“If there’s any pattern to all this, it’s to expect delays. Which categories, brands, or products—that’s anybody’s guess. It’s best to just assume everything will be delayed and end up pleasantly surprised if it’s not.”

That’s Eastside Sports owner Todd Vogel’s take on the state of inventory challenges at this point in the pandemic, nearly eight months in.

“If there’s a delay, you pivot. Delay, pivot,” said Vogel, whose shop is based in Bishop, California. “That strategy has kept us going. It’s all about flexibility.”

It’s no secret that sellers of outdoor goods have been scrambling this year, trying to keep pace with a retail landscape strained by supply chain disruptions, rapid shutdowns, unpredictable demand, and other hardships. Still, one way or another, many retailers are finding ways to keep their shelves stocked—to some degree—and customers happy.

To figure out what retailers are seeing on the ground level, and how they’re coping, we got in touch with several shop owners and buyers to ask about what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and how everyone is bracing for the upcoming season.

What’s Causing Problems

To start things off, we wanted to know about specific pain points. In some sense, we were looking for a pattern, but that exercise quickly proved futile. After speaking with shop owners in several different states, the moral of the story seems to be that there’s no rhyme or reason to what goods or which brands are causing inventory problems on a consistent basis. All the retailers we spoke with say they’re trying their best to prepare for anything.

“Our biggest vendor overall is Patagonia,” said Sam Barg, a buyer at Ute Mountaineer in Aspen, Colorado. “Those orders have come in anywhere from 20 to 50 percent complete. They can’t promise anything. But then other stuff trickles in that we didn’t expect. Our reps have no idea what’s happening either. Week to week, we have to reassess and chase what we can.”

Barg says Ute Mountaineer has seen cancellations from at least half a dozen vendors that are critical to the shop’s core inventory: Patagonia, Kuhl, Columbia, prAna, Hoka One One, Black Diamond, and Sorrell.

“Those are the big brands a lot of people have had trouble with,” he said.

Marinna Merkel, co-owner of Round House Ski and Sports Center in Bozeman, Montana, says she’s also had a lot of trouble with Patagonia and The North Face.

“Patagonia’s Powder Bowl Pant always does great for our store, and I can’t get them, none. That’s a staple piece for Patagonia, so it says something about where they’re at,” Merkel said. She also says the company expects not to see the bulk of its winter order from The North Face come through until late November—a huge problem for getting product out the door before ski season starts.

Across the state in Missoula, Todd Frank, owner of The Trail Head, says he’s experienced similar cuts from Patagonia.

“Patagonia is our biggest vendor. They cut about 40 percent of our pre-season order, but customer demand also dropped, so it evened out,” Frank said. “This year, we’re making a lot of concessions with product—accepting different colors than we wanted, things like that—but we’ve found that people are less picky about color and other small details these days. They’re willing to support us, even if they can’t get the exact product they want.”

Down in Flagstaff, Arizona, Steve Chatinsky says he’s had a lot of trouble with survival items his shop, Peace Surplus.

“I ran out of Reliance water containers for two weeks. We’ve had three or four shipments of those since the summer, and we usually do one per year,” Chatinsky said. “We’ve been a little slow on freeze dried food, too. We went seven or eight days without any at one time. But we’ve been chasing it between multiple vendors.”

Perhaps Vogel, at Eastside Sports, summed it up best. “It’s hard to find a pattern,” he said. “Lots of things are in short supply, but it’s hard to predict. Tents have been hard to get your hands on; backpacking stoves and Black Diamond cams have been problematic. Bikes and car racks have been tough. Even bear canisters have been strangely difficult to get. What do all those things have in common?”

Answer: nothing. Inventory is simply tough right now across the board.

Areas of Success

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, these retailers were quick to point out.

“For us, footwear has done well—though it’s hit or miss by brand,” Vogel said. “Other than Merrell, which basically ran out of shoes, we’ve done pretty well. La Sportiva and Topo Athletic are two that have been outstanding in terms of getting us product.”

Merkel says that while inventory hasn’t been easy in any category this year, there have been areas with fewer challenges. Round House has most of the downhill skis it ordered for the season, as well as a healthy selection of Nordic hardgoods. Some of that, she noted, is carryover product from last year, but that hasn’t posed a problem; there’s more of an appetite for older gear this season.

“There’s something to be says for reminding consumers that we do have carryover product from last year,” Merkel said. “Brands are cutting back expansion of their lines, so there’s probably going to be a lot more carryover for the next few years as well. It’s good to get customers used to that now.”

At The Trail Head in Missoula, Franks says he was pleasantly surprised by the performance of the vendors he uses for his watersports categories.

“All of our boat vendors did a really excellent job,” he said. “We struggled with kayaks and paddles and accessories a little, but not as much as you might have imagined.”

Softgoods vs. Hardgoods

Slicing things a different way, there’s no clear trend in supply differences between softgoods and hardgoods, according to the retailers we spoke with. Here, though, there’s at least some pattern in demand difference.

“Apparel is down by double digits this year,” Frank said of overall sales at The Trail Head. “The more casual it is, the more people don’t want it.”

Franks says that technical clothing has done well and hardgoods are flying off the shelves. He attributes the demand change to one simple factor: caution. Customers don’t want to try things on unless it’s something they absolutely need, like a raincoat, or something they feel safe trying on, like a ski boot.

“On the hardgoods side, we’re up 100 percentage points on uphill gear,” said Barg of his sales in Aspen. “Brands like Dynafit, Blizzard, and Technica are flying out the door. And surprisingly the inventory from those guys has been pretty good thus far.”

Again, though, there’s no clear pattern from a supply perspective, taking into account an experience like Merkel’s. She noted that, even though Round House has most of its pre-season ski orders filled by now, special orders are another story entirely.

“Our story with hardgoods is shipping delays,” sayidMerkel. “Companies are short-staffed, they don’t have the manpower to get special orders out, and that causes a trickle-down effect. We’ve been turning people away on the hardgoods side for special requests, just telling customers we’re sorry, but we can’t get them what they need.”

Add to that a massive fire this fall that burned down the main ski factory for Fischer, one of Merkel’s big vendors at Round House. Hardgoods have been wildly unpredictable, even with some modest success at getting orders filled, she says.

Solution: Sourcing from Multiple Vendors and Leaning on Relationships

One workaround many retailers have pursued is quick pivots to different vendors.

“We’ve been able to keep things going because we have three or four vendors for each of the items in camping, which is a big category for us,” Chatinsky said of Ute Mountaineer. “For instance, in the past we’ve ordered solar showers from Tech Sport, Coghlan’s, and Reliance. Those channels are all open, so if one of them closes, we lean more heavily on the other two.”

Chatinsky says that, in his view, that communication and multiple channels to source product are key to managing inventory chaos as the pandemic progresses.

“Of course, that’s just another way of saying it’s all about relationships,” he said. “When it comes down to crunch time, relationships will sink you or keep you afloat. When you call a vendor and get a friend on the other end of the line, that’s when things get done for you. Pay attention to who you do business with and why. It’s not all about price.”

Vogel echoed the sentiment, and says that another important factor is nimbleness.

“You have to be quick on your feet,” he said. “You have to anticipate shortages and either stock up ahead of time—like we did with fuel canisters this summer—or pivot quickly and look for smaller quantities of similar items from different vendors.”

Of course, pivoting to new vendors and maintaining relationships are two strategies that don’t always play well together. Frank, at The Trail Head, says he chose not to introduce uncertainty for his vendors out of respect for their business. They rely on him just as much as he relies on them, after all.

“We talked about pivoting to new suppliers, but we wanted to stick with the people we’ve always been working with,” Frank said. “We’ve had some new vendors reaching out. I got an email yesterday from a big brand—I won’t say who—that started as a direct-to-consumer operation and now wants to get into wholesale. We’ll probably take a hard pass on that. We want to support people who have supported us in the past. That’s just how it works.”

For Merkel, the courtesy of sticking with your old partners has another benefit—it gives you room to ask for flexibility when needed. That give-and-take might include discounts, shipping assistance, or changes to invoice dating.

“The willingness to flex is different for each company,” Merkel said. “When we go and ask our vendors to ship additional product or cover freight, we know they’re in a hard spot too. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t done it. One area we’ve succeeded in is asking our vendors to pay for expedited freight. We tell them we need such-and-such product, we can’t wait weeks, so we need you to ship it overnight and cover that cost. And most of the time they’re willing. Yes it’s a big ask, but ultimately it’s to support sell-through, which benefits them too.”

Frank says that his big ask always comes down to invoice dating. He doesn’t push his vendors too hard to ship product faster, but he does insist on keeping the timeline for payment at its agreed-upon length if an order arrives late.

“My standard approach is, if you ship something 30 days late, I’m adding 30 days to the dating for payment. I’m going to call up and ask for more time, because we had less time to sell it,” he said. “To me, that just makes sense.”

How Are Customers Handling It?

In the end, all these retailers seemed to agree that customer flexibility is a big factor—perhaps the biggest—in dealing with inventory challenges during the pandemic. If customers are willing to wait a little longer for their gear, reserve pickiness about color and other details, and occasionally shop around for carryover product from last season, much of the inventory chaos can be buffered enough to keep retailers and brands going until things even out again.

“Thankfully, there’s a push this year to shop local,” Merkel said. “People know that shipping is backed up, and they’re sympathetic. Many consumers still want to buy things locally. Even if we can’t guarantee special orders or promise to have every single new product in stock, the forgiveness of our customers can get us through. And we won’t forget that when things get back to normal.”

The post The Puzzle of Inventory During the Pandemic appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

This story originally ran in the Summer 2020 issue of The Voice.

Who, exactly, should qualify for a pro deal in the outdoor industry? A ski patroller? Full-time mountain guide? Retail employee? Most everyone can agree that these professions get a green light. But how about a seasonal whitewater guide getting a deal on skis or a yoga instructor getting a discount on a tent—greenish yellow? How about someone who takes an avalanche safety course or an amateur photographer with a nature blog—red?

What about average enthusiasts who just claim they do one of the above?

Figuring out who deserves a steep gear discount is crucial to running a successful brand pro program. Connect with the right pros, the theory goes, and a manufacturer helps these influencers do their jobs, while also familiarizing them with the gear and driving full-price sales to local retailers for a win-win. But if standards loosen so much that practically anybody can stock up on gear for 40 percent off or more, then pro deals become something else entirely.

“Pro programs are a complete farce,” said Wes Allen, owner of Sunlight Sports in Cody, Wyoming. “The idea of a program where you discount to shop employees and people who work in the industry is a solid one. But anybody who’s being honest about it knows that the programs are completely out of control. It’s a way for brands to sell direct-to-consumer at a discount without violating their MAP [minimum advertised price] policy. And let’s be real, there are brands out there encouraging this behavior because they see it as an easy, high-margin sale.”

Without any industry-wide standards or watchdogs for pro programs, it’s tough to judge how well the system is really working. So we went digging for evidence.

The Broadening Definition of “Pro”

Employees at The Trail Head, an independent outdoor retailer in Missoula, Montana, run into shoppers with pro deals “every single day,” said owner Todd Frank. Sometimes they’re just showrooming—trying on boots and apparel in the store before heading off to order their gear directly from brands or on third-party pro platforms. Sometimes they’re attempting to use a prAna influencer card (good for direct purchases from prAna only) for a discount in the store, not understanding how the program works. Sometimes they’re getting their new pro-deal skis mounted.

“Over the last bunch of years, the number of skis we sell has dropped 15 to 30 percent a year, but the number we’re mounting has gone up,” noted Frank. “People are very open about [getting a pro deal]. It’s a badge of honor in a community like Missoula. It makes you a legit outdoor guy.”

“Legit” is exactly the point of contention. Who’s legit? Brands and retailers alike agree that true industry professionals deserve a gear hookup, noting that gigs like ski patrolling, guiding, and wildland firefighting often pay so poorly that these pros would struggle to buy needed equipment. Without pro deals, “there’s no way you could afford this stuff,” said Steve Kunnen, an avalanche forecaster, educator, and guide for Washington’s Mission Ridge Ski & Board Resort, the Northwest Mountain School, and the Northwest Avalanche Center. He considers his pro deals an essential part of his job: This past winter season alone he bought two pairs of Atomic skis and goggles, a Patagonia ski pack, and Arc’teryx shell pants, all at 40 percent off or more. “People don’t realize you hammer your gear” with daily, hard use, Kunnen said. “There’d be a lot more patches and duct tape without pro deals.”

And in the right hands, pros do serve as valuable influencers. “If a retail consumer sees a pro using a product, that’s a pretty big stamp of approval,” noted Derek Young, who manages the pro program for Sawyer Paddles and Oars.

Getting gear into the hands of specialty retailer employees can also pay off for outdoor stores: Not only is it a valuable perk for recruiting workers, but an enthusiastic recommendation from a shop clerk can drive sales. “All you have to do is walk into [a store] and meet an employee who’s like, ‘I was using this last weekend’—that’s hugely positive,” noted Gabe Maier, vice president of Grassroots Outdoor Alliance.

What some retailers do object to, however, is the extension of pro deals to the far margins of the outdoors, such part-time yoga teachers, students enrolled in AIARE avalanche courses, or “literally people who work in the parks department—not Yellowstone park, but tennis courts,” said Sunlight Sports’s Allen. Another gripe: Often, pro members are eligible for discounts well beyond their job categories, as in a backpacking guide also qualifying for ski boots. And some report concerns about straight-up fraud, with faux pros falsely claiming they deserve a deal. Young of Sawyer Paddles and Oars says applicants have sent him snapshots of themselves in a whitewater raft as proof that they’re professional guides.

Nobody in the industry tracks overall pro purchases, says Grassroots Public Relations and Policy Advisor Drew Simmons, but the organization has heard plenty of anecdotes from its member shops. “It’s an income stream [for brands] that’s based on promotional, off-price behavior,” Simmons said. “It seems to be broadening and growing at a significant pace.” (Several retailers say pro programs really started going off the rails about ten years ago.) Simmons added, “Retailers are understandably concerned that it has become such a significant part of many brands’ businesses that they will have a really hard time reining it in.”

And stores argue there’s much at stake when pro programs get bloated well beyond their original intention. “Everybody and their dog 85 has a pro form in a mountain town like ours, when they absolutely should not,” said Brendan Madigan, owner of Tahoe City, California’s Alpenglow Sports. “You’re effectively retraining the public to shop online always and first, and to look for discounts online, which makes them think brick-and-mortar stores are always more expensive. Brands are effectively undercutting retailers.”

“If a product that we sell is readily available from the vendor for 40 to 50 percent less, it makes us look really bad,” added The Trail Head’s Frank. “And it harms the vendors just as much, because they’re going to end up with nothing but a discounted sales channel.”

The Middlemen

You can’t talk pro deals—and their potential for abuse—without taking a hard look at third-party pro platforms like ExpertVoice, Outdoorly, Liberty Mountain, and Outdoor Prolink. These businesses partner with brands to manage their pro programs, in many cases vetting applicants, facilitating orders, and providing other services in exchange for a fee and/or a cut of each sale. (Another site, IPA Collective, approves applicants and then connects them directly to brand pro programs.)

Such programs maintain that they help vendors find and vet influencers, and also instruct their pros to send anyone who admires their gear to buy it at a local retailer. “The clear reason to have a pro program is to drive more full-price consumer sales,” said ExpertVoice CEO Tom Stockham. “It’s [about] finding the people who have the most credible influence with consumers, and making them better ambassadors for your brand.”

Reps for all platforms we questioned for this article (ExpertVoice, IPA Collective, and Outdoor Prolink) stressed they use strict protocols to evaluate applicants. “If you’re not careful with your pro program, you start to undermine your price point and extend discounts too broadly,” said Stockham, who adds that ExpertVoice uses anti-fraud software and cross checks with professional organizations’ databases to limit its members to true pros. A spokesperson for Outdoor Prolink noted that the company has five staffers who review the thousand-plus applications it receives weekly (90 percent are accepted, which the company chalks up to clear criteria on its website that weed out unqualified would-be applicants) and requires members to re-certify annually: “This ensures that 100 percent of our base [is made up of] vetted professionals.”

Retailers aren’t buying it. “The third-party sites are like drug dealers,” said Allen of Sunlight Sports. “They’re coming in with this story about how ‘we’re going to get influencers to push people to your retailers.’ That’s such a bunch of crap.” He argues that third-party shoppers don’t have any real connection to their local outdoor stores.

Frank adds that the sites’ business model encourages them to view applicants with a generous eye. “[Third-party sites] are making commission sales,” he said. “So they’re going to drive as much volume as possible, because that’s the only way it works.”

What’s more, some retailers say their vendors are on board with such everybody-in policies. According to a member of the sales team who worked closely with Black Diamond’s pro program, left the company within the past year, and asked to remain anonymous, “Using ExpertVoice captures a broader audience and requires less in-house maintenance. Yes, ExpertVoice is too lax with who they approve for pro deals, which Black Diamond is acutely aware of. However, it is also a huge revenue driver for the brand.”

In response, the brand shared a statement acknowledging that the pro program isn’t perfect, but Black Diamond continues to improve its system. It also notes that the brand is a key player in an industry working group on pro sales, which meets to share notes on best practices, including dealing with abuses.

So what’s the truth behind becoming a pro? We went undercover to find out. In our investigation (see p. 87), the third-party platforms we applied to accepted our fake profiles more often than not. “If you’re willing to lie about who you are, it can be hard to catch someone like that,” noted ExpertVoice’s Stockham. “But it will happen, and you’ll be kicked off the platform forever. We will always want to work with retailers and others to figure out how to make the system work better.”

Some brands say they recognize the loopholes as well. “We are aware of some issues regarding pro/industry purchase sign-up validation and are taking aggressive steps to correct any problems around our internal approval process as well as those of our chosen partners to 
 tighten controls in a way that ensures a healthy program,” said Andy Burke, head of commercial sales at Outdoor Research.

Bro Deals—and Consequences

In some pro programs, membership comes with an extra perk: periodic discount codes meant to be shared with friends and family, aka the “bro deal.” Recent promotions from Patagonia and prAna have offered each of their pros three codes at 40 percent off to share—much to the chagrin of the retailer community (Patagonia’s codes were each good for up to $2,500 worth of gear).

“The question is, is a friends-and-family program really an extension of the pro purchase influencer program?” asked Grassroots’s Simmons. “Expanding accessibility to everyone you know—is that supporting the original idea [of a pro program], or is it a whole different area of revenue generation? Friends-and-family promotions seem like the number-one thing to train people to [wait for] a good deal every year.”

Besides, members of a pro’s social circle could otherwise be full-price customers—so why offer them deep discounts? According to prAna’s vice president of marketing, Jeff Haack, “We want to give [our influencers] an opportunity to share their love of the brand and products.” (No other brands we approached agreed to comment.)

But retailers suspect otherwise. Allen guesses these promos are a way to unload excess inventory, and Frank said, “Friends-and-family discounts are prolific because most of the companies are just using them to drive volume. We have a lot of publicly traded companies in the outdoor industry now, and they’re beholden to the board and the shareholders”—which means they’re under pressure to maximize profits every quarter by whatever means necessary.

Ultimately, such complaints about excessive pro deal activity can translate to concrete consequences for brands. Frank dropped Scarpa from The Trail Head last winter: “There are people who should not be getting deals from Scarpa who are getting deals every day. Consequently, I just can’t sell it.” (Scarpa did not reply to our requests for comment.) Allen has similarly scaled back business from several brands so far, and is “having super-hard conversations with” a few others (he declined to name which ones).

And Maier of Grassroots predicts that overly generous pro programs will backfire industrywide. “It seems like the programs were created to enhance brand loyalty,” he said. “But where the programs are now, all the anecdotal information points to creating price loyalty. Instead of building up brand equity, it’s having the opposite effect.”

Reining It In

Nobody tracks the precise number of pro program members across the industry— or what percent of total purchases they account for—but our investigation shows how easy it is for someone without real credentials to get access to a killer deal. So how can the industry dial back the free-for-all and restore pro programs to their original purpose?

The first, and likely most effective, step: tightening up the vetting process. “It would be a huge positive step to get some validation at all levels,” said Maier. “If these programs are truly intended to be there for influencers or people who are connected at retail, then what’s the harm in doing a little more work in verifying who’s accepted?” Despite assurances from program managers that all applicants must pass strict scrutiny, our undercover investigation proves otherwise: In some cases, fake pros were granted almost instant access using fake credentials.

Instead, managers could require additional documentation if something in an application looks fishy—such as professional certifications or, for retail employees, the store’s invoice number—or even call someone’s claimed employer to double-check. Another safeguard for retail employees: Mandate that all purchases be shipped to the store, as Patagonia does. The best-run pro programs also require members to recertify every year, Maier says, so former pros can’t hang on to their discounts.

And, “if there’s not a direct connection to the local retailer, it doesn’t work,” said Frank. Many programs do include a note in their acceptance email about sending anyone who admires the gear to their local outdoor shop to make purchases, but there’s currently no guarantee that members even know which shops carry the products. Young of Sawyer Paddles and Oars says he asks his qualifying pros to send curious clients to specific local shops: “I’m trying to build that bridge between the pros and the retailers. Retailers have to trust that manufacturers aren’t abusing that discounted sales channel.” He even suggests taking the connection a step further: “Maybe it’s time for retailers to vet who’s qualified for programs.”

Wrestling these pro programs back down to size, of course, depends on vendors and third parties actually wanting to limit pro deal purchases—not intentionally treating them as a lucrative discount DTC channel, as some retailers contend they do. The current state of pro programs “isn’t a misunderstanding,” said Allen. “It’s not people making a mistake in executing pro deal programs. This is a calculated business practice that people are being dishonest about.”

Patagonia is one brand heeding its dealers’ calls for overall reform by embarking on a revamp of its own program. Among other steps, the company is reviewing pro categories and individual members and scrubbing those not deemed to match a stricter set of criteria, plus ending its twice-yearly friends-and-family promotions.

“We know we can have a deeper connection with fewer pros 
 that supports our business in a better way,” noted Patagonia’s Bruce Old, VP of global business, and John Collins, leader of global sales teams, in a statement to The Voice. “We also realize there are too many access points for discounted products in the market.” The fact that the brand is investing in more environmentally and socially responsible—and expensive—production practices, they add, helps make its full-price business even more important.

These kinds of brand-led reforms—essentially, hiring tougher bouncers for the pro deal club—are likely key to reducing abuses and maintaining a more exclusive definition of “pro.” After all, when everybody’s a pro, then really, nobody is. And that renders a pro program essentially meaningless.

Getting In: An Undercover Investigation

Just how tough—or easy—is it to get into a pro program? We went undercover to find out.

Most brands and third-party platforms say their pro programs are for true outdoor industry professionals only, and that applicants are carefully vetted to ensure only the deserving get in. Not everyone believes it.

Industry insiders report concerns about several types of objectionable “pros.” There are the applicants with questionable outdoor credentials— part-time guides, one-time NOLS students, etc. There are straight-up liars posing as legit pros. And some retailers even charge that platforms will accept absurd applications that are obviously frauds (The Trail Head’s Todd Frank successfully applied to ExpertVoice as President James Madison).

We tested the system ourselves with three fake personas, complete with bogus credentials, designed to probe brands’ defenses against those concerns. “April O’Hara” posed as a retail employee using a free, fake pay stub created online. Yoga instructor “Rashida Samat” submitted a screen shot of a real teacher’s online profile that didn’t include a name. And for our most ridiculous attempt, “Minnie Mouse” applied with a photo of a coffee shop punch card. We tried 11 pro programs (five third-party pro platforms and six brands directly). When admitted, we placed an order and, in all cases, received the gear (items will be donated).

In some cases, our applicants received a green light within a few minutes, suggesting no vetting process or a very limited automated one. In others, someone reviewed the application, but didn’t probe deeply into our supporting documents. Andy Marker, founder and principal of IPA Collective, who approved our application for “Rashida Samat,” noted, “I saw the [online studio] profile, and on that day, it was good enough for me.”

Ten of the 11 targets rejected Minnie Mouse (Liberty Mountain accepted her without question). But the results were mixed for April and Rashida.

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This summer’s announcement that Ibex would abandon the wholesale channel and would transition to a direct to consumer only model, caused a few of us in specialty retail to take pause. Is this the new reality we are going to be faced with every season?

Or, is there a lesson to be learned in what Ibex did? It’s my view that Ibex ended up where they are, which is with a foot in the grave and nails in the coffin, because of their own actions which failed to create “retail priced” value in the products that they produced.

Our Ibex sales rep, an excellent rep and veteran of the industry, indicated that retailers simply did not support the brand well enough to justify continuing the wholesale channel. If we had all just bought more this would not have happened, he said.

On its face, he is right: that is exactly what happened. But it’s more complicated than that.

The real question is why did retailers fail to support Ibex in the way they expected? At The Trail Head, we were a limited—but loyal—supporter of the brand for over 20 years. In the past 18 to 24 months we have had 41 styles of Ibex’s line and around 175 SKUs with sales history. Our Ibex offerings were balanced with other apparel brands who came in with different price points and technologies. We have a responsibility to offer our customers choices. In the end, Ibex had good product but bad policies, and I think the rest of the outdoor industry can learn a lesson.

Several years ago I mentioned Ibex by name in an interview I did with OBJ about some of the challenges retailers were facing. I specifically called out Ibex as having the single most aggressive customer acquisition effort of any company I currently did business with.

Let me paint the picture: we retailers did the job of introducing consumers to the brand, which faces fierce competition from the likes of Smartwool, Icebreaker, Patagonia, Arc’teryx, and a handful of others just for shelf space in stores. We introduced customers to the quality and fit and features of Ibex apparel, and showed them products that were unique and had great value even though the prices were on the higher end of our spectrum. In short, we built Ibex brand advocates out of our regular customers.

As our customers became excited about the brand, they would reach out and touch the Ibex online platform to learn more about the company that made the wonderful piece they bought at their local retailer. Most of us who carry Ibex apparel are small retailers with a limited selection of SKUs. It’s natural that customers would want to see what else Ibex made.

This is where Ibex crossed the line, and forgot about its retail partners. For the past six to eight years, we have watched them use everything in their toolbox to convert our customers to their customers. They offered free shipping, first buy discount coupons, gifts with purchase, and straight up discounting. They blasted out email offers more frequently than brands 100 times their size. If you ever mentioned Ibex in a Gmail, for the next month an Ibex ad would populate the ads on any online search you did.

Ibex was relentless in their efforts to lure away our customers.

And now they are paying for it.

You see, as a retailer, we make decisions about who to support based on product and company performance. If the product is great and the company is great, we buy more from them. If the product is great but the company proves to be a less-than-ideal partner, we mitigate our risk through buying less.

Of course, we all understood that Ibex could not survive without a DTC channel. Few brands can these days. The margins are too enticing and many markets have lost specialty outdoor distribution through stores closing. But I believe they would have received broader and deeper retailer support if they had taken a different path. It is really not that hard to understand.

The notion that my vendors are spending magnitudes more money on acquiring a DTC consumer while still doing a huge percentage of their business wholesale is simply a recipe for “getting Ibex-ed.” I would encourage retailers to remind—to demand, really—that vendors shape marketing budgets that match what the sales look like. If a brand is doing 70 percent of its sales through retailers, does 70 percent of its marketing budget drive consumers to that channel?

The general answer is quite simply: no. Brands struggling at retail are spending way more on the DTC channel, which has a growth rate. They spend little to none on the channel that built the business for them, then bitterly complain that retailers are just not supporting them anymore.

Why the blatant double standard?

Will getting “Ibex’d” become a verb in the language of retailers, synonymous for getting screwed by the brands you helped to build?

I am canceling my fall orders with Ibex. They are just another competitor now. Ibex is of course not pleased with me. They feel that I am leaving them holding the bag of inventory I committed to. I intend to pay my rep the commission he earned, but it is Ibex that owes him the money, not me.

In the end, Ibex left retailers after we worked hard to help them build a brand. I know that is not how they see it, but that is the reality. I look forward to spending my resources on brands that support what we do. I may go down, but I will at least go down swinging.

I am not totally bailing on Ibex until the bitter end. I am leaving the orders in place right up to the cancellation deadline, just in case a core customer that I developed walks through my door and asks to buy that one last piece from me before he too, gets Ibex’d out of supporting his local retailer.

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We, the independent specialty retail shops, did all the legwork to create these customers. Without us, these companies wouldn’t be here. I’m not sure there are many vendors that could survive without us, so I’m trying to help vendors balance capitalizing on the opportunities that direct-to-consumer sales have without undermining our ability to build that relationship with the consumer and profit on our inventory.

What outdoor specialty does the best is introduce people to products. You have consumers who don’t know anything about a new category, if they’ve invented a new kind of shoe or a new old fabric in the case of wool from Icebreaker. It took a tremendous amount of work on the part of a big retail network in America to put Icebreaker products into people’s hands and help people see the value in it. Growing a brand from its infancy to the point where it has relatively broad market awareness is something that retail stores are still going to do better than selling direct to consumers online.

We sell consumers on the brand, but we have a very limited assortment of it because it’s hard for small retailers to pioneer a brand and you can’t buy all of the available products and colors. So you introduce people to this new brand and eventually they go, “I wonder what else there is?” And that consumer ends up going to their website to look at the product breadth that we don’t have.

Immediately after consumers engage with their website, vendors hammer that consumer with email blasts and specials like free shipping and throwing in a pair of gloves or a free hat. They really work to steal that customer away from us.

Ibex is another serious offender. We essentially create the brand disciple and they steal them. I don’t think a company like Ibex could survive without direct-to-consumer business, but I also don’t think they ever would have been able to get off the ground by only doing direct-to-consumer business. We’re not going to win every battle, but if Ibex continues to do business that way, it’s going to be harder and harder for retailers to support them.

I recently threatened to drop Scarpa, one of the most important brands in backcountry skiing. By far, Scarpa has been the best telemark and alpine touring boot manufacturer to work with in my career, so why would I sever the relationship? Vendor partners are now our fiercest competitors. This year, it started with a free hoody if you bought boots from them, some free freight promos and then the now-common “friends and family pro sale.” In the days leading to Christmas, a group of vendors opened up the pro sales departments and wholesale pricing to all friends and family of legit pros. Scarpa, along with 33 other vendors, including Osprey, Cascade Designs, Rab, La Sportiva, Petzl, MSR, BCA, Mountain Hardwear, and Sierra Designs participated in this sales extravaganza run by Outdoor Prolink.

Outdoor Prolink’s homepage. (Screenshot: Todd Frank)

When I asked Scarpa to give me a reason why they did it, the simple answer was “money.” They primarily sell a product that needs to be custom fit by a professional with the tools to do it. We have done thousands of boot fittings here over the last 18 years, and we are pretty good at it. Why would I want to do business with a brand that actively sells a product that needs my expertise to fit properly when that business aggressively under cuts what I can sell it for? Five years ago, I would have howled and said because they have the best boots. Now, there are seven or eight other vendors that have absolutely amazing product, too. (Editor’s note: To Scarpa’s credit, since receiving similar feedback from several retailers they have committed to no longer doing friends and family promotions.)

If we all have to pay the price of a problem equally, it will stop vendors from pushing direct-to-consumer sales and taking business away from us. They’re always going to have a better assortment than we do, and they can’t really fix that piece of it. But what they can do is work with us to make sure we can sell the product we stock profitably throughout the whole season. So I’m asking the vendors to come to us with creative ideas.

I just had an experience with a major vendor in the apparel industry who went off price on their web direct-to-consumer business in clear violation of their own policy that said “We’ll hold price until this point in time.” For reasons that are all legitimate, they couldn’t wait. I went to the vendor and I said, “I think you owe me some markdown credits. You didn’t go by the policy you’re asking me to go by.” They were pretty happy to do it. That needs to happen on more levels.

Until a vendor is affected by the final transaction with the end consumer buying their product, they’re not going to change the way they do it. So I’m looking for more partnerships with vendors who are willing to do things like manage excess inventory, share costs, take product back, trade product out, use markdown credits, or simply guarantee a sustained margin. The only way we’re going to change vendors’ behavior is with our checkbooks, so I can’t keep saying to people, “You have to change the way you’re doing business,” and continue to buy 10 percent more than I did last year. At some point I just have to get up from the table and say, “We’re done.” They’ve got to feel the pain a little bit, and until they feel the pain, there’s no motivation for any change in behavior.

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