Organizers of the Outdoor Retailer trade show roiled Colorado’s recreation, convention and tourism industry last year when they announced they were pulling the semiannual shows out of Denver and taking them back to Salt Lake City, despite threats of a boycott from some big-name companies over environmental concerns in Utah.
Instead, Denver has a new outdoor trade show set to take place at the Colorado Convention Center this week, and it will have something Outdoor Retailer never did: an opportunity for the public to take an early look at the hiking, cycling, camping and paddle-sport gear that will be coming to stores next year — just like the industry insiders.
State officials see even more though. They believe The Big Gear Show, which runs Thursday through Sunday alongside a sister show focused on e-bikes called (e)revolution, is a foundational piece of what eventually could be the South By Southwest of outdoor spectacles.
“We’ve been talking and planning and scheming, and we’re going to be doing some pretty key kickoff meetings around the Big Gear Show to bring some other key stakeholders to the table and test some of these ideas,” said Conor Hall, director of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office, which is part of the state’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade.
Big Gear Show director Kenji Haroutunian is excited as well, but first he needs to prove that the consumer angle will work. “We’re trying to launch a new model of trade show to the world,” he explained. “When people come into the shows, they’ll have access to both. Big Gear flows right into (e)revolution and vice versa.”
Whereas Outdoor Retailer is designed strictly for specialty outdoors shops, chain retailers, brands and manufacturers to do business with each other — a model known as “business to business, or B2B — the Big Gear Show and (e)revolution will limit “B2B” events to Thursday and Friday, and then welcome the public to stroll the same halls at a “consumer festival” on Saturday and Sunday. Haroutunian dubbed it Business to Business to Consumer, or B2B2C.
“Our whole industry is becoming more and more consumer-centric, and consumers have more and more of a voice in the business because they write reviews,” Haroutunian said. “They have networks and post on social media … so they have a lot more influence now. The idea of a B2B2C show is to serve the consumer and the brands’ direct relationships with consumers.”
Coloradans “live and breathe” the outdoors
The Big Gear Show began in 2021 as an outdoor expo at Utah’s Deer Valley ski resort. It was held outdoors that year and last year because of the pandemic, but the plan was always to bring it to a big city convention center and include the public, organizers said.
“This is a show that is still relatively new, but the guys behind it are really legends,” Hall said. Haroutunian “was one of the key architects of Outdoor Retailer for a long time. They’ve grown up in the industry and they’re well-respected. They love this industry, and they’ve built a show that really reflects that.”
Opening the show to consumers is a great move, he added. “I want Coloradans who love this stuff, who live and breathe it, to be able to go see this gear, to engage in these conversations, to meet each other. For me, that’s one of the most exciting aspects.”
As for the e-bike show that will take place at the same time, Richard Scharf, president and chief executive of Visit Denver, said he sees it as an ingenious addition, especially at a time when Coloradans are being offered subsidies to purchase e-bikes.
“The e-bike show is something that is very cutting edge,” Scharf said. “And with the rebates offered through the city, it’s probably going to be a very popular show.”
One of the consumer perks of (e)revolution is an indoor e-bike test track for people who have never tried out one of the bikes. “It’s the first time anyone has had that in the country in an indoor convention center,” Haroutunian said. “It’s 30,000 square feet of uphills, curves, downhills, straightaways, mountain-bike terrain.
“It’s a super exciting aspect of the show, and it’s right next to The Big Gear Show demo area, which features adaptive outdoor gear for hiking and skiing and running and climbing,” he added. “There’s a climbing wall, there’s a dragon boat, there’s a family camp zone designed to help families practice setting up tents and to see what a proper camp set-up looks like. It’s really designed to be an experiential cornucopia with a lot of options of things to do and see.”
The South by Southwest of outdoors shows
When Outdoor Retailer was in Denver, it had an economic impact of $40-$60 million, according to Visit Denver, following its previous move from Salt Lake City in 2018. Now that it is gone, one of Hall’s tasks is to try to bring some of that back by attracting more outdoor industry events here.
As part of that, Visit Denver and Boulder-based Outside Inc., the prominent outdoors media company that includes Outside magazine, are studying the feasibility of creating an outdoor industry festival that would attract national attention. They see South by Southwest, a huge Austin, Texas, event for the music, film and media industries, as their model.
“That’s an event that took decades to build to where it is, but everyone knows it, it’s this powerful convening, this powerful place for thought leadership and sharing ideas,” Hall said, acknowledging that “the vision of what we’re trying to do is pretty huge.”
The Big Gear Show and (e)revolution are an important first step, he said. “We should be convening in Colorado. We have this robust outdoor industry, we have some of the best outdoor recreation anywhere in the world, we have an amazing workforce in this space, and 92% of Coloradans partake in outdoor recreation. We work incredibly hard to protect our land and our air and our water. It makes sense that convening should be here.”
Haroutunian sees a lot of potential for Colorado, especially since Patagonia, REI, The North Face and other leading industry brands are boycotting Outdoor Retailer, which takes place June 19-21 and again on Nov. 14-16 in Utah. “Colorado arguably is at the epicenter of the outdoor industry,” he said. “It always has been. The Outdoor Industry Association is (located) there, and the Access Fund, and the American Alpine Club, and the International Mountain Bicycling Association.
Then you “add the brands and retailers and media organizations there. It’s pretty compelling.”
IF YOU GO: The consumer part of The Big Gear Show and (e)revolution takes place 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, June 10, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 11, at the Colorado Convention Center. Tickets are $12.50 in advance and $15 the day of.
