Interbike 2018: My First and Last

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by Scott Bixby, PCI #1684
NY State University Police, University at Buffalo

[Ed.’s Note: This article was written prior to the announcement by Emerald Expositions that Interbike, in its current format, would be discontinued.]

If you don’t know me, trust me when I tell you that I’m a mountain bike fanatic. In mid-August, when IPMBA Industry Liaison James Englert called and asked if I wanted to attend Interbike 2018 in Reno, Nevada, on behalf of IPMBA, I struggled to contain my excitement as I nonchalantly replied, “yeah, I might be interested in attending.” I’m fairly certain James saw right through my feigned indifference!

If you aren’t familiar with Interbike, it’s probably the largest bicycle trade show in the United States. Since 1992, it has been a chance for the bicycle industry as a whole to showcase all their new products for the coming year to dealers and other industry insiders. In other words, “bicycle nirvana” for a fanatic such as myself.

If you’re paying attention to the industry, you’ve probably heard that Interbike is declining in attendance and relevance so I was really excited to be able to attend before the show went away completely. As it turns out, the end was closer than I expected. As I was writing this article, the owners of Interbike announced that the 2019 show had been cancelled. I doubt we’ll see another Interbike in the future, but I’ll talk about that later on in this report.

Interbike is too big for one person to cover, so I met up with IPMBA Board Member and Conference Coordinator Brian Gillman in Reno. We made a plan to work together to say hello to past and present IPMBA Corporate Partners and the companies that support the IPMBA Product Purchase Program. We also had some assignments from IPMBA Executive Director Maureen Becker, so it was a very busy two days for both of us!

Before I delve into the products I consider relevant to bike patrol, let me say that if you aren’t convinced that e-Bikes are literally exploding in the bicycle industry, you only needed to walk through the front door of the Reno Conference Center. There you were greeted with a sign reading “Interbike 2018 sponsored by Yamaha Power Assist Bicycles”. In fact, the more I walked around, the more convinced I became that the name of the show should have been “Inter-E-Bike”.

To be clear, I don’t hate e-Bikes. I’ve ridden several, and they are fun. And I certainly understand how useful they can be in public safety operations. The fact is, they dominated Interbike 2018. There was an outdoor test ride area, and it was hard to find a bike that didn’t have an electric motor. And one whole wing of the conference center was occupied by Asian companies with very similar sounding names displaying their latest and greatest motors, controllers and batteries.

If you need to haul kids to day care and soccer practice, there is an e-Bike for you!

If you’re into bike-packing but just can’t manage without a Yeti cooler and propane grill, there is an e-Bike for you, too!

As I mentioned, the test bikes available at the outdoor test track were predominantly e-Bikes. I probably did one hundred laps of the track on this Mondraker Crafty. There were a couple of small jumps so I lowered the dropper and hit them over and over and over! I borrowed the bike from the Bosch tent and fully expected them to come pull me off the track at some point.

Back to the task of identifying products specific to public safety operations, here’s what I found.

KHS Bicycles had a large booth set up and inside the display I found this K9 Police model.

I spoke at length about the bike with a KHS representative. I misplaced his business card, so I apologize for not recalling his name, but he was heavily involved with specifying the components. The bike is nicely equipped with 1 x 11 Shimano drivetrain, 27.5+ wheels, and a rear rack and bag. The bike is on their website here https://khsbicycles.com/bikes/2019-khs-models/k9-19/.

If you are interested in this bike, I recommend that you contact KHS for clarification on some details. Specifically, they list a 42-tooth Shimano 10-speed cassette. If you know Shimano, you know that 42-tooth is only available on their 11-speed group. That’s what I saw on the model sitting on the floor in Reno.

Their website also lists “141 Boost”. I’m thoroughly confused as Boost is normally associated with 148 mm drop-out spacing and a 12 mm thru axle. That’s definitely a quick release skewer in my photo and on their website photo. MSRP was $999 or $1099 depending on options selected.

Haro Bikes also had a large display that included the 2019 PD4.

Similar to the KHS, the Haro has 27.5” wheels but smaller 27.5 x 2.0 tires with reflective sidewalls. The Haro comes with a mix of Shimano XT and SLX drivetrain parts and a large range 11-46 cassette. That should be plenty of gear range for all but the most vertically challenging locales! MSRP is $1299 and you can find all the specifications here: https://haromtb.com/collections/police-bikes/products/pd4-2019.

That’s all the public safety-specific bikes I could find. However, I did see this custom e-Bike from the Laguna Beach Fire Department.

And I tried to convince my boss that I needed this $9999 Pivot Shuttle to patrol the more rugged areas of our campuses but he (literally) wasn’t buying!

I said hello to several IPMBA friends and supporters including Volcanic Bikes, ISM Saddles, Bar Mitts, Kenda USA, SockGuy, Cygolite, and NuGo Nutrition. But after two days of walking around, I really couldn’t find anything else that I found ground-breaking or interesting.

That’s a perfect segue into a brief discussion about the demise of Interbike. As I mentioned previously, in the first week of December, Interbike owner Emerald Expositions announced that they were cancelling the 2019 show. This article published on Pinkbike (https://www.pinkbike.com/news/rest-in-peace-the-rise-and-fall-of-interbike-expo.html) lays it all out there, but just as MTV claimed that “video killed the radio star” in the early ‘80’s, social media killed the bicycle industry trade show.

For all the reasons mentioned in the Pinkbike article, I don’t believe that we’ll see Interbike return. Technology has changed the way businesses interact with their customers and that relationship is rapidly evolving. Unfortunately, the “fly away” industry trade show is a great idea whose time has passed.

I’m thankful to James and Maureen and IPMBA for giving me the opportunity to attend Interbike.

Thanks for reading. As always, if you want to talk bikes, shoot me an email at scbixby@buffalo.edu. Here’s to lots of bike patrol in 2019!

Scott is a Lieutenant with the New York State University Police at the University of Buffalo. He has been a member of the bike patrol unit since 2005 and currently serves as its supervisor. He has also been the lead instructor for the UB Police Bike Patrol School since 2017. Scott is an expert level mountain biker and has been riding and racing mountain bikes since 1999. He also runs a bicycle wheel building and bike repair business that can be found at www.bluelinebicyclerepair.com. He can be reached at scbixby@buffalo.edu.

Photos courtesy Scott Bixby.

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