Outdoor 2016: Europe’s largest outdoors industry trade show Part 3

After a long and actually surprisingly tiring three days, our stint at Outdoor 2016 came to an end. We had trudged nearly 30km over the course of the event, visiting about 40 brands eager to show us their new and exciting innovations.

 

Our third day brought news from Coleman, which announced its blackout bedroom technology is to be used across all new tents. It showed its new Kobuk Valley, Oak Canyon and Rocky Mountain ranges of tents all with the new super-dark bedrooms.

 

The Kobuk range has two-, three- and four-berth versions selling for £60, £110 and £130 respectively while the Rocky Mountain 5 will sell for £300. The Rocky Mountain 5+ will be £330 and weighs in at just 15.8kg. They use mainly GRP poles with a couple of steel poles on the larger tents.

 

We were also shown a range of new Fjallraven luggage solutions, something that represented a theme at the show this year. The Swedish brand has joined others by creating a range of functional yet highly practical and stylish travel luggage, including suitcase-style travel cases and duffle bags. They’ll offer Fjallraven’s typical construction quality and come with a range of associated travel products such as wallets and washbags, all of which have a specific stowage area in the larger bags.

 

One of the more unusual developments at the show was the Navigator boot from Hi-Tec. Working with an Indian company called Lechal, Hi-Tec has created a walking shoe that combines via Bluetooth to a smartphone app to help you navigate to your chosen destination.

A small electronic device embedded in the footsole of the shoe vibrates according to which direction you should be moving in. Different vibrations tell you how close you are to your target.

 

It’s very much a gimmick, but it will be interesting to see how popular these Navigators are when they arrive in the UK in a couple of months’ time.

Overall, the show was attended by record numbers of exhibitors. Many of the accessories and tents we saw will be making their way over to our shores early next year, in time for sales for the Spring/Summer 2017 season. We’ll be testing a number of the new products over the next few months so keep an eye on the magazine as well as our website for further updates.