ISPO Officially Opens Europe’s Trade-Show Season
Euro market stays true-blue to home brands.

Things really got cooking for the European snowboarding industry during ISPO. Although the show was not really the first snowboard exhibition this year (see Boarder’s Inn story) it was the first look the entire European community got of next year’s products. And people were busy looking during the four-day show.

ISPO is a European sporting-goods trade show of massive proportions. Held February 4–7, this year’s show had 1,374 exhibitors from 40 different countries (last year there were 1,326 from 39 countries) filling up 124,000 square meters of space. An estimated 35,000 people attended the show.

Of course, not all these people and booths were related to snowboarding. ISPO runs the gamut of sporting-goods equipment, from bicycle machines to Ping-Pong balls. There were entire halls filled by only one or two shoe companies, such as Adidas and Nike. Soccer, in-line, mountaineering, rock climbing, and many other sports-equipment exhibitors were present as well. A classic sight: old, gray, extremely overweight salesmen (some were even smoking) trying to sell abdomen-cruncher machines.

Although business was pretty brisk among the other twenty halls, the activity seemed extremely intense around the four halls dedicated to snowboarding products. The main two, 25 and 25A, held most of the big companies, like Burton, Morrow, Ride, and K2, with the heaviest activity around the European companies like F2, Duotone, Nidecker, Salomon, Rad Air, and Northwave (known as N Boots in the U.S.), among others.

Looking to capture the energy from the snowboard halls, many of the ski companies had both snowboard and ski booths in different halls. Companies duplicating booths included Salomon, Rossignol, Oxygen (Atomic), A7 (Volkl), and Killer Loop, among others.

But the real goal of companies was to show off goods. ISPO is not much of a writing show, although anyone who could get an order was getting them.

"We’re not really writing anything here," said Peter Kleissl, of Slam Sports Trading Company, which distributes Silence and several other brands in Germany. He said that for order-taking, there was another show specifically for the German retailers to place their orders. And that is true about all the other major European countries as well. Retailers preview at ISPO and write at home.

Klaus Thurner, owner of Generics, agreed: "There is no writing at this show, but there are a lot of people checking things out."

One thing going on was retailers trying to find the right mix of what to carry in their stores. As in the United States where there seems to be a division developing between the shops that carry skate and snowboard brands and those carrying ski brands, there also seems to be a similar division in Europe. But it gets even more complicated, because not only are there ski/snowboard companies and snowboard-only companies, there is also the added division between U.S. and Euro brands.

The Europeans are loyal to their own brands. For example, French speaking areas favor the French brands, while the Germanic countries favor the German and Austrian brands.

Nick Kittelmann, owner of the ’core shop Wave 41 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, was struggling to find the right combination of lines. To fight off the larger ski shop in his town, he tried to find a mix of North American brands and U.S. style, while still keeping a low price. (It seems U.S. brands have price pressures in Europe, similar to those Euro brands have in the U.S.).

Kittlemann currently carries brands such as Nitro, Gotcha, and Subwear, and he’s thinking about adding brands like SMP, Twist, A Snowboards, and Option.

While the market matures in Europe and the U.S., things seem to be getting more complicated. ISPO ’97 proved that doesn’t mean things will be any less exciting.

—John Stouffer