By Charlie Lunan
Specialized and Trek, which have skipped the last few Interbike shows, are among more than 100 brands expected to be exhibited at the trade show’s first East Coast Fall CycloFest event later this month.
Both companies will be offering demo rides on their 2016 and 2017 model year bikes during the four-day event, which will take place at the U.S. National Whitewater Center (USNWC) in Charlotte, NC, October 20-23. The event, which will be restricted to independent bicycle dealers Thursday and Friday, will open to the public Saturday and Sunday.
Interbike Show Director Pat Hus said 108 exhibitors had signed on as of October 5 and that he expected that number to grow by as much as a dozen more by October 20. Cannondale, Haibike, Niner, Norco, Pinarello and Pivot have also signed on as exhibitors, as have component brands Full Speed Ahead, Fox Racing Shox, Shimano and SRAM.
“We are pretty stoked to have Trek and Specialized,” said Hus. “Much of the excitement has been the direct-consumer engagement at a venue like the Whitewater Center.”
The outdoor adventure park offers more than 25 miles of mountain biking trails, a 40-foot climbing tower, rope courses, zip lines and a man-made whitewater channel that is an official training site for the U.S. Olympic Team. The park has told Hus they expect about 12,000 to run out Saturday, when it will be offering whitewater rafting trips and a free concert. The allure of so many outdoor enthusiasts more than anything else lured Trek and Specialized. Both companies stopped exhibiting at Interbike a few years ago when they shifted their focus from growing their dealer networks to growing sales to existing dealers. Both brands will be offering demo rides and exhibiting apparel, parts and accessories lines.
Specialized will offer demo rides on its Turbo Levo e-mountainbikes, which only became available in the U.S. this year.
The event could help Interbike offset much of the decline it saw at its show in Las Vegas last month. About 1,200 fewer buyers and other retail and distributor employees attended the show compared with record levels set in 2015, Hus said. Overall attendance fell between 10 and 12 percent. Hus had expected attendance to decline this year due to the tough comparison with last year and a lingering glut of bicycles that has led to the most challenging market conditions in decades. A drop in the number of exhibitors, the closing of as many as 200 IBD shops and a smaller presence of East Coast dealers that opted instead to attend Fall CycloFest also contributed to the decline.
Among that last cohort is Motion Makers Bicycles, which sent only two representatives to Interbike last month but plans to send its entire staff of 15 to Fall CycloFest, according to owner Kent Cranford. He plans to close his second, smaller location in Sylva, NC for a day so staff can travel to Charlotte on October 20 to do test rides and clinics. The company’s main store in Asheville, NC will rotate staff through the rest of the event.
“Hopefully, all our guys can get down there and ride bikes they don’t get a chance to ride otherwise, or go to tech seminars,” Cranford said. “There are also some management classes going on that I always like to attend at Interbike, but that our senior staff does not get to.”
He continued, “I don’t want to take away from Vegas, but it’s getting harder to justify sending staff to Interbike because we’ve done most of our business by then,” said Cranford, a Specialized dealer who once sent as many as six employees to the show. “We are writing most of our orders in July and August.”
Photo courtesy Interbike/CycloFest
