An annual outdoor pilgrimage (inside)

As I type, I’m sitting on the Berghaus stand at the OutDoor trade show in Friedrichshafen, in the south of Germany. The event takes place in July each year and sees all of the major outdoor brands gather under one very large roof to showcase their latest product developments. I tend to wear several hats while out here, but spend the majority of my time meeting journalists on the Berghaus stand and giving them an overview of the spring/summer 2010 collection.

It’s been a very busy few days and there has been plenty of interest in the new clothing, footwear and rucsacs. Highlights include a comprehensive collection of base layers, a great selection of low cut outdoor footwear and some really exciting new daysacs. And the colour palette across the range is fantastic – it’s really vibrant and perfect for summer.

One of the other big stories for Berghaus in 2010 revolves around some significant anniversaries. Next year will mark 25 years since Sir Chris Bonington reached the summit of Everest. It will also be 60 years since the first successful summit of an 8,000 metre mountain, when Maurice Herzog climbed Annapurna, and the 50th anniversary of Chris’ own first ascent of Annapurna II. And Chris will be 75, in a year during which he is heading back out the Annapurna region to lead a trek to commemorate all of the above.

Sir Chris features prominently in Berghaus’ communications plans for 2010 and even appears on some really nice ‘heritage’ t-shirts that the company has designed. His association with Berghaus goes back to the early 1980s and he is the living embodiment of the brand, still exploring unclimbed peaks and new areas over 50 years after he started to make a name for himself in the world of climbing.

During the show, I have also been talking to journalists about developments at the Outdoor Industries Association. Since her appointment as association director, Louise Ramsay has made a big and positive impact, and is delivering some dynamic plans that will really help the OIA achieve its long term objective to effectively represent and promote the UK outdoor sector. The latest step has just gone live, with the launch of the new OIA website. It already looks great and there’s much more that will be added to it in the near future, as it develops into an essential resource for outdoor brands, retailers and other businesses.

Finally, I took the chance to introduce a few of my contacts to the Adventure Generator for North East England. Interest in this great online activity break planning tool is building fast. Recently, former Olympic athletes Steve Cram and Allison Curbishley gave the Adventure Generator a spin and enjoyed a range of activities across the North East. And now, several of the outdoor magazines that I met at the show have expressed an interest in featuring it.

All good. Right, I’m leaving the show this afternoon and travelling back by boat, train and airplane. So, I need to go and catch a ferry.

Outdoor adventures - global and local

I’ve had quite an ‘outdoorsy’ week, which has been very enjoyable. It began with me collecting this beast, which the Family Lines has just invested in. We looked at loads of great tents, but this was the one that really took our fancy – the size, layout, headroom and general quality all appealed. So, we made the choice and look forward to a bit of camping, or maybe even ‘glamping’, very soon.

Anticipating future nights under canvass I then set off for the unashamedly plush Carden Park near Chester, to attend the Berghaus spring/summer 2010 sales conference. There, delegates representing about 30 countries in which Berghaus products are sold, were presented with details of the range that will be available to consumers around the world from next February. I can’t spill the beans on all of that here, but suffice it to say there are (as there seem to be every season these days) some very exciting developments and plenty for Press Ahead to get its PR teeth stuck into.

Berghaus has an outstanding team of sponsored athletes and many of them attended and contributed to the conference this week. Sir Chris Bonington, Mick Fowler and Leo Houlding all gave inspirational presentations about their exploits and demonstrated very clearly how they are the personification of everything that is great about the Berghaus brand. Also at the conference were Anniken Binz, Rob Jarman, Leah Crane and Carlos Suarez – they are all very much part of an extended Berghaus family.

On Tuesday, I led a workshop that Berghaus marketing director Sarah Wilson and I put together for the international representatives. It was designed to give them an insight into how sponsorship can be used to build the brand (and subsequently sales) in their market, and to give them tips on how to create their own sponsorship strategies. Our magnificent seven Berghaus athletes were also involved in the workshop and it was a thoroughly enjoyable session that the audience seemed to both enjoy and find very useful.

One of the best aspects of a Berghaus sales conference is that it gives people involved in the business around the globe the opportunity to get to know each other and share best practice and ideas. At every conference, the company lays on some sort of team activity. This time delegates were split into mixed groups and then set a series of challenges in the grounds of Carden Park. My team included a few from the UK, including Berghaus brand president Richard Cotter, along with representatives from Spain, the Czech Republic and South Korea.

Over the course of a couple of hours, we tried a range of activities and challenges, with varying degrees of success. Our team ‘excelled’ at archery and climbing, but was less successful when it came to ‘laser’ clay pigeon shooting and building a tower of crates. It was all great fun and the sight of Richard Cotter and European sales director Simon Roberts racing each other up a telegraph pole was pretty entertaining. Simon, with reckless disregard to his career prospects, reached the top first and was then given the charming title of 'tree monkey' by Richard!

The images below were taken during the crate building exercise and provide an idea of the fun that was had. The guy balancing at, and then falling off, the top is Mike Clark, Berghaus' retail operations manager.

Overall, the conference was a big success, thanks to a huge amount of work put in by people across the business, from product design and development, sourcing and logistics, and of course the marketing team who co-ordinated the whole event. Well done to everyone involved – now comes the work of selling and promoting the new range!

I returned to the North East to find that the Outdoor and Active campaign up here is really starting to gather momentum. The media coverage in the region is starting to roll in, with a lot more activity in the pipeline. Meanwhile, the team at Press Ahead has been picking up the ’phone to national journalists and visits are being arranged as I type. We’ve got a really cool (can I use that word at my age?) initiative lined up to launch in June, that I think is going to have very wide appeal. I won’t reveal all now, but watch this space for more news on that soon.

So, yes, the outdoors has been the dominant theme of my week. And with the Bank Holiday weekend weather forecast looking quite promising up here in the glorious North East, I dare say I’ll be heading outside quite a bit more over the next few days.

Taking the outdoors inside

I made a brief visit to the Ordnance Survey Outdoors Show last Friday. Every year, I find it faintly ironic that the biggest UK consumer event dedicated to the outdoors is held at the distinctly indoor National Exhibition Centre near Birmingham. The show has been around for eight or nine years now and I’ve been to every one. In fact, I remember attending the meeting at the NEC when plans for the first event were announced. I was representing Berghaus and I’m pretty sure we were the first major outdoor brand to commit to backing the show, which has had the unwavering and substantial support of Ordnance Survey since day one.

The first show was pretty exciting. It was a new departure for the industry and no-one really knew what to expect. How many people would turn up? Would the various features work? Could the show become a regular fixture on the calendar? In short, the answers to those questions were; loads (too many as it turned out), yes and yes.

That year, the event was held in a pretty small hall with limited facilities, but it was a huge success. The organisers (a company called Brand Events) actually had to turn potential visitors away, which was unfortunate, but demonstrated clearly that there was an appetite for a show of this type.

Berghaus built a fairly ambitious stand just inside the entrance. Essentially, it was a square tower, on one side of which the Avon and Somerset Cliff Rescue Team put on live shows each day, demonstrating how they lowered stretchers down from treacherous heights in rescue situations. The Cliff guys were born entertainers and also very resourceful. Hidden underneath the tower, which was decorated with huge canvasses on each side, they conjured up a mini kitchen, complete with kettle, refrigerator and all sorts of goodies. I’m sure that the facilities team at the NEC didn’t have a clue what was going on under there and am equally sure that they would have vigorously waved a few health and safety papers at us if they had discovered it all.

Elsewhere on the Berghaus stand, we had a Gore-Tex testing tent which was a walk through area equipped with a shower. Visitors could use that to test jackets and footwear and experience Gore-Tex fabrics in action. The shower was, alas, a little short on pressure (okay I confess, it was more like a moderate dribble), but it was still a popular feature. And we also hosted an information and fundraising area for legendary mountaineer Doug Scott’s charity, Community Action Nepal.

That first show was quite a ride and the many ways in which visitors could interact with the various exhibitors (and outdoor celebrities such as Sir Chris Bonington) was the foundation of its success that year and for the next few. The Outdoors Show grew and grew and over time extended its footprint across three of the major NEC halls, but I have certainly felt that its lustre has been fading a little over the last three years. It’s a very different beast to the monster that was originally created and although that’s fine, I don’t think it’s as interesting an event as it used to be.

However, I still go every year, as do thousands of other members of the public, and there’s always something or someone there to hold my attention. The 2009 Outdoors Show was, significantly, held in one hall, so was much more compact than in recent years. Partly for that reason, it felt busier than it did in 2007 or 2008. I managed to bump into various friends, colleagues and contacts, including mountaineer Alan Hinkes, Country Walking editor Jonathan Manning, Michelle Daniel (also from Country Walking), Matt Swaine and Graham Thompson from Trail, Gill Wootton from Greenshires Publishing, and Angela Turley and Terry Stephenson from Berghaus.

I’m glad that I went, but I do miss the relative chaos and pioneering spirit of that very first Outdoors Show and I feel that back then, the event did a better job of bringing the true spirit of the outdoors inside.

Below, from left to right: one of many climbing walls at the show that were popular with youngsters; Graham Thompson, gear editor of Trail, dispenses product advice to visitors.

Bottom: Jonathan Manning, editor of Country Walking.