TRE Takes Switchback Solo, Competes Directly with Freetrail’s TrailCon

Peter Verry for Footwear News:

After breaking into the outdoor market with Switchback in 2022, The Running Event(TRE) is set to expand the trade show.

TRE added the outdoor-focused Switchback section to its annual running trade show in November 2022. Now, TRE is making Switchback a standalone event, with the first taking place in Nashville, on June 16-18, 2025.

Two things here:

First TRE’s gain seems to be OR’s loss. Outdoor Retailers has been struggling for years trying to find a proper home and even relevance for existence. TRE has been growing steadily and taking Switchback solo is a bold move in times where trades shows find a hard time to exist at all. Outdoor Retailer hasn’t announced the summer show for 2025 yet, but it’s usually in June as well.

But the much bigger story here is that this announcement sets the date for the standalone outdoor focused show by a footwear trade show company for almost the same time as Freetrail’s announced TrailCon at Olympic Valley in the week between Broken Arrow and Western States.

• TrailCon: June 25-26, 2025 – Olympic Valley, CA
• TRE’s Switchback: June 16-18, 2025 – Nashville, TN
• Outdoor Retailer Summer show: not announced yet, but most likely June – Salt Lake City, UT

So we’ll be possibly heading into next year’s June with three outdoor related trade shows competing against each other. Outdoor Retailer and TRE having a B2B focus and TrailCon trying to combine the business angle with the consumer one. Will be super fascinating to watch how brands respond and what event they find my useful to attend and are willing to support.