In a LinkedIn post, Gabe Maier, president of Grassroots Outdoor Alliance, provided financial figures from his organization’s retail members for 2025 and the first five months of 2026 as well as store closure trends that show the outdoor independent specialty channel has recovered smartly from the inventory corrections of 2023 and 2024 and even appears to be outperforming big box chains.
Maier’s post, entitled “The State of Independent Specialty Retail: Mid-2026 Update,” was inspired by a recent article on LinkedIn that stated: “Industry estimates suggest that the number of independent outdoor specialty retailers has declined by 15 to 20 percent since 2019.” When he reached out, the author removed the data reference that had been found to be unsubstantiated.
However, he also noted that Grassroots, which represents over 100 independently owned retail businesses operating over 225 locations, “sits on more measured information about independent outdoor specialty retail than anywhere else” and felt an update could “help reduce ambiguous projections that misrepresent reality.”
“The short story if you’re pressed for time,” wrote Maier. “The independent specialty we can measure is the healthiest it has been since the pandemic surge, with comp growth running ahead of 2025’s pace through the first five months of 2026.”
2025 Update
For 2025, aggregated comp sales across Grassroots’ 102 independent specialty retailers were up 2.9 percent year over year, with Q4 accelerating to 5.5 percent, the strongest non-pandemic fourth quarter in the organization’s history of tracking. Sales were down in both 2023 and 2024 as the pandemic-era boom in demand for high-end gear leveled off, while inflationary pressures weighed on discretionary purchases.
Other encouraging indicators included gross margins improving 76 basis points for Grassroots’ retailers in 2025, with many stores returning to pre-pandemic levels.
The data also showed that inventories are rebalanced, with the majority of retailers indicating inventories were well-positioned by Spring 2024 while the number of Grassroots’ vendor partners indicating the same by Spring 2025. Maier wrote, “Clean inventory typically foreshadows less clearance, stronger full-price selling, and margin improvement, which is what showed up in the sales figures above.”
2026 Through May
Year-to-date through May, comp sales growth has accelerated to 4.9 percent across 102 stores, with the median store up about 2 percent, and the distribution has strengthened: 47 percent of stores are growing, 23 percent are flat, and only 30 percent are declining. Comps have grown every month, with sales trends in June for reporting stores performing similarly.
The improvement comes despite tariff-driven price increases in Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 that threatened to lead to a consumer pullback. The gains also don’t appear to be driven by inflation, which is boosting gains across the broader retail sector.
Maier noted that a subset of 28 retailers connected to Grassroots’ point-of-sale data program, with UPC-level sales history from 2023 forward, shows that for the first quarter of 2026, transactions were up 3.0 percent, units grew 4.5 percent, revenue grew 5.9 percent, and average ticket was up about 1 percent. Maier writes, “After two years of declining transactions and units in that same group of stores, people are buying more things at these stores, not just paying more for them.”
By comparison, Circana’s OIA’s Q1 2026 analysis of the Athletic Specialty and Sporting Goods (ASSG) channel (covering larger chains such as Dick’s SG, REI and Big 5) showed dollars down 0.7 percent, units down 7.3 percent, and average retail price up 6.7 percent. Maier said, “In big box outdoor retail, rising prices appear to be covering declining demand. In the independent stores, we can measure at the unit level, volume is growing and price is playing a smaller role.”
Outdoor Specialty Closures Overestimated
Maier’s post questioned whether media coverage of prominent outdoor shop closures over the years has made the health of outdoor specialty retail appear worse than it is and overstated closure rates in the space. He noted that the articles often portray these closures as “evidence of a dying specialty channel.”
Over the past 10 years, across its membership of more than 100 retailers, 32 stores have reached a “transition point,” meaning they need to explore a sale or closure. Of those, 22, or about two-thirds, found new ownership, largely to employees, customers, or other family members. Maier observed, “The dominant succession path in specialty we’ve observed has not been private equity or consolidation; it has been mostly people who already love the store.”
Of the ten that closed, only “three closures were ‘normal’, where businesses faced unsustainable market dynamics,” said Maier. The rest were special conditions, such as an over-extension that came up short, a sudden death, or an advantageous property sale.
JAX Ames Outdoor Gear in Ames, IA, closed last August, but the founders of Next Adventure in Portland, OR, recently announced plans to delay retirement and continue operating the business, while Rutabaga Paddlesports in Fitchburg, WI, remains in discussions with potential buyers. Maier said the avoided closures “support what independent retail tends to do best — rally local communities behind a cause” while the “story of three closures traveled a lot farther and faster than the corrections did.”
Meanwhile, data on store openings in the outdoor space is less well known, including Grassroots’ own data, because retailers can’t apply for Grassroots membership until they have been in business for two years. However, Maier believes outdoor communities are often underestimated in the lengths they’ll go to to keep their local gear shops open.
He pointed to efforts to keep Minneapolis’ Midwest Mountaineering open before its closure in Fall 2023. Maier said, “What was much less covered were the attempts to purchase Midwest before it closed. Independent store owners are just that, and their decision-making, which tends to buck typical corporate decision trees, extends into selling or closing as well.”
He also noted that after the closure, a former store manager opened a shop, Lake State Mountaineering, in the area to fill a gap for local outdoor enthusiasts in Minneapolis, and he believes that’s happening in other parts of the country as well. Maier said, “The people who come up through these stores are often the ones who carry the channel forward, and we are seeing a healthy volume of them in recent years. Six current Grassroots members have founded their businesses since 2016. New stores are opening in this channel; they just don’t make the news the way closures do.”
Overcoming Challenges
Maier’s didn’t discount the challenges faced by independents, including unfavorable weather that dragged down sales last year for dealers in the West, Midwest and Rockies.
The post further noted that stores are facing cost pressures with labor, rent, shipping, and insurance costs all rising annually, most in the 3 to 6 percent range, as well as some recent pushback from consumers due to inflation. In Fall 2025, 78 percent of Grassroot’s retailers reported shifts in consumer behavior tied to pricing changes. Selling on third-party marketplaces has also been challenging for many independents.
Maier told SGB Executive, “Selling third party on Amazon is a dynamic business that can shift overnight via Amazon policy or vendor authorization. That makes it a difficult business to sustain long term for any retailer, including independent outdoor stores, because you have to constantly balance thin profit margins and carefully manage your expense infrastructure.”
However, he still asserts that the vast majority of outdoor specialty dealers are finding ways to persevere.
He concluded his LinkedIn post, “Don’t get me wrong, the challenges facing specialty retailers are many, and positive momentum is far from universal. Perhaps another part of the point here is that this has always been the case, and independent specialty retailers today are holding their own as they have for decades. Just like many outdoor pursuits categorized as ‘type 2’ fun, overcoming challenges is part of what makes the wins for an independent business owner so sweet…Viva La Specialty.”
Maier told SGB Executive that his organization is exploring ways to make Grassroots data more publicly available to bring some more regular insights into the outdoor sector’s performance. He said, “We’re hoping to issue figures like this more often, perhaps quarterly or biannually between the shows.”
He also told SGB Executive he doesn’t believe the outdoor specialty industry has an “image problem” due to negative dialogue about the store closings of longstanding shops, but he believes the capacity of newcomers to build credible outdoor shops is often underestimated.
Maier said, “Many people who work in the outdoor industry got their start in an outdoor specialty store. When an iconic store closes or struggles, it is a big deal and people notice it because they care. Those get airtime, and when we know the owners more personally, I think we can struggle to build a narrative around how a new owner might build the same type of business. We are seeing that new life shows up, and it takes time for businesses to be built that are that iconic.”
Maier’s full LinkedIn post can be found here.
Lead image courtesy Grassroots Outdoor Alliance; others courtesy Trail Creek Outfitters
