Amanda Collett spent more than 15 years producing events across Canada, the US, and Europe. At every one, she watched organizers ask attendees to download an app, exhibitors rent scanners they barely knew how to use, and leads sit trapped in someone else's platform until someone remembered to export them.

Last December, on her 40th birthday, she did something about it. After a nearly six-month acquisition process, Collett — formerly North America Country Manager at Web Summit, where she helped launch the first Web Summit Vancouver — bought Conference Badge, a platform more than 10,000 events worldwide already use to design and print badges. She bought it with one rule: simplify, don't overcomplicate.

This month, that rule extended to a new product. Conference Badge has launched the Lead Retrieval Generator, which turns the badges events already print into a complete lead capture and networking system — no app, no hardware, no rollout required. Exhibitors scan a QR code on any badge and it opens directly in a phone browser. Notes and tags can be added while the conversation is still fresh. When the event ends, every exhibitor automatically receives a CRM-ready CSV and a stats summary by email.

"People don't go to events for app features. They go to make real connections," said Collett. "I kept waiting for someone to build for that. Nobody did. So I bought a badge company."

The product follows the same logic that made Conference Badge popular with organizers — collapsing what used to be days of badge work into a task done in under 30 minutes. The lead capture page carries the organizer's own branding, and organizers can mark the product up and resell it to exhibitors.

The launch is part of a broader rebuild since the acquisition. "Going through an acquisition is not for the faint of heart," Collett said. "It's equal parts exhilarating and exhausting — highs, lows, and more learning than you can plan for."

The rebuild has also included a refreshed platform and dashboard and the addition of Lean Ticket event ticketing. International expansion into Australia and the UK is underway, backed by CanExport funding.