Competing retail shows catering to rodeo fans

Friday, Dec. 12, 2003 | 10:54 a.m.

Rival rodeo retail shows will hit the trail this weekend after 10 days of peddling everything Western during the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.

Two events that have befriended cowboys and their followers annually turn two major convention centers in the city into supersized country stores while the championship rodeo is in town.

Several other retailers, hoping to capitalize on the December appearance of rodeo cowboys, their fans and western wannabes, expand their inventories for several days, setting up aisles of merchandise in tents erected in parking lots and adjacent to stores.

"These are just a terrific bunch of people," said Zandy Carnes, project director for Las Vegas Events, the coordinator of the National Finals Rodeo.

Carnes also manages one of the two rival convention center-based shows. She said she enjoys working with the hundreds of retailers and the thousands of rodeo fans she sees every year during the rodeo.

"You won't find a friendlier group," she said. "When we were setting up, there was a guy who had to move some equipment and asked me for help because he didn't have a truck available. One of the other cowboys happened to overhear our conversation and he came over, held out his keys and said, 'Go ahead and borrow my truck.' That's just the kind of people we work with all the time."

Carnes oversees the Cowboy Christmas Gift Show at the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Her show, which ends Saturday, is affiliated with the National Finals Rodeo so is therefore deemed the official retail event of the rodeo.

"We're the original," Carnes said of the event, which opened in 1986 with 30 retail booths and a few hundred curious shoppers.

Now, the event has 346 exhibitors and in 10 days brings in 150,000 shoppers, who get in for free and walk the aisles of western wear, art, boots and cowboy memorabilia. Carnes makes no bones about her feelings about the rival shows that have capitalized on the rodeo's popularity.

"Some of these copycat shows and tent sales just put money in a promoter's pocket," Carnes said. "Our show puts the money back into the NFR because its actually affiliated with the rodeo."

The largest of those rivals is the Ariat Country Christmas Western Gift Expo, which closes its 10-day run at the Sands Expo Center on Sunday.

Chris Woodruff, owner of Group W Productions, Fort Worth, Texas, is one of the out-of-state promoters Carnes criticizes.

But seldom was heard a discouraging word from Woodruff about the show at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Instead, he's more than enthusiastic about noting that his show, which also is free, is larger, with about 400 exhibitors and attendance of between 10,000 and 12,000 people a day -- or 100,000 to 120,000 over the course of the event.

"Coming to shows like this is a part of coming to a big rodeo event and a huge part of coming to Las Vegas," Woodruff said. "They can't spend the whole day sitting at the blackjack table."

The producer of Country Christmas also produces a similar but smaller retail show in conjunction with the Professional Bull Riders Association at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in October.

Woodruff said Ariat International, a Union City, Calif.-based western boot maker, is the title sponsor for his show, but several companies that have sponsorships of rodeo events are among his exhibitors. He feels comfortable providing competition to the NFR-affiliated event.

Both the Cowboy Christmas and the Country Christmas shows have enjoyed playing host to rodeo participants and both have stages to provide celebrity cowboys and cowgirls a place to meet their fans and sign autographs. Both shows also have ticket exchanges for people to acquire the hard-to-get NFR performance tickets, which sell for between $50 and $200 a seat.

"Some people have season tickets for the entire rodeo, so this gives them a chance to sell their tickets to fans who don't have any," Woodruff said.

Ticket exchangers only sell tickets at face value so there's no scalping and the seller pays a commission to the show.

The managers of both shows note that attendance comes in waves -- the first weekend attracts participants of the first few days of the rodeo as well as the executives of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which has its annual convention in Las Vegas preceding the NFR.

The second wave of shoppers at the two shows are the midweek visitors who hope to avoid crowds by arriving between Monday and Thursday. The final wave, those that come for the last weekend of the rodeo, may be the biggest enthusiasts because they're in town for the finals.

So which retail show is better?

While many of the small vendors had to choose between the Cowboy Christmas and the Country Christmas, some hedged their bets and decided to exhibit at both.

"I'm selling at this show and my husband has a booth over at the other one," said Barbara Williams, Mancos, Colo., who had a 10-by-10-foot booth for Joy's Inc., which produces southwestern chile jams, salsas, meat sauces and hot and spicy food dips. "I guess we'll find out at the end of the shows which one was best, or at least which one was most successful. Or maybe I'll just find out who the better salesman is."

Williams, who said she has never attended an NFR performance, said the hours are long on the rodeo retail circuit, but the people are friendly and she said her product now has a following among rodeo fans who look to buy different types of sauces for themselves as well as for holiday gifts.

Carnes, meanwhile, attends nearly every rodeo performance -- the only one she misses every year is the one on the second Saturday, when her Cowboy Christmas event begins to close down.

"I've been a fan since Herbie McDonald and Benny Binion helped bring the NFR to Las Vegas in 1984 and Herb had this crazy idea that you could bring a lot of people in if you had a trade show like this to bring the rodeo closer to the people," Carnes said.

"Now, it's one of the greatest things about the rodeo and I love it."