Crossvegas was just something thrown into my trip for an extra challenge. It’s like the spur of hike-a-bike to an overlook that you add to your long ride just because it’s worth the view. The real reason I went to Interbike was to visit with sponsors and potential sponsors. Couldn’t all that be done through the magic of the internet? Well, maybe… I can let someone know what I need and what I’m willing\/able to do for them, but the impersonal setting doesn’t suit me nearly as well as meeting face-to-face.<\/p>\n
I’ve been told that I’m very “marketable.”<\/p>\n
Last year, I approached the show with very little focus. I swept across the show floor going into any booth that looked cool, and probably handed out about 100 business cards in the process. It was a successful trip in many respects, but I got pretty lucky along the way. This year, my approach was more calculated. I made contact ahead of time and found out when I should stop by to talk to the right person to hand out a packet full of race resume and other pertinent info.<\/p>\n
The process of turning myself up to “11” and selling people on my ability to persuade the masses is both incredibly fun and incredibly exhausting. I took breaks often to hang out at the Ergon booth with my friends in there. As Sonya Looney put it… it’s a “safe” place where you can sit down and switch off for a few minutes. Plus, they had a kickass happy hour on Thursday afternoon. I generally played it cool on the post-show parties, though. It’s hard to do my job if I get further sucked in to the money pit\/hangover that is Vegas. There’s a great article along the same vein over on BikeMag: Interbike Survival Guide<\/a><\/p>\n With the exception of not being able to track down a marketing guy at SRAM, I was successful in meeting with everyone who needed to be met with. As for everyone else, the meetings were positive. Nimblewear, Gu Energy, ProGold, and Industry Nine are all a go for doing it again next year. As far as potential new sponsors, I can’t really talk about who and what just yet, because it’ll be different than the who and what this year. More on that sometime (hopefully) early in November.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Crossvegas was just something thrown into my trip for an extra challenge. It’s like the spur of hike-a-bike to an overlook that you add to your long ride just because it’s worth the view. The real reason I went to Interbike was to visit with sponsors and potential sponsors. Couldn’t all that be done through…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Uq-1IB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6609"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6611,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6609\/revisions\/6611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFun side story- I did have a fun moment at the SRAM booth when I stopped by their info desk. The nice girl behind the desk said she had the same shirt as I was wearing. I asked if she’d taken advantage of Target’s “2 for $10″ deal as I had, and, turns out, she did, and her other shirt was the same as I’d bought.
\nLike I said, I would rather meet in person, but the info desk couple was very nice and encouraged me to take a ‘MTB Sponsorship” card and email them after the show.<\/p>\n