Three days at the winter OR: Seeing a lot of gear, seeing a lot of friends and pitching in to help a good cause.

So I went to the Winter Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake City, Utah.

First, some facts about the outdoor industry  “lay of the land”:

• 40% of the current outdoor users have a family income of $75,000 or more per year. The current median income is  $53,0000 a year.
• 70% of the outdoor users are of European ancestry (read: White)
• The outdoor industry product sales (counting vehicles) is 120.7 billion dollars
• REI’s sales alone topped two-billion dollars in 2013.

There’s a LOT of money to be made off the mainly white, college educated and affluent consumer base. And the Winter OR shows that it is indeed an outdoor industry.  More so than I realized.

Continue reading At the temple of gear – The Winter OR show at PMags.com.

Off to the Outdoor Retailer trade show. in Salt Lake City. For the next few days, I’ll be with the CDTC as we work a booth and form some partnerships with outdoor retailers to help out the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. And our silly little podcast is doing a show down there, too.

I probably won’t give the usual gear reviews typical for people going to this show. There are better blogs for that topic. There may be a beer report, however. You can’t just have one…..  🙂

Continue reading Off to OR… at PMags.com.