Interbike 2019 cancelled

@Dewey 183496 wrote:

Bicycle Retailer and Industry News (BRAIN) is reporting Emerald Expo has cancelled the Interbike 2019 tradeshow in Reno, NV. The publisher printed an opinion piece noting various cycling Industry non-profits will lose funding/sponsorship including “hundreds of thousands of dollars out of People for Bikes budget”. For the past couple of years People for Bikes have organized an annual Congressional Bike Fest in the Rayburn Building, hopefully this can continue.

While the anger and disappointment in the opinion piece was clear, I don’t know the industry well enough to fully understand how much blame the entities mentioned in the article should really bear. Based on the comments, it sounds like some in the industry thought the costs of participating in the trade show far exceeded the benefits. They also criticized the management of the trade show and its failure to adjust to changing industry needs over time.

I wonder if regional expos may benefit in the absence of Interbike. They seem like they’d be more accessible to dealers and consumers.

Hopefully, People for Bikes and its Congressional Bike Fest won’t be impacted significantly. It looks like People for Bikes has an annual budget of about $7 million ( https://2017.peopleforbikes.org/static/Annual_Report_Financials_2017_FINAL.96be67f3.pdf ). I wonder how much of that comes directly from Interbike.

So much of running a bike shop these days is engaging with your community — it’s an industry driven by service, often for your friends and neighbors, more than chasing the latest tech. Times change. I will miss the small mom-and-pop booths with weird or interesting stuff, like those water absorbing shoe storage inserts — stuffits! Finding things like that was fun, but not worth the cost of traveling to Vegas.