High Altitude Marketeering

Is the outdoor industry ready for online-only workbooks? They’re cheaper than printed workbooks. That’s good. Reps and buyers won’t like it. That’s bad. So far, it’s a tie. Here’s the tie-breaker. Never mind your worries about luddite dealers with no high-speed internet in their stores, at Outdoor Retailer, the premier industry trade show, you can barely send an email, let alone load pagefulls of products.

Here’s the deal. Outdoor Retailer provides two levels of paid internet access (no free access mind you, despite what you’ve come to expect from your airport or local coffee shop). At the OR show, you can opt for the $400-a-day account for your booth. Or, if you don’t have a booth or $1,600 to throw at a signal, you can opt for the $14-a-day account.

You like the $14 one? Congratulations, you’re a shrewd shopper. Only you’re now paying for a signal so slow that it takes a good five minutes for the show’s own sign-up page to load. To justify the $400-a-day option, the show slows its $14-a-day service to a crawl. On top of that, their bandwidth is so limited and there are so many users on the system that the already-slow performance quickly reaches sub-dial-up speeds.

Never mind the fact that the internet policy is a classic example of gouging a captive audience, it’s a telling example of how far the industry has to go to really take advantage of new technologies. The fact that mobs of OR attendees haven’t stormed the show’s “business center” demanding usable internet access means there currently isn’t a great need for it. To be sure, folks are texting and Tweeting from their phones but for any form of online product presentations, order management or assortment planning, attendees need better access to bandwidth.