Why did Outdoor Retailer leave Utah? The show's two exits

In 1996, at the Salt Palace. The convention center expanded in 2006 so it could hold both the summer and winter markets, and by 2013 KSL² reported the shows had outgrown it and spilled into the parking lot across the street. The same story put the show's value at an estimated $40 million a year for the city and state.

At its peak the show was enormous for a city this size. Utah Business counted 27,000 attendees and 1,600 exhibitors at the summer 2015 market. In 2022 city and county leaders said the first 22-year stint produced $565 million in direct delegate spending and $52 million in state and local taxes.

The squeeze showed up at bedtime. In 2016 Salt Lake City had 18,000 hotel rooms to Denver's 42,000, and Dan Probst of the Utah County company Ready Project told Utah Business that "a lot of people have been traveling to Park City or even farther just to sleep."

One of the calls to leave came from inside the Utah gear business. In January 2017 Peter Metcalf, a cofounder of Salt Lake City's Black Diamond, publicly urged the show to leave Utah over state leaders' opposition to the Bears Ears National Monument, KSL reported. KUTV⁵ reported that more than 30 retailers, REI and The North Face among them, said they would leave the show if Herbert didn't change his position on the monument.

On February 16, 2017, the show's organizers announced it would leave Utah. The contract ran through summer 2018, and Herbert's office said the decision was "offensive" and reflected "gross ingratitude" to the community that had embraced the show. The show opened in Denver in 2018.

In March 2022 Emerald announced a return. Organizers said they had "a strong relationship with Salt Lake City and a committed partner in Mayor Erin Mendenhall," and that they had decided to "push back, not pull back." The deal kept the show at the Salt Palace for at least three years, with shows every January and June. "This is a huge win for Salt Lake," said Kaitlin Eskelson, president and CEO of Visit Salt Lake.

Not everyone came along. Patagonia stayed away from the show, which ran January 10 to 12, 2023. So did REI and The North Face, and KPCW⁸ counted about 30 major companies boycotting the return. Close to 400 brands showed up anyway, according to the Deseret News¹⁰, and the show threw a block party at 100 South and West Temple with a drone show. "It really returns a piece of our city's identity," Mendenhall said.

On October 2, 2025, Emerald announced that the 2026 show would run August 19 to 21 at the Minneapolis Convention Center instead of in Salt Lake City in June as planned. Emerald said it chose Minneapolis for the outdoors close at hand and for its business community, and TownLift^7,12 reported that organizers framed the move as a reimagined show and not as public lands politics.

The local explanation was construction. Utah lawmakers had approved a $1.8 billion funding mechanism for a new convention and entertainment district that takes in the Salt Palace, with partial demolition of the exhibit hall possible as early as 2027. "Construction will be about three to four years, and they would not fit within that footprint of what we have left available," Eskelson told KSL.

The show had also shrunk. It went to one show a year in 2024, and the June 2025 show at the Salt Palace drew nearly 1,700 attendees and more than 350 exhibiting brands, according to TSNN¹³. That was a fraction of the 1,600 exhibitors of 2015.

For now, yes. Trade Show Executive¹⁴ reported that the Minneapolis debut drew more than 1,800 attendees and 275-plus brands. More than 400 qualified retailers came to buy. The show's website lists the 2027 dates as August 18 to 20, again at the Minneapolis Convention Center. In other words, the first Minneapolis show was about the size of the last Salt Lake one, and Salt Lake's convention center is the one headed for partial demolition.

For a small Utah company, it meant the buyers came to you. "I love it because it's in my backyard; all our customers love coming there," Terry Peterson, owner of the St. George lighting company HybridLight, told Utah Business in 2016. Probst said the show got Ready Project "in front of buyers we otherwise wouldn't have been able to," and that the team could "drive to and from the show and sleep in our own beds at night." For a trade show, that is the whole dream.

It also recruited companies. When the Swedish helmet brand POC moved its North American office to Park City in 2014, its marketing director listed nearness to the Outdoor Retailer shows among the reasons. That story and others are in brands that moved to Utah. For two decades, a European gear brand weighing an American office could count on the industry showing up in Salt Lake twice a year.

That is the loss locals feel. The show was where a Utah brand could meet the whole industry without a plane ticket, and where a city of Salt Lake's size got to host something it had built a building for. The companies themselves did not leave. Petzl still runs North America from West Valley City, and Black Diamond is still in Salt Lake City. The rest of the Utah outdoor brands are on the map, most of them within an easy drive of West Temple. How they got here is in why so many outdoor companies are in Utah.