Notes and Opinions From
Outdoor Retailer Winter 1999

Know what a lemming is? A small rodent that reproduces rapidly only to meet a drastic end when they inexplicably stampede to the nearest cliff and commit mass suicide.

Well, I had the feel that the outdoor lemmings were accumulating their numbers this week at the Outdoor Retailer Show. These outdoor lemmings appear as snowshoe manufacturers, hoping to cash in on one of the fastest growing areas of the industry, recreational snowshoeing.

Since last Winter OR new snowshoe exhibitors—Baldas, Alchemy, Yukon Charlieís, Yowie, OuttaBoundz, and others—are springing up all over. Outdoor Retailer lists twenty four manufacturers in the show guide, and at least one manufacturer attended the On-Snow Demo days, but opted out of a booth on the show floor.

When times are good for the lemmings, food is plentiful, and the population increases. But nature has a way of restoring balance. When the stampede occurs, the lemming population plunges in a cataclysmic event. If the stampede didnít restore balance, famine, disease, or drought would bring about homeostasis.

Are the snowshoe sources destined for overpopulation? Where opportunity exists, it is rare for just the right number of companies to enter the market. The inevitable result is market oversaturation—the lemming effect—and an eventual rebalancing, hopefully not a cataclysmic suicide. Will it be through a famine of customers, the disease of recession, or a drought of profits?

Let's hope the snowshoe market continues to grow and doesn't overpopulate any time soon.

By Steve Mann

A New Outdoor Acronym

At the Fall '99 Outdoor Retailer (OR) show, it didn't take many visits to outdoor manufacturers' booths before I formulated my first impression of the latest trend in technical gear, especially apparel. Three full days later-after innumerable sales pitches, fabric samples, product catalogs, and gab-fests trading impressions with retailers and editors-my first impression still held.

Synthesizing this impression with my daily notes I came up with a new acronym-LBP which stands for "Lightweight Breathable Packable". LBP applies mainly to apparel, although lighter weight tents, packs, and footwear also sprouted like dandelions at OR. The LBP trend will allow you to take your backpacking, distance kayaking, adventure traveling or biking to new levels. LBP products weigh less and take up less space than the products currently in your gear bag or backpack, or on the local outdoor store shelves. And LBP apparel achieves these goals without compromising the warmth or breathability we've all grown accustomed to.

How many LBP products were introduced at the show you ask? Looking at the list of manufacturers, you'd begin to suspect a vast outdoor conspiracy! One representing not only companies with household names like Columbia Sportswear, Mountain Hardwear, Marmot, The North Face, and Eureka!, but also Hot Chilly's, Duofold, Cloudveil-names even my spell checker doesn't recognize-and dozens more.

A leading example of an LBP product is Gore Technologies' Tex PacLite fabric, one of ten products to win Backpacker Magazine's Editors' Choice Awards announced at the show. (You know Gore, they make Gore-Tex.) PacLite weighs 25% less than Regular Gore-Tex, and packs down in 20% less space. PacLite will appear in garments from Mountain Hardwear, Marmot, The North Face and a few others this fall. Other manufacturers, like Patagonia and Helly Hansen, will release their proprietary LBP apparel about the same time.

LBP is for you if:

• Your layering pieces often stay unused in your pack, just taking up valuable space and adding unappreciated weight;
• You fastpack;
• You are a minimalist;
• You want the best in high tech gear;
• Or you do anything else where weight and space are critical.

As the Fall 99 season approaches, I look forward to stuffing a few new LBP layering pieces in my pack, and to a lighter pack with a little extra room to spare.

By Jeff Porcaro