If you were of a mind to organize a drinking session in a brewery the SIG might not be your first choice. SnowBySIG is supposed to be France’s premier ski and snowboard show - but not if you turn up at 2pm on the last day it is not. The conversation with the security guard seemed to come straight out of Monty Python’s Holy Grail (did someone mention elderberries?):
“We’re closed” he announced to the queue of visitors waiting to get in. “No you are not, the show is supposed to be open to 5pm,” I insisted. “Look no one has turned up, the organizers have decided to close the show early, everyone is going home, no one is coming in, those are my orders”. Certainly the, albeit small, crowd standing outside the locked gates were not coming in. A small boy started to cry, his dad had taken the afternoon of work to show him the products.
SnowBySIG has fallen a long way from its glory days when it was “zee rendezvous” for the European ski industry. The website claims “a marriage of efficiency and professionalism”. Maybe this is codespeak for closing 3 hours early and annoying people. You would think Grenoble, capital of the French alps would be able to at least put on a ski show rather than messing around building a multi-million Euro football stadium for a club that barely scrapes into the Danone Conference League.
The website goes on: “all the big names of ski, snowboard and backcountry accessories under a single roof”. Seriously we would have liked to show you some of them but the message to visitors is clear: visit the IPSO in Munich, at least the Germans know a thing or two about breweries.
Well I guess it was inevitable, especially given the date this year two weeks before the Munich IPSO but SnowbySig has been cancelled due to lack of interest after running for 48 year. The show had been in decline for some time and last year’s final day shambles probably didn’t help its image.
SnowBySig blame the consolidation of the Ski market over recent months.