New outdoor show in Europe announced for mid-September

On the heels of huge debates between apparel and hardware about summer trade show dates in Europe, another show will be held, SNEWS has learned.

The Outdoor-Bike Order Show will be Sept. 14-16 in Munich in cooperation with ispo management, ispo card membership, as well as with the UK’s Go Outdoors group.

“It’s our answer to the needs of the industry,” Tobias Groeber, ispo director of the outdoor, bike and running segments, told SNEWS. “The show is not about hyped-up marketing or big fancy booths. It’s low-key and work-oriented.”

Groeber said the Outdoor-Bike show (www.outdoor-bike.show), which will include climbing and trekking, will help solve the needs of the industry where “the split between hardware and apparel is huge in the summer.” When ispo moved its summer dates to late June from early August on the heels of OutDoor in Friedrichshafen moving its dates to late July, an outcry came from many smaller companies, and particularly from hardware ones: The early ispo dates, some said, wouldn’t allow them to get good samples or to properly work with customers on their needs. The mid-summer OutDoor dates weren’t early enough for apparel companies, but weren’t late enough for satisfy hardware specialists, SNEWS heard from some.

The new show will be run by MOC (Munich Order Center) at its showrooms and halls on the north side of the city where many companies (including Ex Officio, Deuter, Concurve, and Lafuma) already run showrooms. It will be small — about 4,000 square meters (43,000 square feet), or about half the size of one hall at the ispo grounds.

Groeber, who will also work on the show, said this year is considered a trial to see how it goes. “This is only the start to see how it works. We could expand (to other categories),” he said. “It’s not our intent to hurt anybody else, but rather to give options to the needs of the industry.”

SNEWS View: Although ispo says it doesn’t want to kill off any other shows, the other shows — OK, OK, the rival OutDoor show, which broke off from ispo a few years back — may hurt if this new one succeeds. You see, this places OutDoor in late July, smack in the middle of vacation times and summer sales for some European countries, and sandwiches it between a late June show and a mid-September date. Although OutDoor has become more of an outdoor industry gathering and is more of a “trend” show and not an ordering show, the industry all over the world has begun to question how many trade shows it can schlepp to. Economics will be the big answer here — can a company afford another show? And, if not, which will go? We still think there is a bit of a battle going on here between OutDoor and ispo. Insiders tell us there were conversations between the two after both changed their dates — fruitless conversations, it seems, since both stuck to their guns. Politically, being able to say that MOC runs the show, ispo has managed to stay slightly protected from being called out as a big bad bully. But come on, we know where this new show came from, now don’t we?