In just two weeks, the show season—the 2026 show season—kicks off in Grapevine, Texas, as the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers holds its annual expo.

The NASGW show is smaller compared to the NRA Show or the vastness of SHOT Show, but it’s the event that determines many of the new products for the coming year—technically making it the first show of 2026.

As a friend of mine in sales put it, ‘It’s the show that determines what’s going to be new at SHOT, depending on what the distributors pre-order.’

He described the process as, ‘Throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks with a PO.’

New products shown during the NASGW Expo may never reach the market. Many are shown, some behind closed booth doors, to gauge distributor interest. If there isn’t any interest—and interest comes in the form of a purchase order—then that ‘new’ product is dead on arrival.

If distributors like what they see and believe they can sell the product in the current retail climate, they’ll place their orders—and we’ll end up seeing these new models on display at SHOT Show.

The expo also serves to reset the 2025 sales programs, taking into account how well—or how poorly—products sold this year.”

Companies whose products fared poorly in 2025 will be looking to hold on to distributor support—either with new products they believe will sell or with re-incentivized sales programs designed to motivate staff to push harder behind 2025’s dogs.

New products are always the lifeblood during the industry’s downturns. The major manufacturers—the ones that have weathered repeated slumps—already rolled out new offerings in 2025, and you can bet they have more waiting to bring to market for 2026.

Smaller companies and importers may not be in the same position. Younger firms haven’t experienced enough highs and lows to confidently weather the downturns. And with limited ability to accelerate R&D, new products may be few and far between.

Importers face different hurdles—time-zone distances and language barriers. And those bringing in a me-too product at a lower cost may struggle to expand that model effectively.

The key to successful overseas manufacturing is often having your own person on the ground to oversee production and clearly convey what needs to change in order to create a product that appeals to the U.S. gun buyer.

Some companies have someone on the ground in ‘Somewhereistan’ to do just that. Others do not. On-the-ground communication is immediate, while overseas product management takes time and is prone to miscommunication or misinterpretation.

This year’s NASGW will shed light on how companies view the 2026 outlook. In some cases, the show may also indicate which companies barely made it out of 2025 and could be facing a possible shutdown in 2026.

— Paul Erhardt, Managing Editor of the Outdoor Wire Digital Network