Frequently Asked Questions

With more natural products on the shelves than ever before, and some new product innovation fueled by disruption and reinvention, the conversation around transparency is more important than ever. Beginning in 2023, every brand will be reviewed by New Hope’s Standards team before the show. In the past, standards reviews have been required for new exhibitor applications and for returning brands on-floor at Expo, but as transparency has become more important to our industry (and to buyers), we know that reviewing brands in advance will help every product shine in its best light.

In the past, brands may not have had access to an affordable impact estimate that demonstrates transparency when it comes to sustainability. In Beacon, brands receive a sustainability impact estimate from HowGood, the world’s largest sustainable ingredient database. Retailers tell us they are looking for this kind of transparency, and it can be a major differentiator for products when they’re choosing which ones to buy. Beacon Discovery gives smaller brands insight and access to the information retailers and customers want to know. Once brands receive their estimate, they have the option to promote it on Beacon. 

Onboarding to Beacon Discovery begins by uploading your products into the New Hope Product Portal, powered by SPINS. After uploading, our New Hope Standards team will be able to review products for approval and placement on Beacon Discovery.

A leading wellness-focus data company and passionate advocate for natural and organic retailers and brands. Their technology powers product intelligence in Beacon Discovery. Their portal, Pinto, is used to power the New Hope Product Portal for use at events and on Beacon Discovery.

Beacon is much more than a directory because it provides, in one place, many new and different metrics and tools to find products that meet practical, value-driven, and mission-oriented objectives. These include criteria like avoiding prohibited ingredients, sustainability impact estimates, processing transparency, regulatory compliance, distributer and broker detail, high-level velocity and sales metrics, and robust filtering with over 100 categories aligned with SPINS’ shelf category architecture.  

Beacon is the brand-retailer discovery platform that matches brands with buyers based on New Hope Network’s standards and the transparency and priorities that retailers say they want. Beacon identifies connections based on ingredient preferences, values, mission, and more than 100 other filters, including a sustainability impact estimate from HowGood, then lets buyers reach out to brands. Beacon also integrates with the show experience at Natural Products Expos East and West, making it easier for buyers to find the brands on the show floor.  

Our current version of Beacon Discovery features a variety of CPG brands that conform to Natural Products Expo standards (whether or not they are exhibiting at a show). On the discovery side, retailers, exhibiting ingredient suppliers, investors, and service providers can search for brands. 

Beacon is an inclusion in all booth contracts for Expo East 2023 and Expo West 2024 so there is no additional cost to exhibiting brands – and brands onboarding in 2023 can upload unlimited products, at no additional cost!   

 
For non-exhibiting brands, the cost is $2,000 for one year.  

There are two ways to use Beacon – exhibition inclusions (included in the Expo booth price) and non-exhibitor subscriptions. Exhibitor inclusions will run January through December and non-exhibitor subscriptions will be annual, beginning on the subscription date and ending a year later. 

When natural products businesses enter our New Hope ecosystem, we perform a labeling review to identify that ingredients and claims meet our standards. Some brands make corrections themselves. Others want affordable, accessible regulatory assistance to help bring labeling into both event and federal labeling compliance. MarketReady helps exhibitors and non-exhibitors do both easily and efficiently. MarketReady Verification costs $750 per label.  

We hope to make an industry-wide impact on climate change while giving brands the knowledge and actual tools to make affordable improvements in sustainability and transparency, so they can stand out in the industry for doing the right thing. Beacon was built to make discovery faster, more reliable and more transparent using metrics that matter. Learn more about New Hope’s other transparency initiatives in Navigating Integrity. Learn more in our article, Navigating Integrity in the Natural Products CPG Industry.

Our banned ingredient templates are part of what makes Beacon Discovery so unique. Choose a template that aligns most closely with your store’s standards and we’ll make sure you do not see any products that contain those ingredients.

Ingredient template options:

• New Hope Network Standards: This is the default selection. New Hope Network ingredient standards are applied to all products you see on Beacon.
• Retailer Standards and Retailer Standards Plus: We created these more rigorous templates based on public lists posted by industry-leading retailers, plus our own Standards Teams’ expertise.

Ingredients listed with a “*” next to them mean they are only banned if genetically engineered. If a product has this ingredient and does not have a Non-GMO and/or Organic certification, Beacon Discovery will not show the product.

Exceptions:

• Nail polish is allowed to contain artificial colors across all templates.
• Hair color is allowed to contain Paraphenylenediamine (or PPD) in the New Hope Network Standards and Retailer Standards templates.
• Products found in the Home and Miscellaneous categories on Beacon are not filtered against the banned ingredient templates.

The number of ingredients banned in each template is based on representing a single ingredient name in all ways it may be displayed on a label—which may mean the full ingredient name, alternate spellings, and abbreviations. In some cases, multiple ingredients may be combined under one display name that we show in the templates (example: PEGs).

New Hope Network allows these brands to exhibit at shows and on Beacon to foster innovation and discovery, balanced with labeling compliance. International brands get a chance to see how the US market responds to their products, while US buyers see what’s available internationally in a market setting where international products and ingredients are increasingly popular. 

Many of these brands do meet labeling compliance within their home jurisdictions.