IO_Summer_21

Inside Outdoor | SUMMER 2021 20 O nce upon a time not so long ago – pre-pan- demic for sure – the biggest worry a retailer had was that the store down the street might carry the same vendors. Heaven help us if they had the nerve to sell them for a few dollars less. Fast forward to 2021 and those concerns pale in comparison to what the independent retailer contends with today. What retailer on planet earth wouldn’t take the competitive challenges of yesteryear versus dealing with today’s internet-driven issues? Consider the following scenario. You are at a buying event and discover what you believe will become a “hot” line for your store. You are promised “exclusive” rights to the line in your trading area in order to give you an oppor- tunity to develop the brand. Your customers love the line, and your competitors are chomping at the bit to buy it, should the opportunity present itself. All is good until one day you discover (or worse yet, a customer does) that same hot line is available online. Needless to say, that’s a problem, since now all the customer has to do is open a search engine on any device and see the same item that you carry and more. You try to convince yourself that your customers will shop locally and support your store. That all sounds good until the price changes. Now the same item is available, in some cases, for 30 percent to 60 percent less than you are selling it for, the shipping is free, and the item arrives at the customer’s doorstep the next day. Sorry, but that customer-loyalty thing just went out the window. Okay, so you accept the fact that you now must com- pete with Amazon. But wait, there’s more … as the com- mercial goes. You now discover that your new vendor has the very styles that you carry on its own website. And they are not directing customer inquiries back to you. In most cases, they are selling direct to the retail customer (DTC) – direct to your customer. If that isn’t enough, some vendors are starting their own “rent the runway” type services. One store that I work with notified me that items she had in her store for only four By Ritchie Sayner Facing the great stampede toward DTC The Elephant in the Aisles Buyer’s Side