No more testing with your bike and partying on the shore of Lake Constance! The big European bike fair is moving to Frankfurt. That's tough at first. The cancellation of the Eurobike 2020 due to Corona certainly contributes to this, but I have never experienced that colleagues and partners in my area were so looking forward to a trade fair as they were to the last one Eurobike 2021 in Friedrichshafen. For a long time, the Eurobike was like a festival for many. In any case, the fair was in its best times, at the end of the noughties and beginning of the tens, the largest "Testival" in the world.
"Eurobike? That reminds me: Camping instead of a hotel, the small celebration by the fire, the feeling of togetherness with others who are passionate about bicycles!" (Hans Dorsch, freelance journalist)
Perhaps that is also the biggest difference to the competing event in the early days: for decades, the largest German two-wheeler trade fair, IMFA, was purely a business event. Dealers came to Cologne to check out and order the bikes for the next season.
A trade fair like this is always primarily business, but that's how it felt there. But without the traditional trade fair IFMA, the Eurobike would probably be unthinkable. For the mountain bike community that was just forming at the time, and that included many dealers and the often still small manufacturers who were just discovering biking as a new lifestyle, the IFMA was as exciting as a long evening at the stamp association. Not the right thing for the outdoor specialists, neither in terms of content nor atmosphere.
So we went on the offensive: the trade fair from below, that's how it started with the Eurobike. Friedrichshafen was a good place for the southern European countries that had already discovered cycling for themselves. Already at the first attempt in 1991, 44.000 visitors came to Lake Constance. After a few years it became clear that the trade fair was to become a real adversary for Cologne. There you had to learn: "They don't just want to play in the mud, after all", even if dealers and private visitors thought the practical possibilities of testing bikes were great. Soon they could also ride bikes other than mountain bikes there.
“The Eurobike party of 2018 is legendary! But it was also legendary that we stood with our feet in the water here on the stand in the open-air area when it had rained. Because this is exactly where a flooded gully runs..." (anonymous employee at the stand of engine manufacturer Brose)
"We met at the Eurobike party ten years ago, what kind of spontaneous memories should we have...?" (Laughing couple of visitors during the lunch break on the Friday of the fair)
"When you've worked the whole week and the whole team was just really through together... And then how the pressure dropped when everyone celebrated together at the Eurobike party - that was just incredible!" (Marcel Spork, Head of After Sales mudguard manufacturer SKS).
I was at the Eurobike for the first time in 1998, still on the old exhibition grounds. That was easy. Much looser than my first IFMA before. If at all, men in jackets and ties drove a single lap in Cologne in a lane marked out with warning cones in the dark exhibition hall. It looked very different here.
But there was concern in the industry: “Two big trade fairs are too many, too time-consuming, too expensive!” In fact, the exhibitors also decided which trade fair would last by staying away from Cologne. In the end, the IFMA had to admit defeat despite the power of Cologne as a trade fair location.
In the 2008s - the IFMA was history after 1.400 - the Eurobike had a maximum of 2.000 exhibitors and around XNUMX journalists were accredited. Pretty big - at times the largest bicycle fair in the world.
"It's a pity that the "class trip to Lake Constance" will no longer take place. We often felt like we were in a school class when we were in Friedrichshafen with the team. You get along with each other in a completely different way. If only because we used to be spread out over a few dormitories for a week.” (Paul Hollants, Managing Director of HP Velotechnik).
“What comes to your mind spontaneously when you think of the 29 editions of the Eurobike in Friedrichshafen?” we asked visitors and exhibitors. For example, I can think of an absolutely rainy Eurobike Demo Day when testing was still taking place in Argenbühl, Austria. It poured all day. Cars and tents sank into the field. But crawling through the mud with hundreds of like-minded people on studded tires has never been so much fun as it was back then. If the atmosphere is right, the experience is right.
“Actually, I've never done anything here other than test driving. As many bikes as possible. I didn't count how many. Get off the bike, up to the next one. I even forgot to eat once. You should have seen the hungry branch!” (A visitor aged about 50 on the test course)
Eurobike moves to Frankfurt
The Eurobike trade fair location in Friedrichshafen is now history. July 2022 we go to Frankfurt, if Corona wants. We'll see how that turns out and what's possible. In principle, the path already taken towards more urban and new mobility will be expanded. That certainly doesn't mean that the Eurobike will be boring there. But different.
"I'm from Munich, but I'll definitely go to the Frankfurt Eurobike if you can talk about e-bikes in a relaxed manner there." (59-year-old Petra, who covered 9000 kilometers a year by e-bike moves)
The fair will perhaps become more colorful and broader again. It remains to be seen whether it will be as attractive for mountain bike fans as it was in the early years. This stands or falls with the local possibilities. After the move, the trade fair will certainly also help to ensure that the bicycle gets the place in the public eye that it actually deserves and should have.
The Corona period in particular has shown how much mobility the bike can transport in everyday life. The bicycle as the new real means of transport will also be a very big topic in Frankfurt. And finally, bikes and e-bikes are at least as stylish today as they were at the beginning of the Eurobike.
“I believe that in Frankfurt we are an important part of the trade fair concept. The Eurobike will be even more urban there, and that's where we're completely in our line of work." (Angelina Wiedholm, Hopper Mobililty).
Whoever you ask: Almost everyone mourns the loss of the Eurobike on the Swabian Sea, so much so that you forget that you weren't always happy with the dates, infrastructure or other points. But almost everyone also says: She will continue to develop in Frankfurt and we are looking forward to it. And for many, the new location also suits them well because of the shorter journey. Frankfurt is roughly in the middle of Germany.
“I see huge potential for the trade fair in Frankfurt to return to its old strength. And I think that we feel very comfortable there.” (Andreas Geiger, Sales Manager at the cargo bike manufacturer Urban Arrow).
Klaus Wellmann, head of Messe Friedrichshafen, put it very vividly in this year's preliminary press conference: "Eurobike has grown up and is now going to Frankfurt to study." To be honest, I found the puberty stadium very exciting, but I'm also curious to see how student life at Eurobike will look like and I'm looking forward to it - despite all the sadness at the moment.