Fast & Furious - Is Shorter Better for Triathlon?

The racing at the Las Vegas USAT Super Sprint was fast and furious!

In the space of 48 hours back in September I saw the two most exciting triathlon races I had seen in some time, live and in person.

At Interbike on a Thursday night, under the lights in Las Vegas, I watched the finals of the USAT Super Sprint Series, produced in cooperation with Marc Lee and Kanga Productions. This short and sweet, swim/bike/run racing, all took place in a large vacant parking lot, that was a stones throw away from the famous Las Vegas strip. The women's final, in particular was a barn-burner, with all 10 women, swimming, cycling and running neck and neck, and with a desperate and exciting sprint finish to the line, that almost needed a photo-timer to sort out!

I hoped on a plane shortly after the women finished in Las Vegas, and headed back home, and directly to the Subaru Centurion Canada Cycling event on Friday, in Blue Mountain, about 2 hours north of Toronto where I was working as the Race and Event Announcer. Part of the Centurion weekend of events, was the Subaru eGames triathlon - in set up and concept it was similar to the USAT Super Sprint, with very short, repeated legs of swim/bike/run. Unfortunately, inclement weather necessitated the cancelling of the swim, which turned the eGames triathlon into a duathlon. Despite the absence of swimming, the racing over the very short, multiple lap run and bike legs was very exciting, with the winners in doubt right up until the end.

Video highlights of the Subaru eGames are here - http://vimeo.com/108393955

Earlier, in the summer, I watched on TV some of the ITU World Cup event from Hamburg, Germany. The part that I watched was the 4-person, national team relay - 2 men and 2 women, racing again, over very short multi-lap swim/bike/run legs, and then when done, tagging off to a teammate. The race was amazing - with non-stop action, and some interesting strategy thrown in of which athlete would go in which position for the various national teams. The whole thing lasted less than an hour and made for great spectating and TV!

A year and a half ago, I was part of a two-day consultative exercise, that brought together many key people in the sport of triathon, from race and event management, from sports administration, from the media, and some top level marketing people. Also invited were Canadian Olympians and Olympic medalists from 4 different sports! The focus - come up with a new style or format for triathlon racing and competition. We did come up with something exciting - but for now, I'll have to keep this under wraps. Like the above examples, I can tell you that it was short and fast!

One interesting conclusion, that came out of the above two-day consultation was an agreement, that while we thought this new short and fast concept could be a winner, ironically, the current modern-day-triathlete, may not be a big fan of it! And that is why triathlon right now is at a bit of a cross-roads - some exciting shorter race formats are being experimented with, but for the most part the larger masses of Age-Group and participatory triathletes are more focused on longer races and seem little interested in it!

The situation is somewhat akin to what Nordic Skiing went through a number of years ago - the skate technique changed everything. In particular,  the format of the racing. Shorter race formats started to be introduced, which were much more viewer friendly on-site, but also for TV. At first this was met with a fair amount of resistance from traditionalists, but after time, people started to come around to their popularity.The sprint events at FIS Nordic Skiing events now draw the largest crowds, the biggest TV numbers AND, perhaps most importantly, young skiers are being drawn into nordic skiing, because they want to do the sprint events!

On that last point - could there be some lessons for triathlon there?

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Interbike Report - Leaving Las Vegas

Interbike 2010 was in Las Vegas last week. Just before the this year's show, we learned that Inrebike will move from a long time run at the Sands Convention center in Las Vegas to Anaheim CA, and it will be six weeks earlier in the year running the first week of August in 2011.

In recent years with many of the big companies in the bike business pulling out of the show, there has been a great deal of discussion about the utility and usefulness of Interbike (the changes for next year being made to supposedly address this). Indeed, some even question why Nineteen, a company that only makes triathlon wetsuits, would even be at a trade show called Interbike! The reality is that there is no specific trade show for the triathlon business, and many of our retail customers, prospective retail customers, distributors and the triathlon media all attend this show. Years ago there had been some discussions about a Triathlon zone or area at Interbike that never came to fruition. I take no credit for it, but when we (Nineteen) started going to the show four years ago, I sought out where the leader in the tri wetsuit business was, Blue Seventy, and I took a booth across the aisle from them. They were fine with this, and now, almost all the wetsuit companies can all be found within a very small area or short walk on the Interbike show floor - as well as more than a few other companies interested in the triathlon market. There is now an informal Triathlon Zone at Interbike that has developed over the past few years in the back left corner of the show floor.

Of course, with the move to the Anaheim Convention Center next year, it will be interesting to see how this will be replicated - formally or informally. Naturally the move to Anaheim, generated considerable talk amongst vendors and dealers at this year's show. If it was Interbike's intention to make the show "better", by drawing back in, some of the big players who no longer book booth space on the show floor( TREK et al . . ), and more dealers, they may be sadly mistaken in this regard. The reaction on the part of fellow vendors that I spoke to, and dealers was mixed at best.

I understand why Interbike has become not at all helpful to big players in the bike business, such as TREK and others. Pre-season orders are now taken in July and August, and these larger companies these days are in the habit of inviting in, all expenses paid, all or their best accounts to special events that they host either at their own facilities or elsewhere at nice hotels and resorts. Even smaller companies such as Cervelo have gone this route with their BrainBike events!

Ironically, for really small companies, micro businesses really, Interbike still full-fills a valuable a key role - it puts vendors(sellers) and dealers(buyers) under one roof for a few days. I know that for us at Nineteen, Interbike is perhaps the most important three days of the year for us and this year, was the best Interbike show that we have ever had - we met with more people, talked to more good prospects, and interacted with more key media in the triathlon business than we ever have.

Hopefully next year, despite the move to Anaheim and it being six weeks earlier, it will be more of the same!

Finally, it's important to know that Interbike is a Trade Show. In the gear oriented sports of cycling and triathlon, many consumers are obsessed with finding out what is the latest and greatest, but the general public is not welcome at the show. People who do get in or newcomers to the show, are often overwhelmed by all the gear and all the cool tech stuff or the VIP's just wandering around - Is that George Hincapie over there? I know I was like that, when I went to my first Interbike show years ago. However, it's important to note that often the key things that go on at a show like Interbike, are the quiet conversations that go on in the aisles, with customers, competitors, prospects and key movers & shakers in the business. This is where and how the real action in the business happens.

That being said, everyone wants to know what was the coolest thing I saw at the show. Well, truth be told, I barely got out of the Nineteen booth for the whole show and I really did not get a chance to walk the whole show or see much of it for that matter. This being the last Interbike in Las Vegas, that to me was the news of the show. I have been coming here for many years now, so on the last night of the show, I took a short walk up and down part of the strip near our hotel for one last time just to take it all in. I have always had a strange relationship with Las Vegas - it's not the kind of place I would ever go to on vacation, but thousands of people do. That walk of nostalgia amongst the masses strolling the Strip, past the Venetian, Treasure Island, Caesars, The Flamingo, Mirage and the Bellagio, and the other grand hotels and casinos of Las Vegas seemed a fitting way to end it all!

A Day at Interbike in Booth 1055

Thursday, Sept. 24

Traditionally, Wednesday and Thursday of Interbike are the busiest days of this three day trade show. By mid-day on Friday, everyone is pretty much done. This year was no different. Wednesday was a full day, but Thursday was really the BIG one for us at Nineteen. We were fully booked with meetings - typically on the hour and at the half hour as well. Dan Rishworth, the owner of Nineteen, and I split about 20 scheduled appointments for the day. But as you can tell, lots of people do just drop by on the fly.

Here's how the day unfolded:

7:30 am - Breakfast Buffet at Harrah's our hotel on the Strip. We talk strategy for the day and review who we met with yesterday and any new developments. I like to have a bigger breakfast, as their is rarely time for lunch and dinner is a long way off!

8:40 - Walk over to the Sands Exhibition Hall, vacuum the booth carpet and get things set up for the day.

9:00 - Show opens and we start in with our first meetings of the day.

9:30 - First presentation has gone well, but I am now freezing cold in the Sands Exhibition Hall( AC is always on high in here it seems). Have brought an undershirt - so I go and put it on. Better now.

10:00am - 12noon - More meetings and appointments.

12:30pm Former Top Canadian Pro Women Jill Savege drops by to say, "Hello". It was good to catch up with her quickly. She leaves wondering where her Fiance Jordan Rapp is

12:45 pm Slowtwitch Programmer, Pro Triathlete and recent Ironman Canada Champ Jordan Rapp checks in at the Nineteen booth. I give him a quick run-down on the line. But then he has to go as he is wondering where his Fiance Jill Savege is!

1:30 - Head over to the concession area to get a quick bite to eat on-the-fly between appointments and give a wave to Steve Harad in the Kestrel booth. Line-up for food too long. Swing by the Gu booth on way back and grab some Chomps. That will have to do for "Lunch".

1:45 - I have a quick chat with the folks next to us on the floor, Beljum Budder - It's a chammy cream and body lube for endurance sports. Nice people. Great product!

1:55 - It's now getting warm in the Hall. Contemplate taking under-shirt off.

2:00pm - Tri-It from Calgary, one of our best customers has their appointment. They have brought all 11 staff members and I give them a 20 minute PK session on the Nineteen line.

2:30pm - Carrying on with the meetings

3:40pm - I grab a quick tete-a-tete with Dean Jackson my counter-part from Blue-Seventy off to the side of our booth. All good. We have some friendly competition in this business but surprisingly some mutual challenges and it's good to know we are on the same page.

4:00pm More meetings and appointments, this time with some good new prospects for Nineteen. Always good news.

4:15pm - It's round about this time of the day that my lower back starts to act-up a bit. I remind myself mentally that after this presentation, I need to do a bit of a stretching routine for the back.

4:30pm - Stretch lower back out. Now much better.


4:35 Pro Triathlete and all around nice guy Jonathon Caron checks in to say, "Bonjour" and he quickly gives me the inside scoop on training with Brett Sutton and the TBB team. Now I know!

4:45- North American Sports CEO and Tri Race Managment Guru Graham Fraser stops by to give me the low-down on the Centurion Series. An interesting and exciting development for road riding and racing.

4:50pm -On a quick trip for a bathroom break and a drink of water, I run into a few of the Cervelo Sales Reps I know. Cervelo does not have a booth at the show this year, but they are throwing a Party tonight. We agree to catch up at the party.

6:00 -Show over for the day. Quickly review all appointments and make some notes.

6:15pm - Walk over to the Cervelo Party which is being held in a private room at Lavo a very nice restaurant inside the lobby of the Palazzo Hotel. I am handed a Heineken as I walk through the door!

6:30pm - 8:00pm Cervelo Party in full swing. Many key people in the road and tri business are there - to numerous to list. Try and, "work the room", as they say, as best as I can - still enjoyable though. VP of Sales Tom Fowler and Co-Founder Phil White give some speeches and introduce the Cervelo Test Team riders there.

8:15pm - Cervelo Party wraps up and it's decision time. Take the bus out to Mandalay Bay to watch the USA Crit Finals or head out for dinner? We choose dinner with a good friend and customer, Ian Fraser, from Cycle Logik In Ottawa, and a few other folks from Cervelo.

8:45pm - Sit down for Dinner at Aqua - a very nice seafood restaurant with an obvious water theme. I have the grilled Mahi Mahi which is outstanding. Talk over dinner is interesting, rambling and varied. Check my Cervelo Test Team musette schwag bag from the Cervelo party and note the goodies in there - a signed Test Team Jersey is one thing.

11:00pm Dinner is done and we walk back to Harrah's. There is talk of heading out for a night-cap as we stroll through the casino area of the Venetian, but I am done and am ready for bed.

11:30pm - In bed and fall asleep quickly ready for another day.

What Now For Triathlon?

It's been an interesting year in the triathlon business to say the least. While carnage and chaos was the story elsewhere, the triathlon business kept growing. All indicators are as we start another business cycle, that 2009 was another very good year in the business - and 2010 is looking good as well. Wholesale and retail sales have been good and in some cases great. Race entry numbers have stayed steady or have grown. Many are focused on the big high profile events such as the Ironman and 70.3 triathlons, but it's the smaller entry level triathlons that are the true indicators of what's going on. Most Race Directors that I have spoken to recently have told me that their entry-level triathlon events geared for first-timers have been at capacity all year long - a good sign that new people are still coming to the sport of triathlon.

Of course, it's not been a year without challenges, because some big businesses( automotive and financial services) took huge hits, corporate sponsorship of events has taken a down-turn, I am told. Some large events went on without a corporate title sponsor, buoyed by the fact that the successful model in triathlon race management is that the user/participant fees( entry fees) should cover all the hard-costs of putting on the event. Corporate sponsorship, is usually gravy money.

On the retail side I have noticed that it's been a challenging year for more than a few smaller triathlon focused retailers, and/or retailers who came late to the triathlon party and were not that well established when the worst of the economic storm arrived. And there was regional variation as well across North America. In Canada for example, it would be hard to tell looking at the world through a triathlons lens that there was a recession going on! Whereas, in parts of the United States, there were specific areas of the country that seemed to be taking a bit more of a hit, and no surprise, it was in the areas of the U.S. that were hardest hit by the recession - California, and the auto manufacturing centers such Michigan. I note that the really good triathlon retailers have had good to great years and have solidified their place on that A-List of retailers in the business. This group has become stronger.

What now? As we enter another business year with Interbike next week and orders starting to flow in for 2010, many seem optimistic about where the sport of triathlon is at. One issue is the number of brands, that are competing in a number of categories - I know this is the case with wetsuits. People often ask me, "How many wetsuit brands do we need?" Often the trend is that there is a sector giant, such as Gatorade, in the sports beverages category, and then an ever growing roster of other sports beverage makers jumping in. Some well known, others we may have never heard of. The challenge is that retailers, always seem to have a limit as to the number of brands or choices for their customers that they will carry. This seems reasonable - good if you are on that short list, not so good if you are not!

One thing that may have saved the Tri business is the timing of the worst of the economic news and hard-ship. It came, during our "off" season of the fall/winter just past and then when the good news, and that talk of, "green shoots" and some more optimistic news started to come out, is when, our "on" season of spring/summer of this year kicked in. Tri-retailers were lucky in this regard as, so much of just about all other retailing centers around the Christmas selling season - December can make or break the year for them!

Let's hope the good news continues!

(Picture at the top is of power cables and outlets waiting to be distributed to booths at last year's Interbike Trade Show)

My YouTube Video Debut!

We are going back in time a bit. Out of curiosity, doing a quick search of "Nineteen Wetsuits" on YouTube, turned up a series of short videos that one of our customers, Trisports.com shot at the Interbike trade show back in September. There is a total of four, and in them, I very quickly go over the features of each of our Nineteen wetsuit lines - The Pipeline, the Tsunami, the Frequency and the new Frequency SS ( Speed-Skin).I had talked at length about the new Frequency SS in a previous post about product development. Below are the links to all four of the videos on YouTube. A big thanks to Trisport.com's Seton Clegget and Sarah Lienke who shot the videos of, not just Nineteen but, I am sure their many other vendors as well. I was surprised, by the numbers of people that had viewed the Nineteen videos on YouTube already!

And by the way - this is a great example of Long Tail sales and marketing at work. I had reviewed Chris Anderson's book, "The Long Tail" in an earlier post, it's been interesting to see this in action. Again, anyone looking to get a better understanding of current sales and marketing trends and how to make the best use of the current resources of the internet and social networking that is available, should definitely read, "The Long Tail".

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nineteen+wetsuits&search_type=&aq=f

Tri Business in Troubled Times

The daily business news is grim. Yesterday, I heard a chilling stat. Automobile sales, that had peaked last year at 17 million units sold in the U.S., have dropped abruptly this year and they are expecting only about 10 million new units sold this year. That's a 7 million unit drop in a year! No wonder the automobile manufacturers, in particular the big three US Auto makers are hurting.

What about the triathlon world and business? So far, from what I can tell it's for the most part business as usual. Most of our customers had good to great years this year - not just with Nineteen wetsuit sales, but overall. Despite all the daily bad news, triathletes where still buying, bikes, wetsuits, shoes, clothes and all those other tri gadgets and nick-nacks, mostly at a record pace. The recent Interbike Trade show (Picture of the Nineteen booth above) was very up-beat. Most vendors that I talked to, had good years this year and pre-season orders for 2009 were at or ahead of record levels. The mood amongst many of our retail customers was very good. Some were a bit wary about the dark economic storm clouds that have been gathering all year, but they still were optimistic for 2009.

It's not a surprise really. The triathlon demographic is very good. You need to have a certain level of income - well north of what would be considered "average" to afford all the equipment needed to do the sport. You need sports gear for, three different sports! I think that is one of the key things that keeps it going. This may also be the dark down-side to this as the barrier costs to getting into the sport have been going steadily up, as have race entry fees. I have heard others say that if we see anything over the next year, it will be a slowing down of new people that have been coming into the sport - for that reason. The barrier costs of all the equipment needed and race entry fees getting too high. However, that is a slowdown from an astounding growth rate over the last five years. Record numbers of new people have come into the sport of triathlon and embraced the training and the lifestyle with gusto - and this is where the opportunity may lie. Many of these new people, bought entry level equipment to start out, in the last few years, just to get going - particularly when it comes to bikes and wetsuits. When they come back into the store now, they are not going to want to replace what they have with something similar. They are going to want to take a step up. My sense is even in troubled economic times, we are still going to be seeing people trading up to better equipment. That's why, many bike manufacturers, such as Cervelo, debuted over-the-top new bikes at the top-end of their lines - they know, that in addition to building awareness and the brand, these bikes will sell, because people do want to step up!

Be ready for the step up!