Smith Family Adventure: Germany and Eurobike Trade Show

The biggest trade show in the bicycle industry, Eurobike, happens every August in the Southern German town of Freidrichshafen. Never hear of it? That's because it's positioned directly between nowhere and no place.

Like the rest of the bicycle trade shows, I have been going to Eurobike for at least ten years and I find it extremely monotoneous (in a boring sort of way). But, it's really important because all of the Tomac international customers attend and it's a good excuse to visit our big customer in Germany, Stadler.

This is a photo from the ride we went on my last day at Stadler. Please note all four guys are riding Tomacs! It's like a Harley Owner's Group ballyhoo, except not lame. Well, that's it for my four days in Stadler because I didn't take too many photos.

On to the trade show! We actually had a "Importer Meeting" the day before the show started at the hotel where we stayed. That's Johnny doing the hard work and me talking when I shouldn't be. Basically what we do is roll out the new product and program for the next year to our customers. Twenty six people attended, so it was pretty busy.

Johnny is pretty famous in the bike industry. This is him doing a video for a Czech magazine website.

Set up for the trade show was a little odd because of two things 1) our booth was in a hallway 2) we air shipped the entire booth from the US, so we tried to bring as little as posssible.

We had this wall graphic made, and when I say "wall graphic", I mean it was going to go directly on the trade show hall wall. We were really afraid ze Germans were going to bust us on that, but the Polizei never showed. This pic is how we intended to install it, but you will see in a moment, it didn't go up like this.

This is Bec Jess, she and Rodney (with Johnny in the background) are our Australian importers, but they are obviously really cool too. They helped us with the booth and the set up for the importer meeting.

This is Johnny and I cutting the carpet to size.

This pic is a little out of order, but this is Bec Jess waving a Tomac sticker to make sure the customers could find the meeting room.

If it looks like I am scared, it's because I am. That decal cost $700 and we had one shot to get it right.

But, it went up okay, and the booth started taking shape.

This is Clemens. He's typically not looking like such a homo, but catch him at the right moment, and voila! He works at Stadler but mans the booth with us for the trade show each year.