Ok, here is my rant. I fail to understand how the bike industry can call itself public friendly when their shows are not open to the public. It amazes me how stupid the idea is. If you want to have a show, and bike enthusiasts are not allowed unless they are some little 16 year working at a bike shop, then how is this industry showing their wares to the people that matter, the ones that have the money to buy 3k and 5k bikes. It is amazing to me.

They need to change it to having shows that open early for 2 hours to the industry only and then open to consumers and industry the rest of the day. This is logical.

What gets me is that the guys that go to these shows and work in bike shops usually know next to nothing about bikes, then you have the hardcore enthusiasts like me and most of you in here who may not work at a bike shop or for a bike mfg and we cannot go.

I guess I am pissed because I will be in Vegas next week and a buddy of mine told me that the Interbike show will be in Vegas when I am there and I will miss it because I cannot get in. What a crock of sh#t.

Very dissapointed in the bike industry. I guess I'll be ordering my next bike directly from overseas, since none of the makers and distributors here want me seeing their high end stuff. Derosa/Colnago/Pinarello here I come.

Sorry for the rant, but I had to vent.

I'm not certain if one could actually call it "stupid", but for any cycling enthusiast who is more than moderately interested in new developments, I could understand how it could extremely "frustrating"

Every manufacturing segment has its own retailers and marketing trade shows... The Auto industry has it in many segments, the electronics industry has it and on and on...

I've never been to a cycling industry trade show of any kind so I'm not certain if they have a balance of "retailers only" and "open to the public" shows as the other indutries do.

I think what the Interbike show is catering to are those reps from the retailers that will say things like "I need 470 units of bike a and 300 of bike B"

When you have a large open show for everyone from the Walmart purchasing manager and the curious joe off the street, Walmart managers sort of get distracted

You might well say, well Geez! high powered guys like that just have their people contact the other people's people, but truth is, there is a huge advantage for them to go to one centralized location where all the manufacturers are hawking there wares so they get the big pitch all in one day or two without flying all over the country or spending hours and hours on the phone.

The shows of the Interbike kind are also more for show, and less for the "deals" that individuals love for public trade shows... If you're cruising Interbike looking for a killer deal on a Shimano Gruppo, you'd better be prepared to talk pallettes

I don't think the Interbike folks are trying to be exclusive, by any means... they've just targetted and prepared for a particular segment so they can be effective for that segement.

The fact that the young kid working in the LBS sweeping up floors after hours gets to go is simply because he is associated with a retailer... Its simple dumb luck not pure logic... If he has store ID what are they going to do? stop him at the door and say Hey! you're the floor sweeping kid! WIth the crazy way business is done nowadays, that pimply faced kid might very well be Kmart Jr...

Just my two cents...

Feanor

Oh,did you go to the Derosa,Colnago,Pinarello show that we didnt here about.You can get in if you try.Act like you know something and say your a manager for some small town bike shop.

I can understand the frustration, however the ENTIRE sporting goods industry does this not just the bike industry. Like said above the auto industry has a show as does the electronics industry. Also the building industry has one as well.
You could however get a part time job a a shop and alleviate all this frustration.

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Just Pedal

It is too bad that Interbike is not open to the general public-and this issue has been raised with the organizers of interbike,and the general verdict is-don't hold your breath... the additional expense of having a day open to the public alone is prohibitive at best-Never mind the fact that the show was never intended to be a consumer show in the first place.

When I lived in Las Vegas from 82-89, I worked in the defense electronics industry. Consumer electronics shows prefered local defense electronics folks not attend, so they started rejecting convention applications.

If you identified yourself with a less commonly known division name, you slipped past the their filters while coworkers identifying themselves with the parent institution name got filtered out.
Also, if you identified an out of town address you often got your passes.

I had one engineering coworker that enjoyed crashing conventions. He had a badge making kit he kept in a briefcase. Used to observe the badges of people outside, then made a badge up from his observations outside the facilities.

Hunter's idea looks like the best.

I understand your frustration.
Maybe you should move to Australia, our shows are open to the public

Brian