It was packed. It was packed with visitors. It was packed with exhibitors. It was packed with interesting special bikes, recumbents, trikes, velomobiles. It was packed with a great cycling atmosphere. The organizing guys themselves called it “The New SPEZI” in the press release, i.e. the SPEZI that was held for the second time in Lauchringen in southern Germany, instead of in Germersheim near Karlsruhe.
It was the 26th edition and I dare say that every one of the six thousand visitors who came this year enjoyed it. SPEZI was again held in an abandoned textile factory in a small town in southern Germany, near the Swiss border, called Lauchringen. The uniqueness of the whole event was, as last year, built on three basic pillars.
Firstly, there is one large hall with 5,500 square metres / 60,000 sqft in which most of the exhibitors have their stand.
Secondly, it’s two test circuits, which I’m sure you’ve already read about somewhere.
And the third pillar of the whole fair is the atmosphere. The technical atmosphere given by the exhibition area itself in an abandoned factory and complemented by the many unusual bikes that are not bound in their design by the rules of the International Cycling Federation or any other complex regulations.
So there were really a lot of interesting constructions to see. From single-track recumbent bikes, through tadpole trikes with two wheels in the front or the delta trikes with one wheel in the front. Also velomobiles either three or four wheeled, with steered front wheels or even with steered rear wheel. In addition, there were various quads, either off-road or urban. In short, anything one can imagine in the world of recumbents.
Not to mention the many cargo bikes, which is a chapter in itself, because their designs are often very unusual.
And there were also a lot of news, although at first glance they were sort of hidden and we didn’t know much about them ahead of time, but they were there anyway, we found them and you’ll see them in a future long video.
For me, as someone who has been in the recumbent world for over 20 years, it was crucial to see that this was an important trade show for exhibitors. Last year the “new SPEZI” was born and for many it was a testing year. Some didn’t come at all, some had only a small booth, some were testing the layout of their stand in relation to the one they were renting bikes from, etc. The experience of last year has given everyone the confidence that it makes sense to invest time, effort and money in this show. Therefore, we saw not only bigger stands, but also an overall greater commitment, although this actually remained somewhat hidden from the eyes of the visitors.
For example, ICE trikes did not participate in SPEZI last year and this year they had a beautiful presentation. HP Velotechnik had created a kind of a plaza in one part of the hall in the middle of which was their main presentation and then three smaller stands at the front for both bike lending and the sale of spare parts and accessories. AZUB enlarged their already huge bike lending area and even then it still happened that they had basically nothing left to lend and people had to wait for a test ride.
Compared to last year, when they had bikes on the ground and one banner on the wall, this year Steintrikes had set up a nice relatively large booth whose main feature was a huge screen on which they played their videos.
HASE arrived in Lauchringen on Wednesday already, on Thursday they were setting up their stylish stand with large seating area, on Friday they were fine tuning the details and while the others either hadn’t set up yet or were still in full swing, the HASE people went to rest and get ready for two busy days. That’s what I call commitment!
Today we bring you just a photo and video taster. A proper commented video report with all the news will come to you hopefully next week. We are already working on it!
Photo: SPEZI & Aleš Zemánek – AZUB BIKE