Even as its members are pursued by two larger trade shows, the board of directors for the American Fly Fishing Trade Association remains determined to organize its own, independent show for next summer.


After an 11-year run, AFFTA broke off is ties to the Fly Fishing Retailer (FFR) show run by Nielsen Business Media last month, when the parties could not agree on the future direction of the show that has experienced dwindling attendance. AFFTA had initially been receptive to folding FFR into Outdoor Retailer Winter Market in Salt Lake City, which Nielsen operates under an exclusive agreement with Outdoor Industry Association. With OIA’s blessing, Nielsen proposed setting aside about 20,000 square feet near the paddlesports exhibitors at OR and adding a casting pond in a parking lot outside the Salt Palace convention center, home to the OR show.


AFFTA’s board rejected the Nielsen offer as inadequate and began negotiating with the trade show management company to buy the rights to FFR. When those negotiations failed Nov. 30, Kenji Haroutunian, Nielsen’s show director for both OR and Fly Fishing Retailer, issued an open invitation to former FFR attendees to attend summer OR. Within days, the American Sportfishing Association issued a similar invitation to fly fishing retailers to join its annual trade show – ICAST 2010 – next July in Las Vegas. As an added inducement, ASA offered to honor AFFTA’s discounted member exhibitor booth fees and membership to help manufacturers who had budgeted to show at FFR. 
Last week, AFFTA President Gary Berlin reiterated that AFFTA’s board has voted to back its own independent show, which precludes endorsing either OR or ICAST.

 

Berlin conceded organizing an independent show by next August or fall will be challenging. The last FFR show took up 187,000 square feet, including 33,000 square feet of exhibition booths, at the Colorado Convention Center. FFR generated more than three quarters of AFFTA’s 2008 revenues of $414,205, according to its tax return.

Steve Schmidt, a former AFFTA director and owner of Western Rivers Flyfisher in Salt Lake City, said he has never missed FFR, even though he is one of the few fly fishing retailers to regularly attend OR, where 33 of his major suppliers exhibit every summer. “Last year I paid for the show in the first five minutes I was there” he said of FFR. “I exchanged some information that was well worth the cost.”


Still, Schmidt said he lobbied for years to fold FFR into OR to counter declining attendance. AFFTA ran a deficit of $84,334 last year, according to tax records.


Schmidt predicted the bulk of AFFTA members would not attend any show not endorsed by their board. “Our guys won’t go” to OR or ICAST, he said. “It’s hard enough to get them to go to FFR.”


Berlin, meanwhile, said his mailbox is “flooded” with proposals from show producers that would like to put on a fly fishing tradeshow for AFFTA.