A total of 6,743 registered trade visitors attended Asia OutDoor, the new Chinese trade show organized by Messe Friedrichshafen in Nanjing on Aug. 23-26. The show started off with an ominous thunderstorm, and the attendance level was lower than the 10,000 visitors anticipated by the organizers, with 86 percent of the total coming from China. Some exhibitors reportedly used very aggressive methods to attract buyers to the event. Anyhow, the organizers and some of the participating firms hailed it as a success.
A total of 174 exhibitors - 55 percent from outside China - covered 215,000 square feet of floor space at the fair. Some of the big names present at the show included K2-Summit, Lowa, Meindl, VauDe, the Lafuma Group and Northland. The show is the brainchild of Knut Jäger, a former chairman of the OutDoor show, and was jointly supported by Messe Friedrichshafen and the Nanjing exhibition grounds in China.
Messe Friedrichshafen’s other recent show, Eurobike, took place for the 15th time at the fairgrounds in the organizers’ home town in Germany. The visitor count at the Eurobike show, which ran from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3, rose by 6 percent to 31,810, with 44 percent coming from outside Germany. Out of the 826 exhibitors, 68 percent were not German.
