bikelovejones

A report on my first-ever trip to Interbike, which coincided with my first-ever trip to Las Vegas:

--Arrived Wednesday night. After a small and overpriced dinner my co-worker and I walked our meals off along The Strip. The excess and waste appalled us immediately. The hookers took a little longer to elicit a reaction since they were difficult, at least for me, to distinguish from some of the tourists. We lasted about 30 minutes before retreating to our room at the Treasure Island Hotel (every hotel along the Strip has a theme park thing going on: I who hate all things Pirate-gimmicky lucked out with a hotel that has 100-foot-tall pirate ships shooting off fake cannon broadsides at each other in the parking lot). I fell asleep in fits and starts on the 25th floor of Hell, and slept only a few hours before waking up too early the next day.

--The show. Wow. Just plain Wow. The show was immense and crazy and shockingly bloated in some ways, capable of filling the Oregon Convention Center four times over. (I'd love for Interbike to come to Portland, but with over 25,000 attendees we simply don't have the hotel space to accommodate everyone, so it's not likely to happen anytime soon.) I was overwhelmed by so many things: the plastic, the booths, the excess, and above all else, the waste. I am sure that hundreds of thousands of dollars went into the design and construction of all these booths -- and there were hundreds of them -- that would not see the light of day again after this year. let's face it, trade shows are all about What's New, and it would not do to use leftover booth materials year after year. A reminder that we were in the desert: bottled water cost a dollar more than bottled orange juice.

That said, I recognized that I and my co-worker Heidi were there on behalf of all the rest of the cooperators back home, so we did make a point of snagging whatever free schwag (yes, these things offer tons of schwag, much of it useless and/or impermanent and meant simply to Get The Brand Out There) we could to bring back for the happy campers on the Ordering Committee. I made a point of grabbing things that were at least sewn together and so offered the faint promise of lasting more than a few weeks. Lots of the bags were made of PVC "fabric", perhaps made of recycled stuff but emitting a ton of off-gases that eventually got to me. By 2pm that day my head was throbbing, and no amount of food or drink was helping. I finally remembered that I'd brought ibuprofen. I bought another three-dollar bottle of water -- tap water in Vegas tastes vaguely noxious -- and slammed five of them. Within an hour my head began to calm down.

-- Because I'd had the presence of mind last spring to submit a lengthy essay and several photos of our shop, Citybikes became one of the first-ever "Dealers of Excellence" for Brooks Saddles. Winning meant that we had to attend a little ceremony at the Brooks booth and receive a prize. The prize? A plaque made of steel and leather and weighing in at over ten pounds, and a limited edition Brooks Swallow dyed ghostly white that no female ass could ever sit on. I immediately knew that, to avoid individuals at the shop clamoring for the chance to own this thing, I'd have to get a shadow-box made to mount it in. The saddle will go on display at one of our shops, the plaque at the other. I may get a ton of shit for this somewhat "executive"  decision (executive decisions are generally a no-no in a cooperative, and mostly with very good reason), but I think it's the only fair thing to do. I will think hard before putting us in for this program again next year. Nice press for the shop at the Brooks Web site, but the prizes might cause a bit of a stir --  and therefore a hassle -- in a shop with multiple owners. Next years' "prize" saddle is a B-17 with the cow-hair still on the leather. Huh.

--There was lots of the "Commodity of Cool" thing going on, particularly as it pertained to single-speed and fixed gear bikes made popular among the hipster/fakenger set in Portland and other urban places. I saw at least a dozen different attempts at a mass-produced version of the cobbled together, homemade fixies I've seen in Portland for nearly eight years now. Most of the bikes employed a rear flip-flop hub so the rider has the option of riding fixed or free; and a shocking number resorted to a mass produced version of the flipped and chopped road bar commonly found on homemade bikes of this sort (in most cases, a modified time trial bar with shorter grip area was all they used). Because the rest of the bike looked so shiny and new and, well, um, color-coordinated (leather bar tape on a flipped-and-chopped bar is just goofy), the bikes mostly looked sort of chintzy and silly. Pix will follow soon.

--On a side note, some manufacturers had also noticed the urban sport of Bike Polo. This was most in evidence at Bianchi's otherwise incessantly racy display. In one corner sat a lonely Pista, a bike with too-narrow straight bars and slightly dented top tube, covered with Seattle Bike Polo and Dead Baby Bike Club decals and sporting dirty, torn celeste bar tape, a polo mallet leaning lazily against the saddle. The whole thing reminded me of when raggedy, "poor" clothing was tres chic several seasons back and could be found in the window at the downtown Nordstroms with decidedly wealthy price tags. (I was also reminded that anyone who walked into Nordy's looking too genuinely "poor" was immediately hustled out again. What will happen when more of this studied chic makes its way to River City, Veloce and other decidedly "fancy" bike shops?) 

I shuddered, worried that someday my own shop might lean more and more in that direction whether we liked it or not. The tension between making more money by selling nicer stuff, and the desire to remain grass-roots and down-home by selling more affordable stuff, really sat hard on my shoulders the whole time I was at the show. Being the lead buyer for a business finding itself in this particular emotional and socio-economic transitional zone is a real challenge, and definitely a balancing act.

--I ran into pal Tim Fricker from Bikes@Vienna and we enjoyed a needed 45-minute break from our various buying missions. He would be going to Zion National Park after his Interbike experience ended. Lucky guy. I hope he'll post pix of Zion at his blog. Also ran into Grant Petersen from Rivendell and enjoyed a mostly non-bikey discussion (about family, the crazy presidential politics and how young people have really gotten involved this election cycle), though he did show me and Heidi his plans for bringing a 603 road wheel onto the market.

--Because two of us from Citybikes were at the show, it made it much easier to make sure we saw as much as possible and didn't miss anything important. Heidi mostly ran around and saw stuff, making notes and gathering up information, while I kept the pre-scheduled meetings with reps and distributors and made a few nice connections with new potential suppliers of stuff. While it may seem that Heidi had more fun (she certainly had much more freedom from the clock than I did), I actually enjoyed the meetings a lot. I met some really excellent human beings face to face and that makes for a deepening of these important business relationships when I get back to work and resume ordering stock from them. The relationship aspect of this Lead Buyer gig is one of my greatest surprise pleasures, especially as I find less time to work with the public at the shop. It was reassuring to know that the bicycle industry is filled with good people who are as passionate about bicycles and bike riders as I am.

--We also had a lovely dinner out Thursday night, courtesy of [former Citybiker-turned-rep] Eric and by extension his employers at J & B (who freed him up for the evening). It gave us a chance to talk, to unwind and come down from the total insanity of the day. I was truly grateful for the down-time. Heidi took a walk along the strip after dinner to stretch her legs and see the immensity of the buildings; but I was SO tired I went straight back to the hotel. I don't travel well, especially by plane; flying through space at 600 mph doesn't agree with my body on some major level and I really needed to rest. 

--Side note: If you go to Las Vegas and utilize shuttle service to and from the airport, you MUST call ahead by at least 24 hours to reserve a spot on the shuttles. They are small busses and fill up quickly.

Things I didn't especially care for:

1. The Surly booth staff. I get that Surly is distro'd by a larger parent company but strongly retains its own separate identity and sales staff. When your staff come across as too stoned to care about talking to any buyer who looks older than 30, maybe some re-thinking of the official personae is in order. This is especially the case when your bikes retail for a thousand bucks and up; most kids can't spring for that kind of money without a little help from the [over-30]  'Rents, true? I commented on this to our rep from said parent company and he concurred that Surly does get a little odd about its image at times. He promised to be a helpful go-between for us if needed.

2. The Ibis booth was cute, but when the staff are all holed up INside the baby Airstream and no one is sitting outside to answer questions for more than ten full minutes, it DOES take on the appearance of a, ahem, safety break. Guys? Hello? Anyone home?

3. The Nitto booth consisted of an unadorned table and three handlebars sitting on it. Sometimes there was someone actually sitting at the table, sometimes the booth was empty. Their "catalog" was close by, little more than a three-page broadside that contained pen-and-ink illustrations of their products, some of which I'd seen before in an old Rivendell Reader. While I appreciated the starkness and simplicity of their display I wondered at the lack of a real staff. For a company that is the apple of every retro-grouch's eye, you'd think they would've injected a LITTLE more energy into their presence at Interbike. To be fair, the thought occurs to me after the fact that they might have been there for Distros to talk with, rather than retail buyers who can get their stuff through the distros. I am still learning a lot about how this biz works.

4. The Chrome booth was dark and foreboding, a little like a hip-hop version of the set for Sweeney Todd (think lots of graffiti instead of a factory whistle). They were clearly all about reaching the children of retailers, rather than the retailers themselves. And it showed. Dressed in jeans and a MUSA shirt, I looked out of place among all the kids who were clamoring for bags and caps, and no one gave me the time of day. Chrome just made me feel old. Maybe that was the point.

5. The new and inevitable industry standard for road bars will be a clamp size of 31.8, rendering quill stems still further obsolete. I don't like it, but there it is.

6. Some stuff -- in fact, MOST stuff in the bike industry -- will always be made in countries that do not pay a living wage. We may not like the reality but there it is. The other part of this reality is that someone has to distribute the stuff to retailers. I think it's important to note that this does not make the wholesale distributor evil. They are responding to the American market's demand for cheap stuff. If anyone is to blame here, it's the American consumer and advertisers, who exist in a sickly symbiotc relationship where the admen convince shoppers that they "deserve" cheap stuff, and mountains of it at that; and discourage shoppers from wondering about the true cost of "cheap". Then the shoppers clamor for it, buy it in bucketfuls, and get all huffy when prices go up. Small retailers can make informed decisions about where they get their stuff from, but I do not believe they can totally change the way that business is done in a global marketplace. We make choices where we can: We can buy bags that are assembled in America, but the sub-assemblies are almost all done in China and that's unavoidable, at least right now. That's how it is. In the meantime, we are making inroads and more people in all aspects of the bike industry are beginning to pay attention to the hidden costs involved in manufacturing and marketing of stuff. I believe it will be a long, slow process of awakening and change.

Some stuff I really liked:

1. Rickshaw Bags, founded by former high-ups from Timbuk2. Their booth was simple and brightly lit, displaying their bags front and center. Their staff took great pains to explain their manufacturing processes quite frankly to me, asked me a little about the cooperative structure at Citybikes and were genuinely interested in my answers. We exchanged business cards and I was warmly invited to visit their plant in San Francisco any time. One of my favorite interactions of the trip, and we will definitely explore bringing some of their bags into the shop next year.

2. V-O Imports. They did not have a booth at this year's show, but this new company was meeting individually with interested new accounts. At a table in the Wi-Fi zone, they unloaded a suitcase of new and lovely products explaining each of them in non-geeky language and talking at length about their manufacturing partners in Taiwan. They were very respectful and informative and a pleasure to talk at length with. We will definitely prepare another order of V-O product when I get back to work. 

3. Xtracycle. Though their new company president was half an hour late to my appointment, he was all apologetic and gracious when he finally arrived. He looked rather young and very overwhelmed; he'd only taken over the company a few months ago and he was learning as quickly as I was. We remain an Xtracycle dealer for 2009 and are hopeful that we will make a significant contribution to the longbike scene in Portland as a result of our renewed relationship with this innovative company. 

4. A candid and helpful discussion with our new QBP rep about the future of disc brakes. Because we sell bikes to a lot of commuters who want to be able to make their own minor repairs at home (Portland has a huge D-I-Y bike market), we have never carried new bikes with disc brakes. We will likely need to re-think that decision as these brake systems are definitely appearing on more and more bikes, including some bikes we would otherwise love to bring into the shop. Our new rep offered to come to Portland and teach an in-house class about mechanical disc brakes (he agreed with my assessment of hydraulic systems as messy and much harder to work on), and I am hopeful that we can sell the idea of this to our shop. Our hand may be forced here and it would be good for us to examine the issue more closely before next Spring.

Mostly I was overwhelmed by my first trip to the show. If I remain the lead buyer for Citybikes indefinitely, my return to this show in the future is a strong possibility. There is talk about moving the show to another city, something I desperately hope will happen by next year. While I would welcome another trip to Interbike -- I'll certainly know how to better utilize the time and energy a second time around -- I don't ever need to visit Las Vegas again. The Strip is a landscape of overblown absurdity and utter waste in the middle of a desert, and frankly a pretty stupid place to hold a bicycle industry show. On the up side, I am glad I went because we had a chance to see what's coming down the pike; and because I think it established new relationships with distros and manufacturers and made more established relationships stronger. All of those things can only benefit our shop as we grow into a new, sharper sense of ourselves as a bike business. I think sending someone again next year would be a good idea. I know I learned a lot by going and I know that this knowledge will definitely help our shop.

Pix to follow later. Stay tuned.