The fall of 2022 was supposed to be a chance for bike retailers to catch their breath after two crazy years.

A month after lockdowns had them wondering about their future in the spring of 2020, they suddenly couldn’t keep up with demand. For a year and a half, staff worked overtime as Americans rolled out their dusty steads or bought new ones. A 50 percent increase in riding, plus supply chain snafus and factory lockdowns dwindled inventories. Then, just as supply and demand evened out last fall, a new challenge walked into stores dressed like a delivery person: a glut of bikes and parts arrived during the darkest days of the year.

“We’ve been waiting for this inventory for a year or more,” says Nick, the owner of two Utah bike shops, who asked that we not use his real name because he didn’t want to alienate his sales reps and dealers. “And we’re getting it all at once and at the worst possible time. No one is buying bikes or getting their bike serviced in the fall and winter.”

His shops received so much inventory that Nick ran out of space and had to rent 10 storage units.

“Worse than excess inventory is that it’s not the right mix of inventory,” he says. “We have too much of this, too little of some things, and did we even order that?”

When his main supplier launched a new gravel bike with a major marketing campaign, Nick didn’t have a single model in stock.

“We’re supposed to be a launch partner, but they had no bikes for stores at the same time they had every color and size available on their website,” he says.

But he can’t complain. “During the inventory shortage all the manufacturers gained a lot of power,” he says. “They decided who got inventory.” Now, he worries if he rocks the boat he’ll lose even more access to the bikes or get dropped as a dealer. That’s why we agreed not to use his real name.

It’s all costing Nick money—in storage fees, staff time and debt financing. And things may only get worse. All of the dozen people we talked to for this article say Nick’s situation is the norm. With bills piling up, bike retailers will start discounting what they can. Nick will have to match prices. With demand slowing—he says it’s already 10 percent lower than last year—he expects spring 2023 inventory to arrive long before he has sold most of the just-arrived 2022 models, which will lead to more storage issues, more discounts, slimmer margins. The vicious cycle could spin out of control. “It’s going to get more difficult before it gets better to the point some dealers are not going to make it,” he predicts.

But smart and creative independent bike shop owners are finding ways to work with the inventory challenges by doubling down on service, embracing the new pandemic cyclist, and finding ways to reach novel customers near and far. Despite a busting bike market, inflationary woes, and increased competition from their suppliers and the used market, these shops are optimistic about the future.

Bull whips and snake bellies

The pandemic-fueled inventory roller coaster is not news to any outdoor related retailer. Even other specialty niches like paddling shops are facing challenges with out-of-season inventory piling up, too much of this, and not enough of that. But in many ways the bike industry suffered more during the last three years than other verticals and thus its woes are more extreme, says John Williams, the former president of Live to Play Sports, the owner of Norco Bikes and the distributor of .

First, manufacturing is more concentrated. For instance, just a handful of factories in Taiwan and China produce most of the premium bike frames worldwide. The bike supply chain is also more complex. Even budget friendly bikes include dozens of parts. One unavailable component stalls delivery of the whole bike. And during the pandemic, bike riding boomed more than most outdoor activities. The U.S. Census department says participation increased by 50 percent in New York City. Nationwide bike industry sales jumped nearly 50 percent in 2020 and 2021, , according to NPD Group, a business research company.

The result is what’s known as a bull whip effect. As retailers saw demand for bikes surge, they ordered, say, 25 percent more inventory than normal. When the inventory didn’t arrive in time, they ordered the same amount from someone else and started hoarding what parts they did have. Distributors took that 50 percent order and added their own 10 percent bump. Brands did the same, asking factories to make 70 percent above what they would normally need. Two years later the whip is finally snapping. Missing parts arrived, factories caught up with back orders, cargo ships sailed, port strikes ended. Now all the inventory is arriving in warehouses and shops, at the same time that consumer demand is falling, recession and inflation talk is locking up wallets, and the used bike market, particularly online, is overflowing.

“It’s like the belly of a snake after a big meal,” Williams says. “It’s going to take time for the inventory bulge to move its way through the system.”

Some brands are helping retailers digest. , a Canadian company, has extended its payment terms to give shops more time to sell the bikes it just delivered. Some brands are allowing dealers to rewrite orders, says Williams, something they normally wouldn’t do. And SRAM, a components maker that rarely allows deviation from its minimum advertised price guidelines, gave shops permission to put 200 SKUs on sale.

“Our goal is to create demand so that our retailers, partners, and we at SRAM are in the best position regarding inventory going into next spring season,” said

To Williams, that shows retailers are in a power position. “All the product has to make its way through the supply chain and the majority of it will still sell at retail,” he says. But that doesn’t mean the next year or so won’t be tough for bike shops. Williams says it’s time to be creative, reimagine the in-store experience and offer something not available online.

It’s not all about sales

is a good example of what that could look like. There is almost no inventory at all in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania store. And that’s exactly how Isaac Denham wants it.

“I managed a traditional bike store and watched $250,000 worth of inventory collect dust,” says Denham, who opened Befitting in 2018 with store manager Victoria Edwards. “I wanted to do everything in my power to keep our inventory dollars low.”

In fact, the duo prefers to call the store a fitting studio, not a bike shop. Instead of rows of bikes and walls of helmets, there’s a fit bike, which they can adjust to mimic everything from an extra small mountain bike to an extra large triathlon bike. Before the pandemic customers would come in for a fit appointment and then Denham or Edwards would order the bike and parts. With multiple distributors within a few hours of their shop, they would have everything the next day to build the custom bike and deliver it to the client within a week.

In the summer of 2020, once they could restart fit appointments, the landscape shifted during the 2020 lockdown and bike boom. Delivery was no longer an option and they couldn’t beat direct-to-consumer online prices. Rather than fight it, they went with the flow. Now after the fit appointment, they tell the clients what to order online. When the parts arrive, Edwards and Denham build the bike.

What seemed like a loss was actually good business. For a 90-minute bike fit appointment Befitting charges $300. An average $1,000 bike might put $250 in a store’s register, but that’s before subtracting the cost of shipping, storage, credit card fees and shop time to build and sell the bike.

“A bike sale looks good on paper, but bike fit is more profitable,” says Denham.

And it creates more loyalty, adds Edwards. “My fit clients are telling me stuff about their body they have never told anyone else,” she says. “That intimacy builds trust and creates clients, not customers. The difference in relationship is big.” Edwards says he has many “clients” who drive an hour to have their bikes serviced at Befitting.

Embrace the new riders

Obviously not every bike shop can focus on a luxury service like fit. But everyone can focus on building a community and Patrick Hogan, the senior research manager for the , thinks there is an untapped market of consumers looking for a welcome sign.

In late 2020, PeopleForBikes, which represents 320 bike-related suppliers, commissioned . Of the 2,803 respondents, a quarter got back on a bike for the first time in a year or more during the pandemic. The eight percent who were brand new riders were more likely to be women and minorities.

“The lesson, I think, is there is a lot of opportunity to grow the sport with audiences not typically targeted with marketing and communications,” Hogan says.

When the study asked what it would take to keep them riding, Hogan says the top two responses were infrastructure and community. Advocating for bike lanes is a logical move for some bike shops, he thinks, but it’s a long play. Finding ways to welcome new riders into the sport is a shorter term lever that any retailer can pull.

“If you engage them in the sport, they’re probably going to purchase more product,” says Hogan.

Befitting used to have beer and pizza night every Friday. But like group riders, movie nights, event sponsorship and other classic forms of community engagement, the party nights died during the pandemic and are slow to reemerge.

There are simpler options. Right from the beginning of the pandemic, bike shop in Cleveland, Ohio, concentrated on one thing: getting people on bikes, quickly. Instead of the five week service waits at most shops, staff worked overtime to keep turn-around time to three weeks or less, says manager Antoine Powell.

“Putting your nose to the grindstone makes a good lasting impression,” he says. “I think we got a lot of new faces in here with word of mouth about our service time.”

When they noticed new riders balking at the price of a bike, particularly e-bikes, they introduced financing. Offered through a third party, the retailer eats the interest on the payment plan. But it helps close sales, ensures customers don’t buy an inferior product, which might turn them off cycling, and gets them riding right away, rather than later with a layaway plan, says Powell. Customers are pleasantly surprised by the option.

“More people riding good bikes, means more people enjoying riding, which expands the bike culture,” he says. “We’ll benefit later.”

Every shop is national

Both service and engagement rely on the inherent challenge of selling bikes online: They are too complicated for most people to build and tune out of the box. It’s why traditionally bike shops have had very local markets. But locked stores and contactless services changed the behavior of cyclists just as much as any shopper. Tapping into this shift presents opportunities for retailers, says Cameron Simpson, the head of North America for BikeExchange, an online marketplace where hundreds of bike shops sell their inventory.

“Our retail spaces are becoming antiquated. But the people that are riding bikes stay youthful,” she says. “We need to keep up with the demographic.”

Part of Simpson’s role is engaging with the individual shops that partner with BikeExchange. To manage their inventory challenges some are tapping into niche markets, like working with hotels or cruise ships to supply rental fleets for their guests. Others, like Dallas, Texas-based Playtri, are buying shops and franchising to use economies of scale, like for balancing inventory between stores. But the most productive strategy is to expand online to find new customers beyond the neighborhood, says Simpson.

About 20 percent of all retail sales happens online, according to the U.S. Census department. The number for the bike industry is much lower, says Simpson, but it’s growing. Sales on Bike Exchange’s marketplace increased by 120 percent between 2019 and 2020 and another 60 percent in 2021. 2022 was flat, but conversion rates increased, says Simpson. More telling, the number of BikeExchange retail partners has increased from 130 nationwide in 2020 to more than 200 today, as more and more shops look for ways to move overstocked inventory, Simpson says.

Even on a more local level online is powerful, says Tuvi Mrakpor, a sales associate at Sweet Pete’s Bike Shop, a business with two locations in Toronto, Ontario.

For most of 2020 customers weren’t allowed in stores in Ontario. Sweet Pete’s had to pivot to digital and virtual. Now, even though there are no restrictions, they continue to conduct significant business online, he says. It’s not just customers in Toronto either. They’re selling bikes into other markets where customers can’t find the specific model they want locally.

“The store is functionally a warehouse,” says Mrakpor.

The challenge is delivering the bikes. For out of town customers, Sweet Pete’s builds the bikes up like they would with an in person sale, carefully rebox it, and pay to ship the bike with Canada Post or a courier company. That still requires the customer to put the bike back together. Simpson says other stores bought vans and bike trailers so they could deliver ready-to-ride bikes. And BikeExchange saw this as an opportunity and started an offshoot business, Kitzuma Cycling Logistics, that specializes in delivering fully assembled bikes from shops to customers across the country.

“The industry has flat out tried to avoid online,” says Simpson. “They can no longer put off that this is where consumers want to shop.”

Bike service online?

The advice seems to pull retailers in two directions. Service and engagement is all about offering something that’s unavailable online. But it also points to a potential future where the bike shop is more of a showroom. With bikes still dominating most retailers’ sales and revenue stats, according to the National Bicycle Dealers Association, that’s a hard move to make.

John Williams has some simpler advice for retailers: Look for ways to embrace new customers and don’t panic. There will be chaos. There will be disruption. But when the snake stops looking like a beach ball there will still be bicycle retailers.

“People have been calling for the death of the independent bike dealer for 30 years,” Williams says. “But they are the fabric and soul of the industry. Brands need them. Consumers need them.”

And that won’t change until someone figures out how to tune gears or change a tire online.

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Starting in 2023, REI is set to sharply expand its employee medical coverage. The co-op announced today that, beginning January 1, every REI employee—barring those who have existing coverage through other employers—will be eligible for health care under the new which provides comprehensive insurance through Aetna.

The coverage will be available even to part-time staffers, no matter how many hours they work per week. At national companies with workforces in the thousands, that kind of offering is exceedingly rare. (REI employs about 15,000 people across the U.S.) Enrollment will be available after just three months of employment, where previously the company required staff to work at least 20 hours a week over a 12-month evaluation period to qualify for any kind of coverage.

“Basically, we just believe that everyone should have access to health care and this is something we can offer to every REI employee,” Halley Knigge, REI’s director of communications, told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű.

Knigge said that, earlier this year, feedback from an employee pay and benefits survey included a call for access to health care enrollment sooner after the date of hire, and with fewer restrictions. In July, REI CEO Eric Artz sent an internal letter to all REI employees, stating, “Your feedback on our benefits program was clear—you highly value our medical benefits but want access to them faster and with fewer restrictions. We agree.”

Knigge said that while many of REI’s employees build long-term careers at the retailer, others—including students and retirees—want to work limited hours but still need health coverage as part of their employment.

“We have a lot of employees who want to work at REI but who want to work fewer hours than the previous 20 hours needed to qualify for health care,” Knigge said. “Now, no matter how few hours people work, they have access to coverage.”

The REI Access Plan offers comprehensive medical coverage, including free preventive care with in-network providers and access to a Health Savings Account (HSA). The new plan is extended only to employees, not their dependents. Employees must work 20 hours or more per week to qualify for health care plans that extend to dependents.

Employees enrolled in the REI Access Plan can expect to pay around $700 a year in premiums, with REI paying about $6,800, according to the . The in-network individual deductible for the plan is $1,800, including prescription drug costs. Once the deductible is met, employees pay 20 percent of the cost of physician visits, emergency room visits, and other medical services, with REI covering the other 80 percent. The in-network out-of-pocket maximum is $3,600, though there is no out-of-pocket maximum for out-of-network services.

The health care offering is part of a $50 million expenditure REI has made this year to bring across-the-board pay raises and healthcare coverage to employees, Knigge said.

“Our employees are REI, so anything we can do to increase benefits and opportunities is in line with what we’re about,” Knigge added. “It’s about people, not hours.”

Enrollment for the new program begins this month.

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The Seattle-based gear retailer Evo is expanding its growing travel business with a loyalty-points program, the company announced today. Customers can now earn points through a free-to-join , and use them for purchasing gear or booking adventure trips with the retailer.

“We’ve been building an entire ecosystem designed for the adventure-minded who love to get outside,” Rebecca Heard, Evo’s chief marketing officer, told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. “We want to reward customers who shop, stay, or travel with us, and in doing so, we want to encourage more loyalty to Evo.”

Customers will be able to use membership points to book stays at Evo’s growing collection of properties, including the new in Salt Lake City, the Journeyman Lodge in Whistler, and Campus Tahoe City, a new property expected to open soon in North Lake Tahoe. Customers will also be able to use points to support Evo’s charitable arm, through which the company plans to commit a “$10 million investment in community organizations over the next ten years.”

The loyalty program rewards members through gear and travel purchases made online at evo.com and at the retailer’s seven U.S. retail locations. One dollar earns customers one point, and new members receive a 20 percent discount code for most full-priced items. Points are also awarded for birthdays and social media postings.

Evo Membership benefits will be broken out into three levels based on dollars spent–Green, Blue, and Black–with benefits increasing for each category, Evo said. The more customers spend, the more benefits they unlock, include discounts on gear services and rentals, exclusive member-only events, and with the company, which offers itineraries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Japan.

Membership points only remain active if there is activity on the member account within a calendar year

“It’s so exciting that now our customers, by doing what they love, can turn a new ski or snowboard purchase into helping fund backcountry laps in Whistler or Japan, or a new mountain bike,” said Bryce Phillips, founder and CEO of the company.

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Retailers everywhere are facing the same challenge. They receive a large number of digital assets from brands, and have difficulty keeping them organized and accessible. These assets include workbooks, product catalogs, lookbooks, MAP policies, B2B links, rep contacts, order forms, marketing assets, and more. BrandKeep solves this organizational challenge with KeepMail and Brand Cards.

KeepMail

As a retailer in BrandKeep, your shop has a KeepMail address. This is an email address that delivers files directly into BrandKeep. It’s a simple process:

1. Share your KeepMail address with anyone sending you digital assets
2. The assets they send land in BrandKeep for your entire team to access

Done. No more sifting through emails or pulling files from multiple cloud locations. The assets all live in one place and are accessible to your entire team.

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Brand Cards

In BrandKeep, each brand has its own Brand Card. This central location features contacts, links, and most importantly, all the digital assets related to that brand. Another feature of KeepMail is the ability to send assets directly to a Brand Card.

Use Brand Cards to store each brand’s workbooks, order forms, contacts, and more. Shops can create workspaces within Brand Cards to organize by season, or any way that works for the team.

If you’re headed to a trade show, you can connect your brand contact’s email addresses with their respective Brand Cards before you leave. Then, when that brand contact sends assets to your KeepMail address, those assets go directly into the right Brand Card. This gives you, your team, and anyone else authorized to see the Brand Card instant access to those assets. Now you can spend more time at trade shows building relationships and placing orders, and less time managing digital assets.

BrandKeep is Cloud Storage Plus Retail-Centric Organization

BrandKeep’s secret weapon is creating uniformity for busy retailers. We all know retailers interact with too many systems on a daily basis, and keeping track of everything can be difficult. Most retailers are using a mix of desktop folders, email, and online storage systems to keep track of assets. BrandKeep can make life a lot easier for busy retailers this trade show season.

Digital catalog in an email?ÌęOrder sheet on Dropbox?ÌęMAP policy on your desktop? B2B in your browser history? BrandKeep is the solution to them all.

Centralize your assets and information. BrandKeep is your team’s hub across all the brands in your shop.

.ÌęNo credit card required. After 30 days, pick a and carry on. Unlimited brands. Five terabytes of storage.

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If you’ve ever worked in outdoor retail, you are probably all too familiar with a particular customer. They come in, use up your time and expertise to gain product knowledge and find the proper fit, subtly (or not so subtly) take a picture of the thing they want, thank you for your time, and walk out. Your customer, whom you guided along a journey, turns around and buys online, because they found a better price, a different color, or a bigger size.

The cost of spending valuable time and energy on customers, only to have them walk away, is measurable and meaningful. “It happened the other day, a customer came in, went through and tried on all these shoes for 45 minutes, and then I saw her online shopping while I was serving her,” said Joe Ieremia, owner of Sitka Work & Rugged Gear in Sitka, Alaska. Ieremia estimates he and his sales staff lose 10 to 15 hours per week to non-paying customers, or 480 to 720 hours a year. In dollars, he estimates that time adds up to a loss of between $1,600 and $2,000 per week, or about $59,000 to $99,000 per year.

If you’re a retailer faced with similar problems, here are some tips for making money even on those customers who want your time and expertise for free, while continuing to foster community and a welcoming feeling at your shop.

Solution 1: Charge Customers for Staff Knowledge

One solution—the simplest, but also the boldest—is to stop giving out information for free.

Scott Conrad has owned a running shop called Runners Soul in Kennewick, Washington, for over a decade. “I don’t know the right strategy for how you could word it on the door, but I’d love to get the message across to customers that our time is money,” Conrad said. “I’ve thought of creating a policy that if we spend time getting you properly fitted and you don’t buy a shoe, it costs you $10.”

It’s not an unheard-of strategy. In the ski industry, boot fitting is a well-known service that customers willingly pay for. Customizing boots to fit precisely puts customers at ease about how they’ll perform, which provides some justification for charging for the information.

Matt Lyall, a ski boot fitter for Edge & Spoke in Redmond, Washington, believes that having clear answers to common customer problems is the key to charging people for staff knowledge. “People actually want a solution; they want equipment that will work,” Lyall said. “If you aren’t solving a problem for the customer, they will take the info and run, but if you are, they might be willing to pay for the information.”

It’s a risky strategy, but perhaps supported by psychology. Some research suggests that customers perceive pricier goods and services to be of higher quality. Offering your expert knowledge for a fee might be a way to signal to shoppers that, of all the buying options they have, you’re the most trustworthy.

Solution 2: Offer Rent-to-Buy Programs

MTN Gear, a shop in the university district of Seattle, has come up with its own answer to the problem of customers who aren’t ready to make a big spend on the spot, but still want to engage with staff. MTN Gear’s unique retail model encourages customers to walk out of the store without buying anything—so long as they rent it for a much lower price instead.

While many shops rent out hardgoods like skis or mountain bikes, MTN Gear takes the concept a step further by renting out expensive apparel with the option of buying it after the trial period. If a customer chooses not to buy, the item will be rented out again or sold as a used item. Even if the shop isn’t selling full priced goods on each transaction, it’s building return customers and keeping a different kind of revenue stream alive.

“Our model is based on rental in a nontraditional sense,” said Chisholm Jones, the owner of MTN Gear. “You have to be patient and do smaller transactions, but you’re creating a community-based shopping style and people will come back over and over. You get different customer behavior with this method.”

Jones sees this model resonating more as environmentally conscious shoppers are driving changes in retail. “Consumers today are very invested in being responsible,” he said. “This kind of model is attractive to them.”

Solution 3: Offer Gear Consultations

Trevor Deighton is a guide for Exum Mountain Guides in Wyoming. He offers a service for outdoor enthusiasts through his company, Outdoor Equipment Consultants, in which he carefully curates the right gear for any upcoming trip. At $125 for a one-hour consultation, he ensures his customers acquire the right gear for each activity, shares valuable information about what to expect on specific climbing routes, and offers tips on trip planning.

He recommends outdoor retailers adopt a similar type of consultation service for their shops.

“Have people bring in their gear list to check their gear and then give your opinion,” he said. This will train customers to see your shop as a place where information costs money. It will also help build community, which may discourage shoppers from using your staff as a source of free information.

“If customers see your shop as a hub of the outdoor community, with knowledgeable sales staff providing great advice, they will go out of their way to support you,” said Jerry Casson, a buyer at Ascent Outdoors in Seattle, Washington. “They’ll choose you as their primary shop.”

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—the spinoff retail brand of Dick’s Sporting Goods that focuses on outdoor recreation equipment—is opening four new stores, bringing its total to seven locations. The brand was founded just a year ago, in September 2021.

The new storefronts will open in Framingham, Massachusetts, on October 14; Melville, New York, on October 21; Kennesaw, Georgia, on October 28; and Medford, Oregon, on November 4.

The fresh locations join Public Lands’ three existing locations in Columbus, Ohio; Charlottesville, Virgina; and the original flagship store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The question on retail experts’ minds: could the upstart chain eventually edge in on the market dominance REI has enjoyed in the big-box outdoor world for many years? It’s too soon to tell, but it doesn’t hurt that Public Lands’ parent company has enjoyed a blockbuster year. Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) recently reported net sales of $3.1 billion for the second quarter of 2022, a 38-percent increase from the second quarter of 2019.

Timed with the store openings, Public Lands also announced it will double its to conservation causes—from 1 percent of sales to 2 percent—from September 18 to September 25. Those dates are meant to correspond to National Public Lands Day on September 24. In 2021, the company donated more than $500,000 to local and national conservation groups.

“When we first opened Public Lands, we set out to make a difference not just for our national public lands but also for our local communities and organizations supporting outdoor recreation for all,” said Public Lands president Todd Spaletto. “We’re thrilled to be able to double our giveback in honor of National Public Lands Day to support the work of these organizations.”

In addition to Public Lands, Dick’s Sporting Goods also owns Golf Galaxy, Field & Stream, and , a youth sports team scheduling app.

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REI and the California-based organization Outdoor Afro Inc. have collaborated on a new line of technical apparel designed to address gaps in the outdoor market and make gear more inclusive for all customers, both groups announced this week. The co-branded line has been in the works for two years.

“Nature has been, and will continue to be, a place where Black people seek connection and respite,” said , founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro Inc., a for-profit group that collaborates with companies on design, marketing, and sales efforts. The organization is distinct from the nonprofit Outdoor Afro, also founded by Mapp, which oversees a national network of volunteers in 60 cities to promote outdoor education, recreation, and conservation.

“Black people have always spent time outside across a variety of activities, but the community has always felt a gap in finding gear that fits, functions well, feels good, and represents their personal style,” Mapp said. “REI was the right partner to listen deeply and help us create a collection that would start to meet those needs.”

In an posted to its website yesterday, REI wrote that building the line meant “considering the range of Black body shapes that the clothes will fit and respecting the culture’s interpretations of nature. It [meant] exploring a broader range of fit modeling, bold, celebratory colors, and materials that work with textured hairstyles.” The initial 22-piece collection includes leggings, fleeces, shells, and boots designed with input from Mapp and others at Outdoor Afro Inc. about color, style, and function.

“This collaboration with Outdoor Afro Inc. was not optional for us,” said Maureen Estep, REI deputy vice president of strategic brand partnerships. “This was not a question of ‘Should we?’ It was ‘How soon can we?’ It was a commitment to lean into a partnership through an inclusive approach, and it changed us. We turned on a truly inclusive design process. It defined how we worked and who we brought into the work.”

The collection uses technical lightweight and stretch materials that promote breathability and are easy to care for. REI wrote on its website that “the line is a mashup of iconic ’80s and ’90s silhouettes coupled with modern details inspired by the Black community: a play on throwback jackets, a riff on parachute pants, and items printed with a Black folks would gather for rest and fellowship.”

Mapp emphasized that, though the collection was designed with the Black community in mind, “it also solves universal needs. We’re creating a better outdoor product for everyone.”

To support the collection launch, Outdoor Afro Inc. and REI are debuting a new marketing campaign, .

“What I realized is that everyone wanted access to the Black market from a diversity, equity, and inclusion point of view,” Mapp said in summing up the effort, “but no one was truly creating accessible and stylish options that actually accommodated our body shapes. This fashion line is us,” she added. “We are also nature.”

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REI’s Berkeley, California, store has officially unionized after a was certified on August 25. With the successful vote, Berkeley becomes the second REI location to unionize, after the Manhattan flagship store completed a similar effort in March with a wider 88-to-14 vote.

The Berkeley store will join Hayward-based , which represents 30,000 workers. REI’s Berkeley store has 116 employees who were eligible to vote, of which 94 returned mail-in ballots to the National Labor Relations Board for counting.

On the Berkeley REI union member’s , statements from employees were posted alongside a link encouraging other REI stores to form their own unions.

“This opportunity to have a voice in my work world gives me great hope for all my other green vests at REI and retail workers nationally,” said REI Berkeley employee Sharon Delap on the site. “Improving our daily experience and having our needs met by management with a union contract will help us better serve our REI community.”

“As we have said throughout this process, REI believes in the right of every employee to vote for or against union representation,” REI’s corporate office said in a statement. “We fully supported the vote process in Berkeley and will continue to support our employees going forward.”

Barring objections made before August 31, the vote will be certified and REI must start bargaining in good faith with its Berkeley employees, according to the NLRB.

The REI Berkeley union’s and pages were filled with congratulatory messages from both customers and employees, along with calls for other REI stores to organize.

“This is only the beginning,” said one Facebook post. “The real way forward is with a union! We cannot wait to join our siblings at @reiunionsoho. Now, who’s next?”

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—an outdoor retailer that opened in Black Mountain, North Carolina, last year—is already eyeing a second location in nearby Asheville, and has started a crowdfunding effort to make it happen.

Through the , the shop hopes to raise $500,000 toward the purchase and construction of a 10,000-square-foot space in downtown Asheville, said founder Lincoln Walters. As of August 15, just over $63,000 had been raised toward that goal.

“We have a ways to go, but we’re chipping away at it,” Walters said. “We still feel confident that we’ll get there.”

It’s not unheard of for outdoor retailers to ask their customers directly for help with business operations. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Alpenglow Sports in Tahoe City, California, started a campaign imploring fans to buy gift cards while the business was shut down. The move was successful, generating $75,000 in just four days.

That’s a far cry from the half a million dollars that WNC needs, but on the plus side for the North Carolina shop, WNC isn’t expecting such a massive sum for free. Through September 2, customers who donate will receive tiered in-shop discounts depending on how much they give—up to, at the high end, 40 percent off most store goods for life.

“The idea truly is a win-win,” Walters said. “For us, it’s securing the funds for the second space, and for members, it’s securing a discount that would benefit them well into the future.”

Walters said that, in addition to Asheville, he’d like to expand to five additional locations in the next five years and mentioned Bentonville, Arkansas, as a possible next step after Asheville. In order for that to happen, though, the shop’s team will have to prove out the crowdfunding model—far from a sure thing, with only 13 percent of the total raised for the Asheville location.

If it fails, however, there is a backup plan in place, Walters said. “We’re pursuing both a crowdfunding tract and an investor tract. If we have to, we will look at the traditional borrowing route to supplement the gap if we’re short. That would be option B.”

WNC is rare among outdoor gear shops for the heavy focus it puts on small, local brands. Area startups can sell goods at the location on consignment, sharing shelf space with national brands. “It offers these smaller companies an opportunity to be in a brick-and-mortar store without compromising their margins like a big-box store would ask of them,” Walters said. “We are very intentional in telling the stories of these brands.”

Many of the store’s small vendors are members of the , a collection of independent companies based in western North Carolina, including , , , , and .

As for public response to the crowdfunding campaign, Walters said that while the $500,000 goal is still far off, the response has been supportive.

“People have been stoked,” he said. “We realize it’s not a small ask. Even though $500 may not break the bank for some, it is a big ask for many others, even with the benefits attached. It’s been humbling to see the positive response from people near and far. Memberships have even started coming in from out of state. I truly believe our model is the beginning of something that will disrupt traditional outdoor retail.”

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When Lloyd and Mary Anderson founded REI in 1935, the last thing they had on their minds, probably, was running. The two climbers started what eventually became the co-op by selling affordable, quality ice axes, and it was there—in the hardcore climbing space—that the retailer largely remained for decades.

It wasn’t until 40 years later, in 1975, that the business even expanded beyond its home city of Seattle, which was at that time mostly a hub for the buying and selling of climbing gear. As the U.S. outdoor market began to take shape in the last few decades of the twentieth century, however, REI gravitated—at first gently, and then with increasing speed—to the middle ground of adventure retail, selling a little bit of everything to just about everyone. Bikes, skis, kayaks, general fitness, and travel gear became part of the expected offerings when shoppers walked through the co-op’s doors. And in that lucrative, widely customered territory, REI ascended.

Earlier this year, as it has done many times in the past, REI once again fixed its gaze on fresh quarry: the running space. Running goods have intermittently accounted for a meager slice of the retailer’s stock since the 1980s, but it wasn’t until April of this year, when the company announced it would expand its offerings of gear, expert resources, and community support in the vertical, that the co-op made it a focal point.

A Canny Category Play

The business motives behind the move are uncomplicated. With the bump in running participation over the last couple of pandemic years, expansion into the vertical is a savvy move, said Matt Powell, senior sports industry advisor at the market research firmÌęThe NDP Group, who expects running-shoe sales to outperform sales of all other types of athletic footwear in 2022.

REI’s own data line up with the assessment. According to Fan Zhou, REI’s newly appointed run activity director, the company’s running business has grown more than 65 percent since 2019. “There are three big reasons we see running as important,” Zhou said. “First, we see frequent engagement. The median number of days a runner participates hits between 150 and 200 per year.” Second, said Zhou, running is REI’s most popular categoryÌęamong Asian, Black, and Latino customers. This is a large and diverse group the co-op hopes to introduce to its wide offerings by using running as an onramp. Third: “We see significant overlap between runners and [participants in] other activities,” Zhou said. “We found that 50 percent of runners also cycle, and 40 percent of runners also hike or camp. When we think about servicing customers, we believe running is a great entry point.”

Despite the sales potential, REI representatives are quick to use words like “organic” when discussing the move. Chris Speyer, vice president of product at the co-op, said that any time the retailer has expanded into new categories in the past, it has always been the result of a natural evolution of the customer base. Ski equipment, for instance, started cropping up on REI shelves in 1939 mainly because many of the co-op’s original ice-climbing members also liked to ski. “By natural evolution of being on trails and in the mountains, many of our verticals extend into others,” Speyer said.

This year’s run expansion includes no small measure of that organic crossover, but the move does distinguish itself in some ways—chief among them its sense of purpose, of orchestration, the whiff of corporate savvy hanging about it. One feels, in the strategy, the desire not just to find new markets but to create them, to gently cajole almost-REI customers into shoppers walking through the door.Ìę“When we think about growing our member base, we’re looking at including a younger, more diverse urban or suburban customer,” said Speyer. “We’re reframing how we can be relevant to someone who wants to get outside.”

Changes to Expect, Large and Small

What we’ll see in-store, now that the strategy is in motion, is first and foremost an explosion of product offerings in the category. REI’s shelves, from now on, will feature no fewer than 50 different running brands. As recently as last year, the co-op’s running-shoe line mostly ended with trail models; now, members will be able to find everything they need for road running as well: On Running, Brooks, New Balance, Saucony, and many others in addition to the longstanding offerings of Salomon, Merrell, and Hoka One One.

It’s a signal of REI’s strength in the market that brands themselves are taking note of the change and responding in kind. Chris Cohen, vice president of sales at Hoka, said that given REI’s new strategy, the brand has made the decision to extend its range of products in-store to include more road models. “We consistently think about the consumer experience that any given access point provides,” Cohen said. In other words, if the “experience” at REI is widening to welcome more runners into the fold, there’s no reason Hoka’s sales strategy should involve sending customers to two different stores—REI for hiking boots, say, and a local running shop for marathon trainers—to get what they need.

Anyone who has been into an REI recently has probably noticed the apparel, too. Running-adjacent lifestyle brands seldom seen on the co-op’s shelves in years past, like Vuori, have started making appearances. REI has even added its own line of running clothes, called Swiftland, into the mix, targeted at urban and trail runners alike. “There’s a perception that REI only serves the backcountry runner,” said Speyer. “We need to change that narrative. Our customers can be urban 5K runners, too. We want to serve them as well.”

One customer who might be tough, if not impossible, to reach is the experienced road runner with a deep sense of loyalty to his or her local specialty store. “We may not be compelling to the competitive road runner,” said Speyer. “But we think we can coexist with specialty shops.”

For folks like Stephen Sweezey, manager of one such shop—Running Hub in Santa Fe, New Mexico—such coexistence might even be additive for the little guy, if not for REI, in the long run. “REI serves a pretty broad population,” said Sweezey. “If someone starts at REI and really gets into road running, hopefully they’ll eventually find us. When customers get to the point where they’e looking for more specialized equipment and advice, that where we excel as a specialty shop.”

In truth, though, the hardcore road runner notching multiple ultramarathons every year is no more the co-op’s target clientele than the hardcore mountaineer putting up first ascents or setting fastest-known-time records on punishing peaks. Where the run expansion is already resonating at REI, said Speyer—and probably right where the company wants it to—is among “social,” everyday runners. That’s where the big money is, after all. “Many of our members are already runners and couldn’t find their needs here,” Speyer said. “Now they will have the convenience of finding everything under one roof.”

Or, maybe, under no roof at all. The co-op’s full lineup of running shoes and gear is now available online. “Some 40 percent of all athletic footwear is sold online, so they’re making sure to capture this piece of the market as well,” said Powell of The NPD Group. “REI is formidable in e-commerce, so expect them to be competitive here, too.”

At the end of the day, few retailers can match REI’s heft and reach, so it’s fair to assume the ripple effects of this new category push will be significant. Smaller, more hardcore running shops might have cause to worry if there’s a co-op location nearby, but then again, those retailers tend to have dedicated, loyal followings—people who need gear more specialized and niche than what REI can feasibly offer precisely because of its size.

As for everyone else, the linkage of “running” and “REI” in the consumer awareness has yet to coalesce, and there’s no telling if, and how strongly, it will. Anyone familiar with the co-op’s near-century of constant change and constant success probably wouldn’t bet against it, but in today’s rapidly changing industry landscape, nothing’s a shoo-in—even at the retailer some call too big to fail.

Steve Larese contributed reporting.

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