Frostbike vs. Interbike

Just arrived in Bloomington, MN to exhibit at Frostbike, which is QBP's mini-Interbike. QBP is the dominant U.S. distributor for cycling products to cycling shops and each year they invite their top vendors and top shops to frigid Minnesota to touch base in the slowest months of the year: post-holiday and pre-spring. 2,200 people attended last year (compared to Interbike's 25K or so in Las Vegas).

And I must say that so far, despite a high temp today of 7 degrees, Frostbike beats the pants off Interbike. Here's why:

1. It's not in Las Vegas. Sure, bike shops use Interbike to reward loyal, hard-working shop rats. Nothing turns those guys on like free bike crap and the illusion of easy women and fast money. And sure, I'm freezing my butt off in the deepest of winter in one of the coldest parts of the country (the airline lost my suitcase which had my jacket in it). But the drive from MPS airport to our hotel took about 10 minutes, and it didn't involve an obnoxious cabbie offering to take me to strip clubs. It also involved zero stop-and-go traffic and no seizure-inducing neon signage. I didn't have to get herded through the casino sidewalk/cattle chute system, nor inhale the smoke and carpet wax fumes of a casino. The hotels are nice and not staffed with employees angling for any way to part you and your money.

2. It's not at a convention center. Frostbike is held in the QBP warehouse receiving area. This should give you some idea of just how much QBP is receiving! Without a convention center venue, you have no convention center unions. No convention center unions and you have no price gouging on inefficient labor, incorrect setup, late drayage, exorbitant shipping fees, etc. Unions hold tradeshows hostage like <your favorite metaphor regarding inefficiency, incompetence, and price gouging here>. Example: We paid something like $1,400 for a keg of Fat Tire, a few bottles of champagne, and a bartender for one hour during our Bob Roll autographing at Interbike last year. Is that even legal? Another example: some convention center unions allow exhibitors to carry in one box with them - nothing else, not even a rolling suitcase. No unions means no red tape and no red balance statements.

3. By contrast, Frostbike is an untradeshow. Our booth space was free of charge (though we struggled to get invited). We shipped our stuff direct to QBP a week in advance (not to a costly, bureaucratic convention center staging warehouse a month in advance) and paid no drayage. QBP paid to ship our stuff back to Boulder. We ordered gridwall for our booth display (free of charge), and set it up ourselves with zip ties in under 30 minutes. During the two hours it took to set up for Frostbike, at least 5 (friendly, intelligent) QBP employees dropped by our booth to offer us help or supplies. Before show opening, a QBP person even grabbed two doughnuts for us.

4. Free stuff... for vendors! As if being treated like a human being weren't fantastic enough, QBP gave exhibitors free stuff! All the schwag at Interbike is intended for retailers, not exhibitors. Call me a hypocrite, but I enjoy tasteful, non-crap schwag as much as the next guy. Frostbike gave each exhibitor a nice, long-sleeve t-shirt and set of wool arm warmers. Frostbike goes out of its way to treat its exhibitors well - free shuttles from QBP to hotels and back, dinner and drinks for vendors at the QBP owner's house after setup, free meals - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For the top shops, Frostbike is an all expenses paid trip - travel, lodgings, and all meals are covered. Now that's the way to build good will.

5. All this comes at a cost - Frostbike is a tenth of the size of Interbike. It's maybe 8 corridors of vendors and 2,200 attendees. You can't reach the same breadth and depth of audience at Interbike. But there's a hidden benefit - QBP has screened the invites so that only their best customers come. At Frostbike, a vendor reaches the cream of the crop. And since the emphasis is on products distributed by QBP, those shops always know where and how to order from you. Better yet, fewer people means you can hold an actual conversation with someone and actually tell them not just about your best schwag offer but your product, your company, and your raison d'etre to the cycling industry. In fact, I may have struck up some sales just during setup. A vendor stopped by interested in our books, and I may have sold her on carrying 2-3 in her catalog. No one talks during setup at Interbike. It's nasty hot and stinky on the show floor, and everyone's pissed off about the union labor and setting up monstrous booths and the prospect of dealing with 25K schwaghounds for three days.

6. No bimbos. No booth bimbos, Sinclair bimbos, or casino bimbos. Vegas gets gross. Minnesota? A more humane story.

7. I'm not exhausted. Despite running late and skipping lunch, setup took 2 hours and not a drop of blood. Tradeshows are terribly difficult to tolerate when you start them exhausted. Two years ago at Interbike, I set up our entire 20x20 booth with one other guy and intermittent help from another person who had joined the company two weeks prior. It took 7 1/2 hours, and I was starving and dehydrated. Last year's setup was less grueling, something like 5 hours, but we had 6-8 people helping. Oh, and the union set up our booth wrong and had to physically pick it up and move it. Interbike is a three day show, generally 9am-5pm per day. Frostbike is two days, 830am-4pm first day and 830am-3pm second day (and I'm only here for setup and day 1!).