Last week Cory and I were in Austin, Texas for The Running Event, a tradeshow geared for running specialty retailers. A focal part of the show is the exhibition hall which featured over 100 different running products, services and brands catering to the running market- we’re talking about all the shoe brands and sunglass companies, and everything in between. Our goal was to see what’s new and innovative for ultrarunners, and to share some of the interesting things with you.
A few themes we saw in product innovation was not revolution, but instead evolution- improvements and tweaks to existing products. So although there were not many big splashy products or break-through technologies, there were real, tangible improvements to products in nearly every product category. While not as exciting as a “big new thing” we were impressed and excited about many different items, and we are itching to get out on the trails and put them to use. A good example of this is Pocket Fuel’s nut butters – they have slightly reformulated their awesome nut butters and the packaging to make them more digestable, and more accessible from those pouches. No more cutting that pouch open to get the last bit of almond butter into my mouth!
We took simple videos of many of the cool things we saw – and in all we shot about 50 of them. This will enable the entrepreneurs and brand reps to explain their products directly to you and everyone in the ultrarunning community. We’re going to be posting them and sending them out with our email newsletter every week over the next month or so. We hope you enjoy them as you GEAR UP for a great 2015!