It's Show Time - A Few Tasters
We're trapped in the spring outdoor trade show, here's a few examples of what's in the pipeline for autumn / winter 2000 with more to come...
Posted: 25 February 2001
by Jon
We've just crawled back from the first day of the spring Go
Outdoors! show at the G-Mex and it's wall to wall fleece warfare in
there, really things are getting kind of ugly.
Anyway, an outdoors site's gotta do what an outdoors site's gotta
do, so we're going back tomorrow to see what's new for the autumn -
winter season 2001. Yep, that's right, most of this stuff won't be in
the shops until late summer / early autumn so don't you go
tormenting your local gear emporium just yet...
If it's a bit quiet on the site, it's because we've had to do vile
showy things like try on fleece, sniff fleece, look at fleece,
photograph fleece, get drunk to cement our ties with the gear
producers etc. May fleece have mercy on our souls etc.
In the mean time, here are a few little things we came across on
the first day of the show... And if this seems rushed, it's because
it is...
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Aku Nembo 2 £129.95
-Autumn-Winter
Aku are after the sort of customers who
go for brands like Meindl and the Nembo is a bold, love it
or hate it design which is in the same 3-season niche as the
more conventional looking Jasper.
Apparently the strange-looking ribbing is
more than cosmetic, it also stiffens the Nubuck
upper.
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Leki Ultralite Titanium
Poles
The Ultralite Titanium pole range has
been breeding since last year and now has seven members (oo
er - sorry) Weight is around 450g - 20 per-cent less than
normal poles - and the top of the range Triple Spring
version retails at 70 quid a pair.
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Snugpack Nautilus Pack £35 -
Available Now
A departure for sleeping bag specialists
Snugpack, the Nautilus is the bastard offspring of a union
between a trampolene-style backed walking sack like the
Berghaus Freeflo range and an adventure race sack with
helmet holder, hydration system pocket, mesh pockets
etc.
It should mean some of the the plus
points of an adventure race sack but without the sweaty,
close-fitting back system that goes with them. We're getting
one to test soon so we'll let you know how it works in real
life.
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Petzl Headtorch Thingee £30 -
May
Ooops, we've forgotten what this is
called, but it's basically a Tikka LED head torch with an
elastic cord instead of a head band. There's a plastic
button which sits on the back of your head, which isn't
pictured and the whole thing is much more comfortable than
it looks on the soft foam dummy, plus it pops into your
pocket with minimal fuss.
The standard Tikka's already small, but
if you want to save a little more bulk and have all the
other advantages, take a look. Should be in the shops in
May.
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Sprayway Zone 2 Frostfire Fleece -
£90. Autumn / Winter 2001
Imagien the fluffy Regulator 2 fleece on
steroids and you have the Frostfire, one of an astonishing
number of new products from Sprayway. The photo doesn't
really do it justice. In the flesh (fur?) it looks slightly
mad in a boarding kind of way, but the proven Regulator
technology should mean that it packs small, weighs less and
is as hot as it looks cool.
Eeeek, did I really write that? Anyway,
it looks dea neat, especially in red and there's loads more
new Sprayway stuff that we'll cover later in the
week.
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Sprayway New Women's
Range
Just a taster for the autumn winter range
of Sprayway women's kit. We won't even bother telling you
what this jacket's called. The main point is that Sprayway
has put a load of effort into developing a women's range
that fits women, not 'fat-arsed, short-legged men' as one OM
member memorably put it on the forum.
The new jackets and fleeces were
developed with the aid of numerous focus group sessions -
think New Labour in fleece - and have a really neat,
tailored cut to them that should be both practical and from
the evidence we've seen, looks good too.
More news on the women's range later in
the week and thanks to Sprayway's stand-in PR, Bridgit for
modelling the jacket.
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