The Running Event: Our Bedroom Gets a New Poster.

I started my TRE journey down one path but ended up talking about RC cars.

I went to TRE this year with three objectives in mind. One was to continue to work on positioning for my own brand, Auteur Sportif, by picturing how we could show up within this palette of running perspectives. I seeded some hats, sold some t-shirts and got a lot of great feedback and encouragement.

Another goal was to pursue brand/creative consulting work and float the idea of working in-house. The Matt from 10-years ago would have absolutely cringed at saying (writing) that out loud but I’m excited by the idea to storytell via various brand extensions and lead a creative culture within a company. If you have any leads here please holler.

The third goal was of course to parse out my observations and insights from the show. What does it all mean? Writing helps me sort through it so here we go.

First, I did not get to everyone I wanted to speak with, I badly needed another day. I heard this from a lot of other people. There was simply too much activity and too many booths to do a thorough job in two days. At the same time I talked SO MUCH that I lost my voice, as you’ll unfortunately hear in my dispatches below (sorry).

I led with a question about what a brand was doing, aside from product, to create meaning for itself and add value to the running community? Many times this threw the person I was chatting with for an absolute loop. This is, after all, a retail show where brands are trying to get retailers to purchase their upcoming products. Most were ready to rip through their rehearsed product speech and fully tech me out on all the products. When I said I wasn’t as interested in that, many faces went blank.

I had a fantastic conversation with Jeff from Mill City Running about the evolutionary waves of run specialty retail. Wave 1 was the too cool white guy runner who stayed behind the counter and condescendingly asked what you’re looking for when you came through the door (we laughed at that image). Wave 2 intended to compensate for wave 1 with a massive reliance on customer service. We both felt most current shops still fall into this category at the moment. Wave 3 kept up the customer service ambitions of wave 2 but also leaned heavily into community by providing a “third place” for runners to engage with the larger local running community. In my mind it’s the difference between an audience and a community. An audience involves back and forth communication whereas a community communicates both with the shop and amongst themselves. What would wave 4 look like? That’s the magic question. We speculated but there are no clear answers. It was an awesome discussion, thank you Jeff.

So perhaps, from a retailer POV my question about “What else are you doing aside from product?” wouldn’t be of interest to wave 2 shops but would be of massive interest to wave 3 shops like Mill City. I decided to proceed with my plan.

Early on, with my voice still mostly intact, I stopped by the Tracksmith setup. They seemed to have a rather subdued presence and I never noticed the booth to be particularly crowded. Their product quality is top notch so why might that energy be missing? They were all the rage not long ago but this year the energy seemed to be elsewhere. I spoke with my friend Joachim who leads their Envoy van as it tours around the country. They have 12 key moments they are targeting in 2025 that includes more extended stays in communities this year versus the typical short stints that often capitalize on race activity and fail to authentically understand a community. We spoke about that idea here:

At the On booth I spoke at length with their trail athlete Jeff Colt. He has spent years developing their product and their trail presence behind the scenes. He said 2025 is the year they have been building toward and he’s excited to finally fully showcase their brand within trail. Much of it seems to revolve around their athlete team and new products but they are looking forward to having a much more visible presence in 2025. Great news. Here’s a snippet of our conversation:

As my voice continued to deteriorate I stopped to see my friend Lauren at Adidas Terrex. They are looking forward to working within a top US trail race environment to showcase their brand in 2025 with the addition of the Lake Sonoma series. They hope to help return the race to its prominence as a focus race early in the season. The Party Pace in particular sounds like a great time, sign me up! Their focus on building brand through race events also extends to a partnership with Aravaipa for several races in the US. Notably outside of the US they are the new sponsor of Transvulcania in addition to their Infinite Trails Series in Salzburg. I am a big fan of live events as an opportunity for the public to experience all that a brand means beyond the product. It’s exciting to see Terrex move that way.

I looked into 2025 over at the Salomon booth. There are a lot of Erin’s there but I spoke with my friend Erin, of the Cooper variety (pro tip: asking for “Erin in marketing” at Salomon will get you nowhere). At this point my voice was completely unbearable so I apologize 🫣. The Broken Arrow Skyrace will be a larger focal point for them in 2025 and Erin alluded to some not-yet-public news along those lines so stay tuned. Salomon is leading with the shorter distance trail races globally and I’m here for it. It’s fun, fast, exciting and also more beginner friendly than 100 miles. Also interesting to note is that race sponsorship can be a challenge for brands to balance the dollars they spend to be the official race sponsor with the dollars remaining in the budget to meaningfully activate around that race as well. Erin and I also spoke about the gravel category within running and how aside from product it’s important to them to tap into the mindset of a gravel running consumer. Here’s our conversation:

As the show went on I kept taking a step back to evaluate my original question - What else is your brand doing, aside from product, to create meaning for itself and add value to the running community? The answers I was receiving were largely around events and races which, when zoomed out, are fairly standard stuff. As the show progressed I accepted that my question just wasn’t capturing the bigger picture of what I was seeing and feeling on the floor. So here’s another take:

Satisfy was the talk of the show. The closed off booth with a strict no photos policy gave off intimidating vibes but it was all a facade because the energy was BIG and it was very warm once inside. It’s wild that a brand from Paris is largely based around an American West motif but it is working. I was able to meet their entire exec team, hold their new shoe “The Rocker”, see their new women’s line and touch and feel the incredible fabrics coming in 2025.

Why is all of this working at Satisfy? Well, instead of basing themselves around the same consumer insights as everyone else and then building the product and brand to fit, they are coming out unabashedly and authentically themselves and those consumers that identify with it are coming to them. It’s a simple approach but it flips the traditional process used at most brands on its head. My friend Steve Holmberg summarized that at TRE “everything looked new but generally similar.” I’d venture to say that this is the reason why. Satisfy’s unique approach is simply the “purple cow” as Seth Godin would call it.

Satisfy founder Brice Partouche very cordially spent some time with me despite an executive meeting clearly waiting on him. My business cards were vintage postcards from around the world and, true to the brand, Brice chose the card from the Mummy Cave in Canyon de Chelly in Arizona. Their new shoe is based around RC cars which is one of Brice’s hobbies. He has an entire instagram page dedicated to it. No consumer insight on the planet is going to tell you that a trail runner wants a shoe where the box, the included decals and the pattern on the Vibram MegaGrip outsole are fashioned after RC cars. Time will tell how this plays out but their presence ate up a massively disproportionate amount of oxygen in that convention hall. Brice told me himself that story always comes first. Well, story is winning at Satisfy.

Before I sum it all up I want to hit on a few other highlights and observations:

1. Bandit had a booth for the first time. They weren’t there specifically to woo retailers but instead, in true bandit fashion, simply to engage with the community. I spoke with CEO Nick West and while they’re very excited about the leaps forward they are making with product, he told me that in 2025 we can expect more in-person experiences for their home community in Brooklyn and also some visits to the international communities where their brand has taken hold. I’m withholding some not-yet-public info here so stay tuned.

2. GU deserves a shout because the DEI work they do is just unparalleled IMO. Every time I saw the GU crew they were listening to and/or supporting an underrepresented community or cause in running. They paid for some organizations to come to TRE with no strings attached whatsoever. At their booth you could vote for the organization to receive a sizable donation from the brand. How do I choose between Rising Hearts, Running Industry Diversity Coalition and Runners for Public Lands? This isn’t a moment of support either, they’ve been doing this consistently for a while now. Bravo to all my friends at GU.

3. Tantrums was an upstart brand making running packs that I had several people telling me to check out. They had their only 5 samples in existence at the show. They notably designed their booth like a vintage teenager’s bedroom complete with a bed, desk, tube TV and posters on the wall. They felt it represented the current moment in their own existence as they try to sort out what they want to be as a brand. Tantrums looks forward to having a more cultural presence in the sport similar to the angle of Nike Dunks or Air Force One’s. Love that so much. Are running packs ripe for a bit of disruption? The old stalwarts of UD and Nathan are mailing it in and upstart brands like Raid Research (who I missed unfortunately) are making a splash. Anyway, here’s my chat with Adam at Tantrums:

   

4. Nike was in full force. Their booth was middle-of-the-road for size and activity but they had the entire Sunset Room restaurant across the street rented out plus a massive white tent in the adjoining outdoor area. Not only did they have a really fun party Thursday BUT they spent the whole show entertaining retailers at the Sunset Room with a spectrum of activities. Very senior leadership and even investors were present and the Nike team on the ground was feeling the pressure.

5. Hylo Athletics was a booth I missed unfortunately (I really needed another day) but I have to say that anytime I walked past their tiny corner booth it was PACKED. They are hyper focused on creating sustainable footwear and doing it with just one model of road shoe.

To wrap it all up, I saw an industry that is oddly enough experiencing both growth and disruption simultaneously. Typically industries invite disruption by becoming stale and stagnant - not this time. Running is going nuclear. I see massively successful brands that are exhausted from setting the pace with huge growth in their current verticals. They can’t carve out the bandwidth needed to expand into the new areas that running now reaches - that fashion/style/streetwear convo was omnipresent and booths were rocking turntables. There are other brands, however, reporting successful enough numbers despite merely rising with the tide. Their “success” deviously masks a lot of weakness just waiting to erupt when times turn tough. But then the disruption comes from the new brands with new approaches that come out of absolute nowhere to fill untouched new opportunities stemming from this explosive growth.

It brings me back to the teenage bedroom metaphor at the Tantrums booth. All this time we’ve been teenagers with the classic yet safe sports posters on our walls. Who is the fastest? Which tech is the coolest? Etc. etc. This past week in Austin we added our first punk band poster to that wall. Now, it’s game on.

Some of the friends I spent time with or got to meet IRL for the first time in Austin. Simon from Like The Wind Magazine is smiling at me from Switzerland wearing the first and only Auteur Sportif hat on the European continent. Woohoo!

I’m in Amsterdam all week so there will be a break from posts. If there’s anyone I should connect with on the running scene here let me know!

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