By Thomas J. Ryan
“One of the silver linings of this coronavirus is people do really want to get outside and recreate,” Vista Outdoor’s CEO Christopher Metz said at C.L. King’s 18th Annual Best Ideas Conference.
Vista’s brands include Federal Premium, CamelBak, Bushnell, Camp Chef, Primos, Blackhawk, Bell, Giro, Bushnell Golf, Primos, Eagle, RCBS, CCI, and Speer.
In the Outdoor Products segment, Metz said demand remains strong across the board.
“We’ve seen it from all the Cooking with our Camp Chef product line where people are just cooking, whether it be in their backyard or campsite or backcountry,” said Metz. “That business – no pun intended – is on fire.”
The Golf business, led by Bushnell Golf laser rangefinders, likewise is “on fire,” and it’s also helped by a break-out response to the launch of Wingman, featuring Bushnell’s integrated Bite magnetic cart mount to provide golfers the convenience of having the speaker mounted right on the cart bar.
In the Bike business, Bell and Giro helmets are seeing strong growth as “people rediscover biking again” amid the pandemic.
In the Shooting Sports segment, the core ammunition business picked up at the start of the year with firearm sales in the overall marketplace — the pickup began in the middle of 2019 with a traditional a six-month lag time before the ammunition business begins to see the full benefit. Ammunition growth significantly accelerated with the emergence of COVID-19 due to a few factors.
“One, people do want to get out and recreate and that’s also affecting, in a very positive way, our Outdoor Products business,” said Metz. “And then, frankly, there’s civil unrest in our country, as we all know, and people want to take advantage of their Second Amendment rights and make sure that they’re self-sufficient. Our ammunition business…it’s been going full speed, as much as we can produce we can sell for the last six months.”
Metz noted that the NSSF has identified 5 million new gun users with the pandemic and Metz said they include “women, people of color, minorities, and consumers stepping into it for the first time.”
Metz further believes the Hunt industry is facing “very, very, very different circumstances” versus 2016 when a strong surge in firearms sales quickly led to a lengthy downtrend.
First, he said there’s no build-up of inventory across the marketplace with product selling quickly through and signs of significant activity at shooting ranges and in hunting participation.
He also said that the industry typically sees “a bit of an election surge… as people get concerned about who’s going to be in control of our country from a political standpoint” but, he said, “there’s no evidence that’s happening coming out of the conventions”.
“We really haven’t seen that,” said Metz. “That’s what makes this surge a bit different and, in our minds, more sustainable. I don’t think anyone of us from the ammunition industry would say that the surge that we’ve seen — with being able to sell as much as we can produce — is going to go on forever. But, there is a really strong belief that with all the new users, with the participation that we’re seeing, that we’re going to see healthy demand in ammunition for a long period of time.”
Lead photo courtesy African American Golfers Digest, 2nd photo courtesy Vista Outdoor, 3rd photo courtesy Shoppe Black, 4th photo courtesy Zora
