Follow-up to Hotel Show

Yesterday I attended a hotel show in Salt Lake City. It was somewhat different than what I wrote in a previous post about it.

First off, everybody didn’t have their own room. Only Circa did, I think just because there wasn’t enough room in the larger rooms where everyone else was.

Second, Jonas with Fallen and Krew wasn’t there, which was a bummer because I was looking forward to meeting him.

But I did get to meet Shane from Podium who has been hard to get a hold of, so that was a bonus. I also got to meet Randy from Volcom who informed me that Volcom can’t sell to me until I’ve had the shop open for a year. Bummer, but ok, I understand that they only want to sell to shops that are already on their way to making it.

I also talked with Randy about Volcom going public and found out some interesting facts I didn’t know, one of which is that Richard has maintained almost 100% ownership of Volcom to date. He’s going to sell 25% of the company and hopes to bring in $86M. The M stands for “million.” Not bad. I say more power to anyone who can start a company and sell off a fourth of it for $86M. I’m sure Richard will do good things with it. Apparently Volcom is funding the construction of a few skateparks already and may do more with the cash infusion.

In addition to Fallen, also absent from the hotel show were Nike, Globe, Duffs, and Osiris.

I ended up meeting with reps from DC, Adio, DVS/Lakai/Matix, and Circa. Everyone was nice, but I think Shane from Podium gets the prize for providing a solid hour and a half of comic relief. That guy’s a hoot.

Reps from Vans and Etnies/Es/Emerica were there too but I didn’t have time to meet with them. It took me five hours just to meet with the people I alread listed.

I came home with a bunch of catalogs. Most of the other shop owners there were marking them up; circling shoes they wanted, writing prices next to them, writing down quantities to order, crossing out shoes they didn’t want to order, etc. I just sat back and absorbed everything and felt awkward because everyone around me seemed to know exactly what they were doing but it was my first time doing a hotel show.

DC and Vans provided free lunch from Albertos. I had a burrito.

I think the best catalog I got there came from DVS, with Lakai coming in second. I like the DVS one because it was well-designed and had plenty of skateboarding photos in it, and the Lakai one because it looks like a magazine and had some articles in it, like interviews of Scott Johnston and Marc Johnson.

The other catalogs were all well designed, especially the DC one, but I just liked the stuff Podium was handing out the best.

I was right about one thing, it was a good thing to meet people in person, face to face. Even though Mike from DC and Brad from Adio were already being cool to me before I met them it was good to see them in person. And since I hadn’t been able to get a hold of Shane it was good to meet him face to face because that helped me get his commitment to send me a dealer app.

Other than the catalogs I didn’t get any free stuff though. Not even a t-shirt. They need to work on that.