Style 43

What do a 5m-high wooden roll-in, with a selection of wide-rails, security fencing, and 24 tonnes of snow have in common with a clothing tradeshow? Quite a lot if you’re talking about The Park…

The launch ramp in question had been built for a snowboarding demo, to help promote the launch of The Park, a trade show showing a lot of top skate/snowboard manufacturer’s 2007/8 clothing. With a strong showing from brands as diverse as Etnies, Adidas, Hurley and Volcom to name but a few, there was a lot of top-notch clothing on display.

Pepped up on the complimentary cans of Relentless, we had a quick look around the trade stands before the demo, and even bumped into BMX veteran John Taylor, who was helping out on the Emerica stand with his girlfriend. There was a large range of clothing out there, from super high quality snowboarding jackets and safety gear, to general trainers/shoes and the usual streety skate-wear. The clothing wasn’t the only talking point though, as a lot of the companies had gone all-out creating the most eye-catching stands available. With some ranging from random props to the age-old favourite of a massive pile of stickers, stand-out had to be the “interesting” promotional poster by WESC. You know that if stylists at Hugo Boss are calling you about your adverts you’ve got to be doing something right, even if their words may not necessarily be positive.

One of the cool things about the trade show was that they’d made full use of nearby Dface, who’s StolenSpace gallery was literally down the road from the exhibition, and so there was a lot of throw-ups and general art strewn about the place, none more-so than on the grind boxes the snowboarders were putting to full use later on in the night.

Having had our fill of oggling the top-notch clothing inside, we headed out to the snowboarding demo. Fielding a range of 12 sponsored snowboarders dropping in from the 5m ramp to hit the 3 Burton “Black Metal” rails, some pretty crazy and pretty tech stuff went down. Being a full-on outsider to the world of snowboarding I’m not going to reel off a trick-list, but the riders themselves seemed pretty pleased with themselves afterwards and there was a good, progressive vibe coming from them all, so it seemed to go well. With on-the-spot cash prizes and product tosses from some of the big sponsors such as MotorolaVans, Analog and yet more courtesy cans of Relentless, there was plenty of action.

All-in-all, the event seemed to be a success. 315 people watched the demo, and even more went inside to check out what was on offer. According to The Park themselves, there was actually double the amount of people at the London Park than previous shows, so congratulation to all those involved for managing to pull off the event.

Head to The-Park.biz for more info.