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.

The Trail Show #32 featuring a road show from the Winter OR at Salt Lake City!

Show #32 – It’s 2015, Live Large! This month’s show was so packed with beers, trails & nonsense that we had to split it into 2 parts! We talk of cow beheadings, Rucks both west & more west, a recent trip to Moab, a slew of hikers hoist beers from Indiana & Germany, extra special guest Glen Van Peski regales us with tales from the Wonderland Trail, we show our Leadville cards, P.O.D. discusses the Heroes Project, D-Low meets the Real Hiking Viking and the film “Wild

Continue reading The Trail Show #32 – Part A – The Wonderland Trail at PMags.com.