Posted on July 13 2018
Patagonia’s best of show winning foot tractor wading boot
If you haven’t reviewed the full list of New Product Showcase winners, you can do that here. We wouldn’t argue a single one of them. Congratulations to the voters for keen thought and insights, and congratulations as well to AFFTA for coordinating a fair, well-conceived, well-executed showcase. It’s not easy, as we know from having done the showcase when the show was in New Orleans, and we think this was the best-produced of all. Granted, there were some 80 fewer products in the showcase this year than there were last year, but the quality pool was still deep. Hats off to the winners and those that didn’t win, but still showed and showcased some top quality product.
Given that the timing of the show next year moves to October, we wonder aloud what a “new product showcase” will look like with the new timing and product development cycles. Is it really new if we’ve known about the products in the pipeline for several months? Should we maybe redefine “new” and look at products that are already out? Food for thought…