Two Wheels To #ORshow: Riding to the Outdoor Retailer show

Two Wheels To #ORshow is a three-part blog series from co-founder and managing principal Aaron Keller to talk about what happens when #weareOUTDOOR. Follow along with us as we have conversations surrounding outdoor, branding and designed moments. Riding to the Outdoor Retailer Show is the final blog in the series, so make sure to take a peek at the first and second.

There are still places where bicycles are a more primary form of transportation. The United States of America is doing better, but we're still an automobile focused culture. If you're not aware of this fact, try riding a bike on any backroad in the country and count the number of times you experience a close call with a truck, get honked at or yelled at for being on the road. And, to be clear, the law allows bikers to share the road and it favors bikers over cars, it's a culture thing not a legal thing.

So, the fact that SmartWool has been taking 75+ riders from Steamboat Springs to Salt Lake City for 10 years without any major issues is a wonderful accomplishment. Most of the credit sits on the trophy shelf of Iconic Adventures, the team of planners who are the backbone of the trip.

Now, let's move to the philosophy a importance of this trip. Of the 29,000 people attending the show, 75 of them or 0.25% of the attendees sit in a bike saddle for nearly 400 miles and burn approximately 17,000 calories each on their way. Let's do a bit of math on this one and see what we find.

What if four other brands did the same type of event with a similar distance from another city? We would go from 1,275,000 calories burned to over 5 million calories burned on the way to Outdoor Retailer. This would only get us up over 1% of the total attendees at the show, but it would take so many cars off the roads and make a statement perfectly aligned with what we all talk about at this show.

More human fuel, less fossil fuel.

Reach out to AaronKeller@Capsule.us if you'd like to learn more about the conversations we had on the ride, the importance of design for outdoor brands or our most recent book, The Physics of Brand, and follow along with us on Twitter and Instagram.