FAMOUS LAST WORDS: At the last Ispo, it was the big news that The North Face would not show at OutDoor. In fact, that is not 100 percent true. Globetrotter, the big specialty retailer, strongly recommended that the brand should be around in Friedrichshafen when everybody met at Lake Constance, but other retailers could not refrain from laughing at the outcome: TNF rented some acres of land outside the venue to present its tents to Globetrotter. Its show literally drowned on Friday when the whole region faced a monsoon-style rainfall. While everybody could see all the tents of all the other vendors, except TNF, in the indoor halls of the OutDoor show, the hard-boiled buyers of Globetrotter were standing in the rain to check that North Face tents are really water-repellent. We heard at OutDoor that TNF is going to show again at the next Ispo fair. Andreas Bartmann, the managing director of Globetrotter, told this newsletter that he is very confident that the world market leader would be ready to show at next year’s OutDoor.
