Jan
22
BLC, BBC and Lots of Snow
Filed Under Interbike, Photos | 2 Comments
As I write this, I’m sitting in the lodge at Snowbasin ski area, about an hour north of Salt Lake City, sipping some hot chocolate. Brings back memories of living in New England, though we never had mountains like these here. This is where the Backcountry Base Camp demo day of the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market show is being held this year. Think of it as the outdoor industry’s OutDoor Demo. Basically, less sand and more snow. Lots more snow. They got 16 inches in Salt Lake yesterday.
Because of the snow storm, we were held up at the San Diego airport for a while. Luckily, I was with Leanne our new marketing department retailer outreach manager and Megan Tompkins, the editor of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. BRAIN produces the OR Show Dailies and was on her way to cover the show. Megan and had a nice chat about the just ended Bicycle Leadership Conference. I still need to write my follow up post on the BLC. I was hoping to write at the event, but just ended up talking to lots of industry friends and making new ones that I didn’t have time to write.
Just a few quick photos before I have to wrap up to head back down into Salt Lake and the convention center for last minute prep before the show opens tomorrow. This is my first time at OR so I’m curious about the Salt Palace convention center, since it’s one of the few places in the US that could potentially accommodate Interbike, if we were to move the show out of Vegas.
We’re not in San Diego anymore: the drive up to Snowbasin.
Here’s me all bundled up: it was 18 degrees F this morning.
BBC is about the polar opposite (sorry about the pun) of Interbike’s OutDoor Demo in Bootleg Canyon in Nevada. Cold with lots of snow. Great vibe, though, and great runs for skiing.
Back to the bike industry for a moment, here’s Chris Zigmont of Pedro’s and Lance Camisasca of Interbike and Lifeboat Solutions accepting their “BRAINy” awards at the BLC. Chris accepted on behalf of Pedro’s in the “green” company category, and Lance won the individual advocacy award for his efforts on behalf of the industry during his 10 years with Interbike.
Here’s what the sessions look like at the BLC. Most of the major manufacturers and suppliers in the bike industry send high level executives or company heads to this event. Rick Vosper of Veltec Sports was the master of ceremonies – you can see him up on the stage. More to come on the event happenings…
Jan
18
Bicycle Leadership Conference
Filed Under Industry News, Interbike | 3 Comments
The Bicycle Leadership Conference begins today here in San Diego. Since I’ve been working on two of our other trade shows, Outdoor Retailer and ASR (Action Sports Retailer), that are staging next week, I had to miss the morning bike ride, unfortunately. Long week ahead for me with the BLC this weekend, then off to Salt Lake City on Monday for OR and then back to San Diego for ASR on Thursday.
It’s fun to see the gathering of the tribes, as we call the different industries, at all our shows. Each of them have their own unique cultures that come alive when they come together at a trade show. While I definitely still feel like somewhat of an outsider at these other events, it’s still a great experience. And despite their differences, they are all basically retail sports-related businesses that have many of the same issues and challenges that the bike industry has. It’s been enlightening to see how they approach them versus how the bike industry does.
That last thought applies to the BLC since they have a speaker from the ski industry bringing some insight from outside the bike world to attendees.
I’m planning to be there for lunch when the business part of the conference starts. Wonder who I’ll be placed with at meals. I met some great people at the meals last year – they were some of the best time spent at the conference.
Just like we did last year, we’ll be hosting a breakfast presentation on day two. We have an opportunity to explore new venues for Interbike since our contract at the Sands runs through the 2009 show. We’ll present some options and go over issues and realities to consider. A big part for us is to get feedback and see what the industry leaders in attendance think.
Judging from the responses we’ve gotten to our recent press release on the subject from the industry, a consensus might be tough to achieve. I’m hoping to post some of the responses soon to show how the industry is thinking…
We’ll also probably be answering a lot of question about the new OutDoor Demo East event from the industry
I think I’ve written the word “industry” enough in this post, so I’ll stop here. Hope to see you at the BLC. And welcome to San Diego, bike industry!
Jan
10
OutDoor Demo East!
Filed Under Attendee News, Exhibitor News, Industry News, Interbike, OutDoor Demo, OutDoor Demo East | 5 Comments
Well, it’s official: we’ve formally announced plans for an OutDoor Demo on the East Coast in Providence, Rhode Island this coming October. Details are still forthcoming, but the basics are that it will be held at Roger Williams Park just south of downtown Providence.
The press release says just about all there is to say at this point, but I just wanted to add a few thoughts. It’s also a great excuse for a blog post…
As a former New Englander myself (Southern Connecticut native with 6 years spent in Worcester-Boston areas), I’m really glad that we have an event that will provide an opportunity to showcase some of the awesome regional bike culture that exists back east. I’m sure that there will be a bunch of great ideas for peripheral events during that week of the Demo. I’ve already heard talk of a cross race.
One event that you’ll read about in the press release that will not be happening – at least this first year – is a consumer demo day. The possibility of a consumer day at any of the Interbike events always generates alot of excitement and discussion, but we really feel that we need to fully serve the needs of the industry first before we try to open things up to the end users of all this great gear that we showcase. Key ingredients of this decision were both formal and informal surveys of manufacturers and retailers that did not give us a strong consensus that a consumer day was important or demanded at this point. Given the enormous additional logistical and infrastructure needs that having a consumer day would place on us and exhibitors to implement successfully, we decided to get through the first year as a trade-only event.
David Bernstein’s most recent edition of The Spokesmen industry podcast had an interesting discussion of the possibility of an ODD East just before the holidays. At that point it was just a small news item in BR&IN that mentioned that we were looking into the possibility. It’s fun to listen to them talk about Interbike and the stuff we’re doing. They bounced around the pros and cons as they each saw them from their points of view in the industry.
The main thing to remember in all this is that our goal with this new event is to serve the needs of the East coast retailers by having an event in the OutDoor Demo mold as close to their backyards as possible. Vegas is really a suburb of Southern California so a shop can just fill a car full of staffers to drive to Interbike pretty easily. We hope that ODD East will make it easier for Northeast and Mid-Atlantic shops to give their staffs the same opportunities to see, ride, network and learn at an Interbike event.
Jan
8
Hey there! Happy 2008! Been a bad little blogger here for the past couple-o-months. Well, we’re not dead yet here. Just really busy. Working to get back in to the swing of things here in the blog world.
To get things going again, I’ll hand things over to the guys from Cross Vegas with their preliminary plans for 2008. One of the coolest tid-bits in the release is the part about an industry cup race like we had for the crit last year:
CrossVegas 2008 Ready To Rock Interbike Again
Preliminary Race Details ReleasedJanuary 7, 2008 (Boulder Colo.) After a tremendous first year in 2007 that saw 5,000 spectators and arguably the highest caliber field ever assembled in the U.S. converge on the evening of Interbike’s opening day, CrossVegas is back on the schedule for 2008. Boulder-based organizers, CrossVegas LLC, announced the event will be Wednesday September 24, once again capping off the show’s opening day.
Dubbed as “the international cyclocross season starts American-style in Las Vegas,” CrossVegas featured a field of elite men and women racing under the lights at Desert Breeze Soccer Complex, a short distance from the Strip and Interbike. Canadian Lyne Bessette won the women’s event while then-U.S. national champion, Ryan Trebon, took the men’s title.
Providing a peek into 2008 plans, CrossVegas co-promoter Brook Watts announced that a race for tradeshow attendees is one of the new additions for year two. “There’s obviously a lot of folks in the industry who race cyclocross and we’ve heard many pleas for a “Wheelers and Dealers” race to start the evening. We’re ironing out details but expect full information by late spring.”
Commenting on 2008, Interbike advisor, Lance Comisasca continued, “We’re working closely with CrossVegas to build upon the success of year one by developing a shuttle for spectators among other things. We’ll be announcing lots of joint promotional efforts in the upcoming months.”
Sponsorship opportunities are available at various levels ranging from CrossVegas title sponsor to suppliers. Watts heads the sales and marketing effort and explained “It’s still early in the planning process for many companies, anyone who is looking for a way to reach 5,000+ bicycle industry influentials should consider sponsorship of CrossVegas.”
Observing the impact of CrossVegas on the still-growing cyclocross bike category Watts said, “We had several manufacturers tell us they wrote more cross bike orders on Thursday morning than any previous show day.”