Colin True, co-host of outdoor industry podcast Rock Fight, said that since he’s been attending Outdoor Retailer, he’d always thought the name didn’t quite suit the show.
“It really flipped to be more of a showcase,” said the longtime industry veteran who most recently worked at Polartec in an interview Monday with The Daily. “People would come in and they’d have meetings with their reps and their retailers, but it wouldn’t necessarily result in actual orders being written. It was kind of more of a trend show.”
The once massive show struggled in recent years, and when True headed to the recent show in June, he wondered if it would be his last. But instead, True said not only was the positive energy back on the show floor, but he could see the business the show promises in its name unfolding at the booths.
“We walked into one booth, and there was someone literally entering an order,” True said.
True created Rock Fight with co-host Justin Housman because he wanted to share in-depth ideas about the outdoor industry that he felt weren’t being explored in other podcasts.
“The show launched in December ’22 and the idea was to bring back more sports, culture, and discourse about the kinds of topics I have when I’m out recreating with my industry friends, and bring those conversations to the broader media landscape,” he said.
On the latest episode of the podcast, Outdoor Retailer Show Director Sean Smith attributed the summer show’s success to the focus on bringing a variety of buyers to OR and to introducing the new dedicated buyer hours on the trade show floor, which meant that attendees not involved in buying for stores were not allowed on the floor until later in the day.
“This is no offense to the old OR show team. They were a phenomenal team, but times have changed,” Smith told True. “At the end of the day, you can’t just be thinking about putting bodies on the show floor … It has to be strategic. If you’ve got footwear companies, you have to have footwear buyers coming in. It’s a large product mix. It’s apparel, it’s accessories, it’s footwear, it’s hardgoods. So you have to think strategically of who’s coming.”
Smith also talked about what areas of the show could still use some improvement, such as how best to integrate and maximize the potential of the sourcing-focused ODI and how to bring more hardgoods-oriented brands back to the show.
Last November was particularly challenging for OR because it relaunched the winter show, which would replace January’s Snow Show and shift annual show dates to June and November – the start of the respective sales seasons. Because 2023 was the transition year, it meant there were three shows during the year. The Winter 2023 show became a tough sell as brands exhibited earlier in the year and hadn’t budgeted for another event.
“I’ll just call it as it is,” Smith said. “Last winter hurt us and we didn’t have a choice and we did it and we kept a stiff upper lip as best we could. But there were a lot of brands that said, ‘We’re going to have to wait and see how summer goes before we jump back into the water.’ And fortunately we had a really good summer show and so I do believe we will grow the ODI (and OR) business back.”
