Manchester Bike Show and missing helmets.....

Bikermike1411

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I went to the Manchester Bike Show at Event City today. It's a massive hall (two, actually). I made two observations.

1. BMW weren't in attendance. KTM, Triumph, Honda, Suzuki and Ducati all had their adventure bikes there to sit on. I like the KTM. No way I could afford one.

2. There was a shocking lack of big-name clothing retailers. Plenty of little independents, but none of the big names who I thought would have been there shifting last year's stock at decent prices.

I really wanted to try on the range of ADV helmets (Shoei, Arai, Nex, X-Lite etc). There were none. Absolutely none. The only 'large' shop there said it simply wasn't economic to bring them.

Actually, thats slightly incorrect. There were some from brands i'd not heard of (LS2), but knowing nothing about them and being slightly sniffy about what goes on my head, I ummed and ahhed and eventually settled on a Shoei GT Air. My last three lids have been Shoei's, and I've read good reviews about these lids. And the price was outstanding for a 2017 model (£120 off RRP).

I made the choice (and i'm extremely pleased with it) based on the fact that I have two bikes (my GS and a Blackbird), and couldn't see myself riding a peaked lid on the Blackbird.... but it would have been great to actually try on the rest of the models I had thought about.

Incidentally, I don't think I saw any AGV lids, and the only Arai I saw was in a glass cabinet!

What gives? I would have thought that in today's adventure bike climate there would have been a greater presence of ADV stuff!
 
I attended both days as a exhibitor for a charity my 6th year at this show and observed much the same. TT were there but had little or no stock except for a couple of helmets and a huge pile of catalogues, Stahlkoffer were there with a nice display of panniers and ancillaries tucked away and not easy to find. I did find Beowulf who had a comprehensive stock of exhausts and radiator guards and got with show discount a pair of S/S rad guards for my GS for £50. Not good enough for what is probably the fastest growing sector of the bike market though.
 
I went to the Edinburgh show and it was much the same story. I'd decided to go to Manchester next year expecting that it would be bigger and better - appears not

I wonder if the fact that most of us buy the things we need via the internet at very competitive prices has meant that dealers and traders have little need or incentive to attend shows with a lot of stock, or offer genuine show discounts
 
I think that the cost to have a stand at these events is what put a lot of traders off. I was talking to a guy selling trousers at the NEC and he told me that the cost to put up a stand was 30,000 pounds plus all the other costs involved. You got to sell a lot of trousers to cover that. JJH
 


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