With over 40 years as a top gathering space for the outdoor industry, Outdoor Retailer 2026 banked on its new Minneapolis location to deliver an experience that would excite retailers and brands in a rapidly changing landscape.
Owned and produced by Forge, the show brought more than 1,800 attendees and 275 exhibiting brands Aug. 19-21 to the Minneapolis Convention Center and outdoor locations around the “City of Lakes.” But the real game-changer for the show: 150 invited media members and digital creators who helped the show and its exhibitors reach more than 21 million outdoor consumers. Here’s how they did it.
Small Booths, Big Energy
“Our goal was to build around discovery, reach and community-building,” says Lindsay Hubley, svp at Emerald’s Sports and Outdoor Division, now part of Forge. “We wanted Outdoor Retailer to be the place where brands launch and where innovation in this industry actually happens, and that means we can’t just sell a company a booth and hope the right person walks by.”
The first step was to take a middle-aged event, which has gone through some turbulent times, back to its roots, where innovation grew out of kitchens and garages and drove the industry and the outdoor experience forward.
On the show floor this approach manifested in the small-brand pavilion strategy, where such brands could shine in a variety of programs, from the Garage Grown Gear to Founded Outdoors and REI Path Ahead Ventures as well as the inaugural Ascent Summit, bringing together 75 up-and-coming founders for workshops and peer-led sessions focused on scaling, retail distribution and brand growth.
Startups might have only one or two hero products, so the idea of 3×3-foot booths was born. “The format forced the brands to be very creative with their space and the ways they showed off their products,” says Lloyd Vogel, ceo of Garage Grown Gear, an e-commerce site focused primarily on ultralight backpacking gear from smaller brands.
“The most rewarding part was seeing all these small and independent brands being given a platform on a national stage. Centering them in the middle of the show, instead of a back corner, is exactly where they belong. We’ve seen firsthand how a single conversation on the floor can change the trajectory of a brand’s entire year.”
Creators Reach Beyond the Floor
Founder energy and stories built strong buzz from creators invited to Wild Reach, a program created with content platform Popfly to connect exhibitors with outdoor creators. It included about 150 participants, generating 850-plus on-site exhibitor-creator connections and reaching a combined audience of 21.2 million. On opening day alone, approximately 46,000 people engaged with content generated through the program, according to Forge.
“Retailers were telling us that they wanted to come and see new and discoverable products,” Hubley says. “But brands, along with having real conversations with retailers, also wanted to have more exposure and further conversations with the outdoor industry. For these young, innovative companies, social is native territory.”
Exhibitors could track engagement in real time through the Popfly platform and keep content assets for future use, boosting measurable ROI.
Designing for In-person and AI
For 2027, OR plans to expand its paddle and water offerings, bring back a bike section, and lean more into “urban outdoor.” Hosted buyer programs and specialty-retailer scholarship programs are set to grow.
“More retailers is our clearest measure of success,” Hubley says. “We will also definitely invest more in the Wild Reach Initiative to drive highly curated exposure.”
In fact, content generated at the show will continue to gain importance as discovery shifts to A shopping, Hubley says. “We want to build the most concentrated real in-person discovery environment that we can, and we want to generate the content and data that brands are going to need as more of the discovery gets automated with AI. I think that makes in-person more important and more valuable than it has ever been before.”
Next Outdoor Retailer will take place Aug. 18-20, 2027, at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis.
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