia Now.

Sponsored by:

Thrive Café

The Thrive café provided a welcoming space where guests enjoyed premium coffee throughout the day alongside a curated selection of sponsored beverage products.

Sponsored by:

Glow Salon

The Glow Salon was the ultimate destination for conscious beauty and wellness. Attendees experienced the future of beauty with products that made them feel great inside and out. This year's enhanced salon offered an immersive experience where attendees could:

Receive professional headshots from our dedicated photographer
Enjoy complimentary makeup touch-ups by expert artists before your photo session
Visit our customization station to receive personalized heat-printed makeup bags
Explore curated shelves featuring sponsored product samples from leading brands

Visitors discovered everything from established icons of clean beauty to the latest innovations in people and planet-friendly skincare, makeup, hair care, fragrance, and much more. The Glow Salon provided a hands-on opportunity to try these exceptional products while embracing sustainable beauty practices that benefited both the attendees and the environment.

Featuring:

Newtopia Park

Making its debut that year, The Park was the ultimate destination to unwind and connect with colleagues while enjoying pickleball, meeting adoptable puppies from MaxFund, using stationary bikes to exercise and power devices, or sipping complimentary refreshments each afternoon.

CPG Unwrapped: Product Spotlight Event | Thrive Stage

Ten brands. Five minutes each. They showed us everything they got. The thrive neighborhood’s product spotlight event helped attendees find their next best-selling CPG innovation.

See which brands participated here.

Keynotes

Strength Redefined: Mastering Multidimensional Wellness with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

Attendees joined renowned physician and Muscle-Centric Medicine® founder Dr. Gabrielle Lyon as she took them beyond protein trends to explore a revolutionary understanding of strength for wellness leaders. In this thought-provoking keynote, Dr. Lyon revealed how true strength transcended the physical—becoming the cornerstone of both personal wellbeing and business success in 2025's evolving wellness landscape. Participants left the session with actionable strategies to enhance their resilience, optimize their decision-making and create products that called both them and their customers to a higher standard of wellness.

The session revealed:

• How protein had evolved from fitness supplement to central pillar of women's holistic wellness
• Why mental resilience had become the most coveted leadership skill
• The power of emotional neutrality—the secret behavioral pattern shared by the world's most successful entrepreneurs
• Practical techniques to break the dopamine-seeking cycle that undermined sustainable wellness
• A transformative framework for collective strength that elevated both business outcomes and consumer wellbeing
• How understanding customers' complete wellness journeys created more impactful products and deeper brand loyalty

Michael Costello
CEO, GNC

What GNC’s CEO Wants Emerging Brands to Know

Retail success doesn’t happen by accident—and at GNC, one of the most iconic names in health and wellness retail, the bar has never been higher. In this rare, unfiltered conversation, GNC CEO Michael Costello shared exactly what it takes for emerging brands to move from pitch to shelf in today’s fast-changing market.

With a focus on practical brand education, Michael addressed the most common mistakes he sees from early-stage companies and offer clear, actionable guidance on how to build meaningful, long-term retail relationships. From understanding how GNC defines need-states vs. traditional categories to the role of science and consumer demand in shaping decisions, this session was all about helping brands get smarter, faster.

Special Events

Neighborhood Networking Night

Neighborhood Networking Night at Newtopia Now connects attendees over food, beverages, and live music.

Mile High Morning Movement

Attendees energized their mornings with two distinct fitness experiences against Denver's spectacular backdrops—a centering yoga session with city skyline views one day, and an invigorating body weight HIIT class with Rocky Mountain vistas the next, both preparing participants for their expo activities ahead.

Thursday Sponsored by:

Neighborhood Happy Hours

Join your industry peers for an evening of networking, drinks, and fun in each of Newtopia's neighborhoods.

The next era of networking has arrived at Newtopia Now, where buyers and investors reach a deeper level of engagement with natural, organic and purpose-led brands. Here, you’ll not only gain access to changemakers across the conscious CPG marketplace but you’ll also zero in on the right brands for your business through Conscious Connections — a custom matchmaking platform powered by Beacon Discovery.

Using more than 100 filters, buyer profiles and product data based on each brand’s ingredient standards, Beacon Discovery intelligently matches you with companies to fast-track collaboration. The platform even helps you book meeting times and locations in the Connections Lounge after your match is mutually approved. Prefer to DIY your connections? Use Beacon Discovery's advanced search tools to facilitate your self-curated exploration and arrange conversations with potential partners.

Special Event &
Education Highlights

Community Experiences

Community Experiences