This January, the Aspen Outfitting Company headed to Salt Lake City to attend the Outdoor Retailer trade show. Outdoor Retailer has provided outdoor professionals the opportunity to connect with others in the industry for over 40 years. We have attended OR since 2018, and love the opportunity to meet new people and grow as a business. This year, over 400 vendors and 10,000 people attended the show – it was a blast!
Since our founding in 1969, we have worked hard to craft an ecosystem of high quality brands and products. We have a reputation for curating a great selection, and the search for the very best outdoor products never ends! Going into this year’s show, we were excited to learn from guest speakers, network with other brands, discover new trends in the industry, and of course find you amazing new products.
One of the overarching trends this year was accessibility and inclusivity – seeking to increase access to the outdoors. We were inspired by several of the initiatives that we encountered, and decided to revisit our own approach to inclusiveness.
In addition to offering our amazing FREE Women’s Fly Fishing Clinics for the 8th year in a row, we are also excited to announce a local speaker series, and our First Annual Fly Fishing Gear Swap!
The swap will provide an opportunity for people that are new to the sport to connect with the fly fishing community, and get high quality gear at a low price. To learn more, click here. Our first speaker, Chris Siess, will be sharing his Saltwater Fly Fishing experience with us on March 8th. To learn more, click here and stay tuned for more information to come.
While at OR, we were also lucky enough to create new brand partnerships! We really enjoyed meeting the lovely people from BANDITS Bandanas and Le Chameau– we can’t wait to start carrying their products. If you’re as excited as we are about these new awesome brands, please reach out and tell us your favorite products!
Attending the show inspired us to continue our hard work and enter 2023 with renewed focus. It gave us the tools to examine our ongoing projects, and inspired us to begin new, enriching initiatives for our business. AND, it was a lot of fun! We will continue to work hard this year to offer high quality products, experiences and educational opportunities for our fantastic community, but we can’t do it alone. We always love to hear what gets our customers excited, so please reach out and let us know what you’d like to see from us in 2023!
P.S If you’re looking for good Mexican food in Salt Lake City, the Red Iguana is top notch!
Written by Cian McGillicuddy and Jarrod Hollinger