If you attended the Outdoor Retailer (OR) show in its heyday, seeing it now can be rather disheartening. Gone are the days where virtually every possible space of the Salt Palace Convention Center was covered with exhibitor booths, when some 20,000 outdoor professionals would crowd the aisles, and one would navigate the show floor by finding free breakfasts, dozens of happy hours (which all started promptly at 4 P.M.), and the best ‘swag’ possible. You’d then follow up a very long trade show day with brand-hosted parties that often brought in national talent (even acts as big as the Black Eyed Peas) and lasted far into the night.
While many of my longtime outdoor industry friends maligned OR this year, I took a fresh perspective and looked at it like it was a brand-new show. I also asked nearly every brand that I met with how the show was going for them and, almost universally, they said that while they were nervous to come in and exhibit, it had been a very positive show with great conversations all around. Most said that, as the industry has changed, shifted, and morphed, that there weren’t as many buyers there as there once were but that they’d had many positive conversations, particularly around partnerships and with media…
