Attendees of a recent Outdoor Retailer trade show enter the Salt Palace Convention Center in
downtown Salt Lake City. Organizers of the event have announced that they are eliminating one
of the traditional two annual shows and will meet only in June starting with the cancellation of
the gathering originally set for Nov. 6-8 this year. Photo courtesy Outdoor Retailer.
Two years ago, the twice-a-year Outdoor Retailer trade show returned to Salt Lake City after a five-year run in Denver. With shows traditionally held in June and November, the organizers have now announced that they are consolidating the event into a single annual event and that the November 2024 show has been canceled.
The outdoor industry’s annual get-together will now happen only in June, bringing both the winter and summer shows together into one expanded event, officials have decided. Originally scheduled for Nov. 6-8 at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center and a number of other Northern Utah venues, the winter show was meant to focus on brands selling soft goods for snow sports. But the gathering never returned to its once-grandiose stature in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and recent economic downturns.
Many of the brands exhibiting at the winter show decided that the summer show would offer better opportunities for connecting with customers, Outdoor Retailer director Sean Smith told GearJunkie.com. He said the combination is also likely to help raise the profile of the summer trade show.
By bringing the entire outdoor industry together at the same time, event organizers hope to recapture some of the spectacle that has waned in recent years, Smith said.
“Meeting face to face is how our industry was built, and it’s how it’s going to continue to thrive,” Smith said. “Without that, we become a commodity industry. We’re not selling cans of baked beans. We’re selling things that get people in the outdoors.”
For many years, Outdoor Retailer offered events in June and in January. Last year, organizers decided to move the winter event a few months earlier in the season. The idea was to make the winter showcase more advantageous for brands interested in selling soft goods before everyone hit the slopes. But after listening to winter sports brands and looking closely at consumer data, Smith and other OR organizers discovered that June is the ideal selling time for all outdoor sports, including those peddling winter goods.
Politics also played a major role in the success of the Outdoor Retailer shows. Many large brands — including Patagonia, REI and Arc’teryx — boycotted Outdoor Retailer in both 2017 and 2022 over Utah lawmakers’ continued fight with the federal government over control of the state’s public lands — most notably the battle over the wilderness designation of the Bears Ears National Monument in San Juan County.
Even with the consolidation of Outdoor Retailer to a single annual show, Smith and other show organizers vowed that the event is “absolutely staying in Salt Lake City.”