I’d add that if Ironman took more of a local market approach to their expo (not just the running stores, but all of those local vendors that show up at various local festivals) there would be a ton of benefits:
Piggybacking off this idea… Way back when Jeff Henderson was running the Musselman, there was a lot happening on the grounds that was designed to entertain the spectators. They had a petting zoo, face painting, bands playing different kinds of music, ice cream, etc. It was a fantastic place for people to hang out. Ah, those were the days.
IM needs to add to their “athlete experience” the idea that the athletes tend to bring several other people to support them in the race. IM needs to improve the athletic supporter experience as well. Having an expo that also presented like a local festival would help ease the droning of the down time in between an athlete making appearances for a minute on the course and speed on by. Have something for the kids to do. For the significant others to do. Make it about the team and not just the athlete.
They did have local folks at Oceanside. My observation is you see more of that at smaller IM races whereas huge races are filled with premium vendors.
So, a lot of it to me appears to be a brand image topic. What could the expo look like that screams: we care about triathlon and we care about you (what actually makes a participant feel that way) and this experience is memorable. I mean, that’s how Sea Otter feels.
Didn’t seem too interested in having local race directors presenting their race on site, and I did make the argument that women may not be entering that short to long distance pipeline, but helping increase female participation in non-IM shorter distance races local to the IM race where the expo is being held could present co-opetition type spillover effects beneficial to IM.
I find this attitude odd - at the Ottawa Marathon, a good half of the booths are other marathons setting up shop to interest you in their specific event. And they’d be direct competitors since you’re only doing so many marathons a year!
At least if you have a local race series, its unlikely to be at direct odds with an IM race, and would likely increase the pipeline to the IM race.
I’d add that if Ironman took more of a local market approach to their expo (not just the running stores, but all of those local vendors that show up at various local festivals) there would be a ton of benefits:
Piggybacking off this idea… Way back when Jeff Henderson was running the Musselman, there was a lot happening on the grounds that was designed to entertain the spectators. They had a petting zoo, face painting, bands playing different kinds of music, ice cream, etc. It was a fantastic place for people to hang out. Ah, those were the days.
IM needs to add to their “athlete experience” the idea that the athletes tend to bring several other people to support them in the race. IM needs to improve the athletic supporter experience as well. Having an expo that also presented like a local festival would help ease the droning of the down time in between an athlete making appearances for a minute on the course and speed on by. Have something for the kids to do. For the significant others to do. Make it about the team and not just the athlete.
In 2009, after I finished my own race, Jeff let me stand at the finish line and pass out a water bottle with store coupon inside for my store, the fingerlakes running and triathlon company, to every finisher who came across the line.
Here’s the issue with selling Wove at the white tents…it’ll draw from their (Ironman’s) bib shorts & shorts sales, because they won’t need them anymore to be comfortable. I can use a crappier pair of shorts now because I’m riding a Wove, a premium pair isn’t needed.
In the early days a combination of new and used wetsuits, mostly demo suits going out the door for a $100. Later on when DeSoto became a thing, added some of his clothing to the mix too. But in the last years before the race closed, Dan and I bought out the inventory of Trisports in a bankruptcy auction, so we had a little bit of everything small you would find in a Tri shop. Think the first year we did nearly $30k in sales there, but then covid hit and we were/are left with a lot of that inventory still…That was our plan in the beginning, figured 3 or so Wildflower expos and we could get rid of 90% of that stuff, it really was a shoppers dream that expo…
Plus it was just plain fun to be there are around all those people, it really was the Woodstock of triathlon…
I’ll vouch for the above. I even bought one of those wetsuits.
RIP Wildflower
Here’s the issue with selling Wove at the white tents…it’ll draw from their (Ironman’s) bib shorts & shorts sales, because they won’t need them anymore to be comfortable. I can use a crappier pair of shorts now because I’m riding a Wove, a premium pair isn’t needed.
Luckily the Ironman tri suits are pretty crappy. So maybe it’s the opposite. The saddle will cover up the fact that Ironman’s customer just overpaid for their tri suit!
That can be said for most tri suits…very few have good pads in them. I ended up using Endura the last few years–seems to have handled the padding part well. But yes, those Ironman tent race suit have some fairly crappy pads…
Replying to everyone in general - Ironman usually sends out a survey post-race for you to fill out. If you want to see more at the expo, or more local engagement, etc. this is a good opportunity to give them your feedback.
Having just finished my first IM branded event (Eagleman 70.3) I found myself to be very underwhelmed with the “expo” area. There were maybe 3-4 tents outside the IM schwag tent, and they were pretty weak in their offerings. I would have expected Mortal and Maurteen to be there talking about nutrition, maybe a few bike and gear vendors… but it was like one tent selling extra bike tubes and water bottles and another selling triathlon slogan t-shirts and trinkets.
Overall, my experience at the event was positive, but not sure if the IM brand and on-course support was worth the cost different vs. non-IM branded events.
I do 2-4 IM branded events a year and always avoid expo area to the maximum in the same way I avoid physical shops. The products are usually overpriced (to online stores) and I come prepared to a race anyway.
The only time I intentionally went to the expo area for anything else than bib collection was to meet & greet with Jan Frodeno in Nice, post race.
I do 2-4 IM branded events a year and always avoid expo area to the maximum in the same way I avoid physical shops. The products are usually overpriced (to online stores) and I come prepared to a race anyway.
The only time I intentionally went to the expo area for anything else than bib collection was to meet & greet with Jan Frodeno in Nice, post race.
I shared above that I personally don’t like the idea of selling product at the expo. I’d rather it be to show products like Sea Otter and EuroBike, have pros come by to meet fans, do a saddle give away, answer questions, have a stationary bike so that people can sit on saddles. If that’s what the expo area consisted of for a number of tri related products, as a participant, that would be an awesome experience.
We have displayed at an IM Expo in the past (race director) but the cost grew to the point where there was not enough value to it. From an industry perspective, we’ve noticed a steep decline in expo interest from vendors, sponsors, etc. and it routinely comes up as being one of the least important aspects of a race according to our athlete surveys, so maybe they are onto something. I love your idea of having more of a demo oriented expo rather than transactional.
Nick, any possibility of getting into Eurobike Frankfurt?
Next year when I have our $550, $350 and $225 saddles, it will make a lot more sense to have booths at
Sea Otter
Eurobike
Unbound
select IM races if they can confirm there will be at last ~8 other non transactional vendor/manufacturers in the expo to create some draw and if the packet pick up is outside of the white tent to funnel people through the expo, and some pre race promotion for the expo
.
Ironman under their new leadership is going above and beyond in improving the Expo athlete experience.
My n=2 experience is that we’ll have expo space in Kona at 1/7th of the cost of previous years in an effort to get startups like Wove in the door.
The endemic bike sponsor program is being adjusted to be significantly less expensive than originally proposed and with a goal of providing a Eurobike feel at select IM events.
It’s definitely feeling a lot more like a long term partnership mindset vs a PE extraction mindset, and I hope this a sign of things to come in general over at IM and I’m appreciative.