SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 9, 2026--
Social Commerce Summit will bring its 2026 fall series to Salt Lake City on Wednesday, September 16, at Young Living Headquarters Auditorium, gathering over 20 speakers representing resources and brands that have built, scaled or sold inside social commerce.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260909132185/en/
US social commerce sales are projected to top $100 billion in 2026.
Social Commerce Summit has one unbreakable rule: no speaker without a real business behind them and the resources to support. Everyone who takes the stage has shipped a product; run a P&L; or built a platform brands actually use.
"Salt Lake City kicks off our fall series with exactly the kind of room we set out to build: operators who've actually built, scaled and sold in social commerce, sharing what's helped them and what’s working right now," said Stuart Johnson, Founder and CEO of Social Commerce News.
THE LINEUP
The full day is hosted live by David Vanderveen of IM8 /Special Projects and Co-host of Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast.
Confirmed speakers include:
THE DETAILS
Additional events will be held in Los Angeles (October 14–16) and New York City (November 10).
About Social Commerce Summit
Social Commerce Summit is a national event series produced by the platform, Social Commerce News, bringing together brand leaders, platform executives, agencies and investors to examine what actually works in social commerce.
Social Commerce News also produces Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast and the Social Commerce Intelligence Report.
For more information, visit SOCOMMSUMMIT.COM or email info@socialcommercenews.com.
The room that actually built, scaled, and sold in social commerce is coming to Salt Lake City. Social Commerce Summit kicks off its 2026 fall series on September 16 at Young Living Headquarters — 20+ operators who've shipped products, run P&Ls, and built the platforms brands actually use. No theorists. No pitch decks without a business behind them. Just people who've done it, sharing what's working right now. With U.S. social commerce sales projected to top $100 billion in 2026, this is the conversation worth being in. Brands attend free by application → socommsummit.com/events/utah-2026
AMSTERDAM (AP) — Look up as you enter Amsterdam's new Art Zoo museum, and a 12-foot crocodile stares down at you, mouth open, ready to chomp.
The taxidermic reptile is one of hundreds of preserved creatures on display, alongside artfully arranged piles of bones, illuminated tulips encased in apothecary jars and a cabinet of grotesque fish.
While it’s not a Halloween-themed museum, the show should appeal to anybody looking for something a little dark this spooky season.
“It was a little creepy,” admitted Tomáš Vaško, a Slovak living in the Dutch capital, after touring the museum on a dark October day.
Art Zoo is the creation of Dutch artists Jaap Sinke and Ferry van Tongeren, who draw inspiration from “wunderkammers,” or curiosity cabinets collected by wealthy Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries to showcase objects from the natural world.
“The main thing is that we like storytelling with the animals," van Tongeren told The Associated Press. "We like to add drama. We add an attitude to the animals, where traditional taxidermists just want to mimic nature.”
Behind him, a cheetah slouched in an alcove under the watchful eye of a cassowary.
In natural history museums, animals are posed as they could be seen in the wild. At the Art Zoo, a Japanese giant spider crab stretches its 6-foot legs above a doorway beside the leg bones of a mastodon that nearly reaches the ceiling.
The duo rose to fame in 2015 after shark-pickling artist Damien Hirst purchased their entire exhibition from a London art show.
Unlike at a traditional zoo, the human visitors are confined, not the animals. The display rooms in the 17th-century canal house where the Art Zoo is located are enclosed by brooding, black metal cages.
“We really like the concept of having all the people in a cage and then all the animals free,” van Tongeren says. “In that way, the whole building becomes one artwork.”
None of the animals in the eclectic collection were taken from the wild.
“All our animals come from zoos where they died of natural causes,” said Sinke. Still, he acknowledged that the paperwork can be challenging. The pair primarily obtained specimens from Europe to ensure they know the history of the animals.
Sinke and van Tongeren actually consider themselves an artistic trio, crediting naturalist Charles Darwin as the third contributor to their work. They pitched the concept of the museum as the return of Darwin’s wonder.
In a nod to the man who developed the first scientific theory of evolution, one wall display contains a series of Darwin busts, turned sideways. Sinke and van Tongeren see an amusing irony in honoring Darwin inside a building that once housed the Biblical Museum.
Not everything in the collection is a real animal. Underneath the crocodile suspended from the ceiling is a wall of Jenny Hanivers, ray carcasses modified into grotesque creatures by 16th-century sailors who presented the macabre beasts as real sea monsters to gullible collectors.
Their misshapen faces appear to keep a beady eye on museum guests as they walk from caged room to caged room.
Visitors sit near a collection of bones from a Mosasaurus (70 million years old) at the Art Zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Patrick Post)
A Japanese giant spider crab stretches its legs above a doorway at the Art Zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Patrick Post)
A cheetah slouches in an alcove at the Art Zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Patrick Post)
Dutch taxidermists Jaap Sinke, left, and Ferry van Tongeren pose for a photo at the Art Zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Patrick Post)
A crocodile stares down at the entrance of the Art Zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Patrick Post)
