I noticed the same at Bass Pro/Cabelas. Pre-pandemic they had a better selection of camping gear than REI. Then they couldn’t keep anything in stock in 2020-2021. One year ago, I started seeing popular camping products in stock again and by spring there were sales. I bought a bunch of camping gear I had been waiting on, but now I’m done for a while. Perhaps the demand just disappeared because we’re all geared up.
I haven’t been to the Freeport store in many years, but LL Bean’s retail locations around me are basically clothing stores with the gear used as props.
Nobody want inventory. Chain stores have built financial models based on very low interest rates, even though history would suggest that the low rates (from '09 to '22 - ish) were the exceptions, not the rule. Point is, stores have to balance margin and volume. If volume drives their bottom line, then they’ll only stock what sells (and preferably doesn’t take up a lot of floor space or require especially knowledgeable customer service staff).
If you’re lucky enough to have a good paddling/outdoor store within a reasonable drive … a store where you can get products of the quality build and design we talk about on this forum … and if would like it not to go away, there’s only one solution: recognize that they must operate at a higher margin and patronize them anyway. The same applies to your local independent butcher, baker and cafe.
Stores rotate stock according to the season… well, according to next season anyway. You can buy swimsuits now but in the summer its all fall jackets, and in the fall its snow shovels and Xmas trees. I expect we’ll see biking, camping and paddling stuff back on the REI floors shortly if its not there already.
If you’re near southern Maine, Kittery Trading Post is the best place I’ve seen for most types of outdoor gear. They used to have a large selection of kayaks, though i don’t know if that’s still the case. While they do carry a lot of clothing, they have a great selection of hardware, too.
Yes, and the big box stores don’t always do a good job differentiating seasons by geography. When I lived in the Adks, the lawn mowers and vegetable seeds would show up at the local hardware stores with 3 feet of snow on the ground and plenty more to come most years. Good for a laugh, anyway.
We like Cabelas because we can park the pusher in the big lot overnight, do a little shopping, and get some good sleep.
I am surprised that people rely on REI-type stores for their bikes because the great bike shops are usually only doing bikes and are owned by cycling enthusiasts wherever we have lived.
Yes - Kittery Trading Post is good - I’ll stop sometimes on the way back from ME. I’d stop more often, but the traffic on Route 1 from the Outlets is brutal.
The really good bikes shops I know of cater to a hardcore crowd where $2500 is entry level. REI is more for casual cyclists. The bikes they sell are generally a decent value, and their cycling department has grown enough that there’s usually a knowledgeable mechanic around who can answer questions. Plus you can check store inventory online. And they don’t sell Trek or Specialized.
I first visited KTP (be sure that you pronounce it as “KIT-tree” or you will be corrected by a local) in the early 1970’s and was higly impressed then and a couple of other times since. I hope it remains the same today. Cabelas/BPS is not anywhere near in the same category.
Gong back a few decades, does anyone remember “Herter’s Famous?” From Waseca, MN? My dad would get their catalog, everything you could and could not imagine for sale relating to the outdoors and beyond. I bought tons of fishing lures from it. The Herter’s catalog was as thick as a large city telephone phone book of the day.
I think that may be truer in larger cities than smaller ones. Two good shops that I know in smaller cities are staffed by serious bike enthusiasts who know, sell, and love to talk about high-end bikes and accessories. But they also carry a line positioned above the big box junk but priced to sell a few per week rather than a few per year (e.g. Specialized, Trek, Giant). In their smaller markets, they simply couldn’t keep the doors open selling $5000 Salsa Warbirds and $50 rolls of Cinelli handlebar tape.
The urban shops I’ve been to serve a lot riders who use bicycles for transportation, so they sell and service a lot of commuter bikes, hybrids, flat bar road bikes, etc.
The shops that put me off are the ones out in the suburbs that are all in with Specialized or Trek. They will fill the majority of their showroom with bikes from that one brand, and they won’t carry anything that competes directly with the brand’s best sellers. And it’s not just the bikes, Trek and Specialized monopolize the gear and accessories sold by these shops too. Specialized would like you to leave on one of their bikes, wearing one of their helmets and their sunglasses, pedaling in their shoes, drinking from one of their water bottles, while sitting on one of their seats, with a Specialized tail pack under it, containing Specialized tubes. And it’s the same with Trek and Bontrager. I think Giant out sells both of them, but somehow Giant isn’t nearly as bad, at least in my area.
And two thumbs up for Garage Grown Gear! They have some very innovative stuff and support the little companies that are actually out in the wild using the stuff they make. All my hammock gear comes from small companies like Dutchwear and Hammock Gear.
So much of the ultra lightweight items used by thru-hikers works great for kayak camping. We don’t worry so much about the weight, but the UL gear cuts down on bulk tremendously. The dyneema dry bags, while they won’t survive long term immersion, are a fraction in bulk of the Sea to Summit Big River bags.
Sorry to hear about Sweetwater kayaks. Stopped in there a couple years ago while paddling the Ft. Meyers area and loved all the goodies. Hardly any shops left around here that aren’t 2+ hours away.
Yeah, I used to get their catalogs back when I was a teenager. I built a fishing rod using one of their blanks, tied flies with tools and supplies they sold and decades later when I was in the archery business, a customer traded in one of their compound bows, which I still have. It’s are real shame they didn’t survive.
KTP: Make sure you go into their kayak “showroom.” It really is a storage garage but that is where you will find the good kayaks. They stock mostly 14 footers and smaller with a few 16s sprinkled in. They have many Current Designs Visions, for example, but the sales guy was worried that the new CD direct sales model means that this was all they were going to have forevermore. Get 'em while they got 'em, I guess.
One problem is incomplete merchandise. If a manufacturer has 10 colors or options, REI only has 4 (even from website).
Happened to me twice in the last months that I tried out a bike helmet and shoes in the REI store. Perfect fit and I was ready to have them order those in the color I wanted. It turned out, REI doesn’t carry those colors and I ended up ordering them online elsewhere. Most online stores seemed to carry the full pallette of colors and features.
Maybe this is bad management, or REI being too small. Also items that I don’t need to try in store, I often have to order elsewhere because REI doesn’t have the size,color or item at all. And since I get the 10% off, I really would prefer REI.
If you don’t have merchandise, you can’t complain no one is buying
Sometimes retailers get a special color or two from a manufacturer so they can say “exclusive”, but I agree with your observation here. REI certainly isn’t big enough to negotiate the same discount as Walton’s Wonderland or Bezos’ Bazaar.
More likely, the decision to carry 4 colors instead of 10 is based on the cost of carrying inventory, the cost of retail employees, the cost of bricks and mortar shelf space and, yes, the cost of shoplifting. Unfortunately, when we decide to purchase online instead, it just aggravates the problem (I buy plenty of stuff online too, so no judgment inferred). Whether or not we really need 10 colors is another discussion, but definitely a first world problem.