Outdoor Retailer

This weekend my roommate Alex and I headed to the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market.  According to the website it is the "largest winter lifestyle and sports industry gathering in the world," and with 1000 companies and 20,000 attendees, I don't doubt that!  The trade show isn't open to the public because it is a professional event for buyers, distributors, and media, but we were lucky enough to get exhibitor guest badges so we packed up the car and set out for an epic weekend!  


Salt Lake City is about 850 miles from San Luis Obispo, so the drive took about 13 hours.  We left Thursday morning and arrived exhausted, later that night.  We checked into a motel (no car sleeping because Alex has pneumonia!  Crazy...), and tried to get a good night of rest for our big day.  We arrived at the Salt Palace Convention Center early Friday morning for the second day of the show.  We walked in and were instantly completely overwhelmed.  The show floor is ENORMOUS to say the least.  Each company sets up a booth, which actually resembles a small, very elaborate store in most cases.  Besides being overwhelmed by the physical atmosphere, there are people everywhere, and they are all very important, and all on a mission to take care of business.   


We had a few reasons for wanting to attend the show.  First, I will soon be graduating with a degree in Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Administration and I wanted to get a taste of one facet of the industry, and see what kind of opportunities are out there.  Second, Alex wanted to talk to the climbing company 5.10 to see about possible sponsorship.  I also wanted to check in with a few of my contacts for some research projects that I'm working on.  Lastly, one of the companies that was there has an internship posted that I am interested in so I wanted to see if I could meet some important people and get my name out there, or at least give them a face to go with my resume.

We took a few laps around the show floor (probably equivalent to walking several miles, haha!) and both felt nauseous and lightheaded from the whole situation!  Alex worked up a bunch of courage and made an appointment with 5.10.  Five minutes later he was talking to a rep, and 20 minutes later, he was a sponsored climber!  Needless to say, we were both beyond PSYCHED!  He has worked really hard on his climbing and his presence in the climbing community and he definitely deserves this.  


We wandered around the rest of the day and I got to see some of my favorite companies like Ruff Wear, which makes great dog products.  We also got to see a winter clothing fashion show, which was pretty cool.  After awhile we were both wiped out and needed a nap.  After a rest, we headed to the Outdoor Inspiration Awards put on by Adidas and hosted by Sasha DiGiulian and Reinhold Messner.  It was SO, so neat to hear the two of them speak.  We got to watch the video of Sasha's ascent of Pure Imagination 5.14d which was amazing and very inspiring.  After the event, we headed for celebratory sushi and fill our bellies beyond their capacity.  


On our second day at the show, it was time for me to get down to business.  I relayed a message for a friend to a rep at Kleen Kanteen, which had a really cool booth.  I talked to Vertical Girl, a progressive clothing company that aims to inspire female climbers, about becoming a brand ambassador.  I looked for my main contact on my research project but he was out for the day, tried to talk to someone about the internship, but at the time that I was told to come back he was busy raffling off skis.  However, I made a great connection with Kevin Jorgeson about my research, which was great.  This project is going to be fun and super helpful to the industry which really motivates me to get after it.


The show floor gets pretty fun towards the end of the day when a lot of the booths have happy hours and give out drinks (mostly beer, though Arcteryx pretty much had an open bar, and Osprey was making White Russians), there are raffles, aaaaand on this day Chris Sharma and Daila were signing posters.  Woo hoo!  After this full day, we were super wiped out, and left the show.  We were surprised to find that it had snowed!  Finally, it feels like winter.  We got in the car and set off to knock a few hours of the drive.



Unfortunately, soon after we left, we encountered a pretty fierce snowstorm.  Fortunately though, there weren't many people on the road so we just drove in the middle of the snow covered road (snow accumulated pretty fast), and watched the snow blow past our windshield.  We stopped for the night, got up this morning, and gunned it the rest of the way home.  What a great weekend!


I learned a TON this weekend.  It was great to get such an intense view of the industry, meet a lot of cool people, network, and learn that I still have a lot to learn, which is always a good thing.  As my advisor always says, "you should always strive to be the least smart person in the room" that way you can always learn something new.

It finally feels like winter!