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Officials from Outdoor Retailer, Outdoor Industry Association, Patagonia, The North Face and REI recently met via teleconference with Utah’s governor, Gary Herbert. As a result of the call, Outdoor Retailer will not include the state of Utah in the RFP process for future show locations.
“We are doing the work necessary to procure an alternative location for Outdoor Retailer,” said Marisa Nicholson, show director for Outdoor Retailer. “Salt Lake City has been hospitable to Outdoor Retailer and our industry for the past 20 years, but we are in lockstep with the outdoor community and are working on finding our new home.”
Darrell Denny, EVP Emerald Expositions, further commented: “Emerald Expositions will also not extend the request for proposal to Utah for relocating the Interbike tradeshow.”
The organizations are reacting to the governor’s policies regarding public lands in Utah, including a move to reverse the recent addition of Bears Ears as a national monument. Deseret News reported that a resolution was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor urging Trump to rescind the monument. Herbert’s office said he will sign a separate resolution seeking to shrink the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the newspaper reported.
Outdoor Retailer recognizes that the industry has “a unique, maybe even singular, opportunity to coalesce, organize, speak and lay plans to make a difference around public land awareness in such a way that it is not only heard but that it can make a positive difference.”
The Outdoor Retailer show connects approximately 46,000 attendees on a semiannual basis for its Summer and Winter Market shows, conferences and education, and thousands more people through year-round online resources and platforms.