A trade fair review 2024

Of course, before you start writing, you read your own review of the last issue of Cyclingworld to avoid repeating yourself too much. And you notice that you just need to replace a few protagonists, pimp and highlight a few details and the 24er party is in the books. But that doesn't do the trade fair justice. Because developments also take place beyond bare numbers and data and we are always excited about other cornerstones too.

Let's start with the data anyway: 25,000 visitors, 320 exhibitors, six halls, 18,000 square meters. Sounds big, and it is big. But there are certainly trade fairs that attract more visitors and exhibitors, that are bigger, that offer more halls and more square meters and are still boring as hell. It's not about size, it's about the content.

We ourselves find it difficult to give an objective report from a distanced, professional perspective on the trade fair, simply because we can only visit all the halls in a rush. Exhibitors at trade fairs know this only too well, after all, their own stand is the focal point. And our participation in the anything but sparse supporting program also requires a certain amount of attention and time. To be honest: the time between the first fully packed box that we carry into the hall on Thursday morning and the annoying picking of the SCHICKE points from the hall floor on Sunday evening flies past in retrospect like the strobe lights of a loud club night. But please don't feel sorry for us, we had fun. If I'm honest, even a monster of fun.

Personally, I always stammer a bit when we are asked the most frequently asked question: "How was/is the trade fair for you?" Not because I am dissatisfied, don't know, or am playing around, but because I know that the different people asking the question mean different aspects. And simply saying "great" all the time seems a bit too much like being on a party drug. Basically, I would like to say that the fact that in our cute home town, which inexplicably still has a significant problem with bicycles, a bicycle trade fair that has such importance across Europe has been able to establish itself almost from nothing within just a few years is a small miracle. The fact that the organizers of the trade fair and their passionate team also have the ambition to portray the most diverse facets of the incredibly colorful and diverse bicycle landscape and culture in a high-quality manner in order to bring new and exciting things closer to interested visitors is something I simply accept as a gift. And it is precisely in this environment that we at Mütze can shine with our do-it-yourself stand concept and our “hopplahopp, we can do it” strategy. Because creativity has value and it is visible.

We cannot judge whether these exact points led to the Cyclingworld Düsseldorf, which has almost quietly become the Cyclingworld Europe, soon getting a branch in New York City, but we hope it played a role. The Big Apple can look forward to an inspiring trade fair in May 2025, which will certainly receive a lot of attention as part of the 5 Boros Bike Tour. For anyone wondering what the 5 Boros Bike Tour is: once a year New York City makes 65 kilometers of streets car-free to enable more than 30,000 cyclists to take a relaxed bike tour from Manhattan through Harlem, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn to Staten Island. Sounds like a well-rounded story, doesn't it, dear Düsseldorf? If you want to know more about it and don't want to resort to the usual suspects like tourism information etc.: last year the Bike Snob NYC put his son on a Litespeed Titan and rode the tour with him. Humorous report with nice pictures (including a dead NYC rat) that makes you want to go cycling in America, see here .

On our first round as part of Cyclingworld Europe 2024 on Friday morning, we simply had to make do with the Hofgarten and the cycle path-footpath combination between the NRW Forum and the Düsseldorf Trade Fair. It sounds much less spectacular, but it was a lot of fun with a delegation of bicycle bloggers.

We actually spent the start of the trade fair chatting and relaxed, and thanks to our really great team, we and our stand were in a presentable condition an hour before the trade fair opened. Michael Scheibenreiter provided the perfect soundtrack for the start of two days of the trade fair with sophisticated grooves and relaxed sounds.

For the first, but not the last time, Andrea and Gianluca from Cicli Barco from Northern Italy were guests at Cyclingworld. Due to our cooperation in the form of an exclusive chic hat all-road frame set, which we came up with together with the Barco crew last year, a visit to Düsseldorf made sense and was fun for everyone involved. Andrea and Gianluca also brought two other great bikes with them to present their family business, which is now in its third generation and produces high-quality steel frames for numerous exclusive brands. Many people have often admired their bikes, but due to the different brands, they have never been able to understand that all these hi-end steel racers come from a small Italian family business. Their commitment to making their craftsmanship better known under their own name found numerous new and old admirers in Düsseldorf. We were delighted with the countless compliments our new frames received at the stand because we are entering completely new territory with this story. And the fact that we are allowed to put a cap frame on the wheels with a partner like Cicli Barco is also a great compliment for our work over the last few years.

Our two builds of the cap-barcos generated a lot of interested questions, after all the frames look relatively different. On the one hand the completely white painted model, on the other hand a model with a raw look that looks much more rustic with a phosphated frame and silver details. The builds with Shimano's 12-speed Ultegra Di2 and Campagnolo's mechanical Record show the range that is possible with the frames, mechanical and electrical are both possible in a harmonious way.

The white Cicli-Barco frame in the cap version presented Hunt's Sub50 Limitless wheelset, the brand new top model from our colleagues from England, which is aerodynamically optimized, equipped with carbon spokes and sets standards with a rim height of just under 50mm. The wheelset, like the two frames, arrived in the cap a few days before the trade fair, but such last-minute actions are part of a proper trade fair.

Another welcome guest at our stand was Njegoslav from Ritchey, who once again had to answer many questions about Tom Ritchey's range. There is always great interest in the development of Ritchey products, after all, Tom is considered a visionary and is known for often implementing "out-of-the-box" solutions for numerous developments in the field of sporty bikes. Of course, we were also pleased that our Ritchey builds caused a lot of discussion, the sporty implementations based on the Road Logic Disc, Outback, Swiss Cross or the rim-braked Road Logic as well as the creative urban gravel bike in Klunker style with Manivelle basket and Brooks equipment based on the versatile Ascent frame.

In addition to the Ritcheys and Barcos, a wildly anodized KOCMO Team racing bike, a Brother Kepler flat bar build, a Brother Stroma, an Open UP with classified hub, a Veloheld IconX Titan, a Veloheld IconX, a Cannondale SuperSix Evo custom build and a 2024 Cinelli Nemo Gravel in light blue with silver Ritchey parts decorated our stand.

In addition to all the bikes and parts, some clothing was of course also a must, so we were able to show Iris Slappendel's 2024 summer range for the first time on our stand at the same time as her own premiere. We also presented some brand new jerseys from our partners at Café Du Cycliste, which looked great on our new old presentation furniture.

A completely new area that was presented at our stand is the topic of bike fitting. Since the end of last year, we have had a small shop on Oststrasse 20 together with Nils from MotivAktiv , where Nils receives his customers. Nils presented his holistic concept in numerous discussions at our stand. The intensive collaboration is creating completely new possibilities, especially in the area of ​​custom frame construction, to enable customers to get a perfectly fitting bike with the help of frame builders.

The hustle and bustle at our stand is now well known and makes some people seek our proximity. We are happy that our little dead end with the neighbors and friends of Wahoo and KASK in the old forge hall has become a meeting place for many. Even if it got so full that we could hardly get to our stand ourselves. But there are bigger problems at trade fairs. And a little tip for the future: if some visitors go straight through to the back halls when they start in the morning and start there, there won't be a continuous caravan pushing through the halls. In the morning it was quiet in the other halls, where the stream of visitors started rolling in at midday.

With all the excitement about the 2024 edition of the trade fair, however, there are also some critical comments to be made: it is a shame that more and more exhibitors are impairing the view into the hall with high partition walls. We can understand that height helps to make the most of the stand, but if you make your own stand a little more open and let the back wall end at eye level, this will benefit the entire trade fair.

But Cyclingworld is not just a trade fair in the hall, there is a lot going on outside the grounds too. The test area reported a new record with more than 10,000 registered test rides, and the number of guided tours as part of the trade fair was probably even higher than last year. Personally, I would like to see more exchanges between the providers here; the funny story alone that several of our fellow riders discovered on Sunday that they weren't even on our tour is a good anecdote, but shows that equalizing and coordinating should make sense. We are not competitors, but we are allies in helping more people have fun cycling in a group. Let's talk.

The women's road bike movement is really big on having fun with the group and invited people to a road bike ride on Saturday morning parallel to the start of the trade fair. Almost 50 women accepted the invitation once again as part of the Cyclingworld.

Also on Saturday, with our participation, the KASK Giro del Basso Reno rolled out of the Areal Böhler grounds, a social ride with almost fifty guests. From newcomers to race-tested steel calves, different performance classes were at the start to roll side by side in chat mode. Julien "8000Watt" Riganti and Benedict Herzberg from Standert, as KASK partners, take a look at their Cyclingworld weekend in Düsseldorf in their podcast in the 8000Hertz series and, as participants, report in detail and amusingly about our ride.

Our relaxed pace meant that we couldn't make it to a podcast on Saturday evening, but I was able to spend a little more time on the bike and then with pizza and beer outside the door of the trade fair. Thanks to our excellent cap crew, who answered numerous questions at the stand with confidence and competence, this was an invaluable luxury.

On Sunday morning, some had to wrestle with themselves, after all, two traditional hat formats were taking place in parallel: the gravel round under the banner of gravel, pebbles and moss, and the classic ride. The reason was the weather-related advantage of the classic round, which Volker had already revived last year; the rain originally forecast for the afternoon fortunately didn't come or only arrived on Sunday evening. So both groups could just be happy, and under the first rays of sunshine they headed out into the area on the left bank of the Rhine, sometimes with more, sometimes with less contact with gravel. While the classics were able to enjoy Bulle pastries along the way, the gravel community was happy to have Bulle pastries, soft drinks and beer after the ride.

On Sunday afternoon, our friend Roddy invited us to an urban art ride to visit Düsseldorf's street art hotspots under the expert guidance of Klaus from PrettyPortal.

“So, how was the trade fair for you? Are you satisfied?” Yes. And we had fun. And we are pleased about the numerous new contacts that were made during and before the trade fair. And we say hello and thank you to everyone who was there again, on our rides, at the trade fair stand, at our charmingly boozy evening get-together with Rigatoni and Riesling. It was a pleasure.

A small, still somewhat sniffly preview of the trade fair and other interesting facts about hats was published last Thursday. Kerstin and I were guests on Mike Litt's "Alle Rhein" podcast and talked about our enthusiasm for cycling and much more, which you can hear here.

On Friday evening, I was a guest in a small, illustrious group in the Cyclingworld blogger lounge to give a talk and share some thoughts on the effects of Corona on the various areas of the cycling industry. Greetings to Wyatt, Anatol and Erik. This conversation, edited and put into format, will also be published as a podcast in Wyatt Wee's series The Business of Cycling.

We were annoyed that we couldn't clone or photocopy ourselves. There were so many things we would have liked to have devoted ourselves to, from the frame builders' exhibition, where we would have liked to have talked to all the frame builders about their bikes, to Alex's Fixed Crit and the cross race from the cross shop, there were countless things we would have liked to have experienced live. But our strength is limited, and we were completely exhausted on Sunday evening. Maybe we can organize things differently next year.

And a little note about Düsseldorf: we have a great cycling trade fair, we have some great events all about cycling, numerous trips and groups, clubs and private individuals who, in different ways, are enthusiastic about cycling in all its dazzling facets. Düsseldorf is a perfect cycling city. But it also takes a will to promote cycling. Nobody is helped if we continue to act as if we can redistribute space in the city without anyone losing anything. More cycling and more support for pedestrians and public transport means less car traffic. Fewer parking spaces, fewer lanes, less space for cars. Better quality of life. What works in London, Paris, New York and many other cities is possible here too. It is time to start. We are late.

We hope you'll come to our shop and take a look at everything we've set up for the trade fair. There are lots of great setups waiting for you, we have lots of exciting bikes and we're looking forward to a spring and summer on two wheels.

Shall we roll? Together? Yes.

Carsten Wien