Road Show at Bonzai Sports
Bonzai Sports is, like Inside Out Sports in North Carolina, like Nytro Multisport in North San Diego County, really a tri shop. Nothing against stores that carry Trek or Specialized, but those stores typically serve many masters (well, many constituencies).
Stores like Bonzai are, honestly, true to triathlon and its vendors. They are iconoclastic and so is Bonzai's owner, Mark Smith. If you're a vendor and you try to tell Mark, or Inside Out's Cid Cardoso, Jr., or Nytro Skip McDowell, or Gear West's Kevin O'Connor, how it is you're likely to find them telling you how it is. I know this because I've been the vendor side. And you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way.
Above, things are getting set up prior to kicking off. It was a brisk morning.
Several hundred passed through on the day. This is a selling show for Bonzai. They prepared to sell and they succeeded.
There are 2 kinds of exhibitors: vendors and local stakeholders. Above is SRAM alongside VTSMTS, a local race producer.
Above is Rev3Tri's booth and these guys are a ubiquitous presence at East Coast Road Shows.
Our backbone support for Eastern Seaboard shows is T-BLOCKS and its owner Marcus Robinson. Marcus makes the state of the art transition racks: light, portable, easy to set up, and for variable tire widths.
You won't know unless you look close, but that's Doug Marocco, longtime fixture in Armed Forces triathlon and a presence at many Chesapeake area triathlons. He's hte shorter of the two who're talking in the foreground.
Behind Doug is the Infinit Nutrition booth. We have a number of nutritional companies involved in our Road Shows and UCAN and NUUN will feature at a number of them coming up. Infinit is killing it at these shows. The only time Infinit does not sell a lot of product is if the retailer fails to order enough leading up to that Road Show.
Slowtwitch Road Shows would not be authentic were it not for brands like Cervelo.
Likewise Quintana Roo, and this bike has, so far, been the surprise hit at these shows. This brand is the Road Show's Bernie Sanders, you might say, beating the battle of expectations.
Quintana Roo has a long Road Show history. Our first Road Shows were the Quintana Roo Road Shows when I founded and ran that brand, 20 years ago, and Bonzai Sports, Inside Out and others were hosts of our original Road Shows back then.
CEP feels it important to stand in solidarity with its retail stores, including Bonzai, and many of the stores at these shows.
Above is Dave Schindler from ISM. He's got somebody's pelvis in his hand (somebody who doesn't need it anymore), explaining how an ISM saddle works. ISM's saddles have sold copiously at our Road Shows and in my opinion the PR2.0 has been the saddle triathletes prefer among all the 2016 ISM models.
I'm working on at Bonzai's fit studio. A lot of Slowtwitch Reader Forum's members were up on Bonzai's new Purely Custom fit bike that day.
Above is Shimano, slingin' its excellent cycling shoes to customers.
Powertap offers 3 power meter platforms: hub, pedal and chain ring. Now, Quarq leads among Slowtwitchers when the question is limited to a power meter model. But Powertap leads pretty significantly when you add up the 3 platforms. Retailers vary widely as to the platform they prefer. Some swear by the chain ring, and that makes sense when there are so many 110mm bolt pattern 5-spider cranks sold OE on tri bikes. But others order almost only the pedal-based power meter.
This same rep also sells CycleOps trainers, and at this show he had 2 displays for Road Show attendees: Zwift virtual racing and CycleOps's own VirtualTraining.
No, this image was not shot at the Road Show! But this bike was there or, at least, some Orbea OMPs much like it. This bike is a sleeper. It has not gotten a lot of airplay at our Road Shows so far or, indeed, in the tri scene. Yes, Andrew Starykowicz rides it, but this bike sits there, sexy as all heck. I am bullish on this bike.
Finally, above is the booth for Team Z. It's guys like Ed Zerkle that make these shows fun for me. I'm going to try to come to this Washington DC show every year, because this shop puts on a great show, there is a lot of military involvement, local stakeholders pitching in, a really great staff, lots of Slowtwitch readers, and vendors who care about this store. The Bonzai Sports show will be an anchor stop on the Slowtwitch Road Show circuit.
