The Outdoor Retail Show 2011

Entering the dream world before the Outdoor Retailer show starts

The Outdoor Retail show is always a blurrr of action for anyone involved in the industry.  We spend months preparing our new lines of products to present to all our dealers at the show.  It looms large on our horizon through out the year.  This year was a huge transition for us at Liquidlogic.  We are back to producing a full flatwater line as well as our ever present whitewater line of boats.  And most importantly we started our Automatic for the People campaign.  We have always relied heavily on feedback from paddlers but this year we made it official.  We asked you all on our facebook page to let us know what you wanted us to do and we did it (well most of it)! and its working!  Your feedback has helped us create some really great products and improve what we already have.

The Set Up Crew!  Brianne, Bryon, Ross, Bill, Shane, and Woody

We flew out on Saturday evening and spent Sunday and Monday setting up the booth.  It was a little nerve racking because we had all the panels that artis Sam Ogden had painted at our factory and we had to put them up and guard them against all the other million people trying to set up their booths.  Monday was a mad house.  Imagine the largest convention center you can think of and put close to 1,000 exhibiters in the hall vying for space to set up their booths and display their stuff.  Sure there are a lot of small vendors  that have 2 people on the floor but there is also hundreds of huge displays with giant staffs out there, like the North Face, Patagonia, Teva, Coleman, etc...  There are forklifts flying around, people building all sorts of crazy construction,  and some people are losing their temper.  Thank goodness we were set up by the end of the day on Monday and we were able to get out of there.  Tuesday I am sure was total bedlam.

Tuesday we set up the open air demo up on Lake Jordanelle.  Wedenesday we spent the day on the water.  This gives the dealers opportunities to paddle our boats before they start talking about how many they are going to buy for you guys.  The day at the lake was really nice until just before closing time and the wind came up.  We had white caps on the lake.  We could almost surf waves into the beach.

Salt Lake City is a big place and its an odd combination of urban and incredible beautiful sceneary.  We are staying in a house we rented up on the side of the hills just above the town of Draper which is 20 minutes south of town.  It gives us the chance to get away from the intense action downtown but we can head out and party if we need to.

The mostly consists of hanging out talking with folks about new products, and new programs but the really fun thing is the yearly reunion we have with people from the industry.  Dan Gavere is across the hall working with Werner paddles,  Rob Lesser is standing shooting the sh%& in our booth, Chris Spelius is trying to decide if the Stomper is the boat for him.  Its a good time.  This year the energy at the show is very high.  People are starting to feel like there might be a the light at the end of the tunnel as far as the recession is concerned.   And you all have asked them so much about our new boats that they are chomping at the bit to get them in their stores.  The first question out of every dealers mouth is how long till we can the Stompers in house.

So I know you aren't that interested in all that lets get to the new products.  Heres a video!



The show started yesterday and we will be talking the talk for a couple more days.

Here are a bunch of photos from setting up the booth and getting ready for the show.