Observations and
Notes from the Denver Fly Fishing Retailer Show
In mid-September, I attended the Fly-Fishing Retailer Show in Denver. This annual event is the premier trade show for the fly-fishing industry. It originated as a venue for manufacturers to pitch new products to retailers, but it has also evolved into a place for people in the industry to "network" and to catch up with past acquaintances.
Attendees are a mix of manufacturers, sales reps, retailers, press and general industry types. Activities run the gamut from serious industry seminars to after-hours movie premieres, and almost everything in-between.
As a first-time attendee with a limited amount of time, I didn’t get to experience the full scope of the show. Several people mentioned that the show was smaller than in years past (likely a combination of the economy, Hurricane Ike, and a general industry slowdown), but there was still a lot to see. I managed to get through my short-list in the time I had allotted, but I was pretty burned out by the middle of the second day.
My primary editorial goal was to find things that might be interesting to BTB fly-fisherman, that would not get a lot of notice from the traditional press. After all, there are lots of places you can go to see “New for 2009” articles (which tend to be reprocessed press releases). Rather than duplicate that effort, I went off searching for things that struck me as interesting, innovative and maybe even useful to people fishing "beyond the breakwater", regardless of who made it, or how popular it would be to the general fly-fishing public.
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