Between Covid, the moving of the Casual Market from Chicago to Atlanta, freight surcharges and an upcoming election, the casual industry has not had a moment to breathe over the past five years.
However, I think that’s exactly what everyone needs to do. It’s not the same industry that it was, and we need to stop and see what it has become.
By almost all accounts, it’s much stronger than before Covid. It was already changing, but the pandemic sped that change up, and now full-line retailers and designers are a bigger part of our industry than ever before.
Speaking to people around the market, it’s clear that interior designers and full-line retailers are now the main players in the category. They not only make up a larger percentage of buyers for many, but they also have buying power that dwarfs most casual retailers.
I still believe that specialty retailers will always have an important place, and we can’t forget the industry’s history. However, when are we going to accept that our industry has expanded into more than just specialty shops?
For instance, there’s notably not an award for full-line retailers or designers at the ICFA Awards Gala. How can a buying demographic that likely makes up more than half of all outdoor sales in the U.S. not be represented at the event for the casual industry?
In addition, Thomas Hebel of Bucks Country Gardens, winner of the 2024 one-store retailer Apollo Award, started his acceptance speech with “I know a lot of you don’t know who we are.”
So how did they win? If ICFA members voted on the Apollo Award winners, what does it say that they don’t know who this retailer is?
Everyone knows who City Furniture is. Everyone knows who Baer’s Furniture is. And yet, these companies are being ignored by the association.
Why are these companies not being invited with open arms into our industry? Because change is hard? Not everyone is going to like it, but change is also necessary for growth.
If we are going to move forward as an industry, we need to embrace change. Step one in doing that is understanding what these buyer segments add to the industry and how they can help it grow. But we’ll never get there if we don’t seek them out and ask them to be involved.
Patio Prom is a term that gets thrown around when talking about the ICFA Gala, and while many use it as a playful joke, full-line retailers use it seriously. They understand the camaraderie — which is truly great for the industry. However industry associations are meant to move industries forward, not ignore important players. Having entered this industry and not been invited with open arms, full-line retailers I speak with do not feel welcome.
Forget the fact that nearly the same people get nominated for the Apollo Awards each year. Over the past few years, the ICFA has added the Unsung Hero Award, the Mary Fruehauf Retail Genius Award and the Dudley K. Flanders Leadership Award. There needs to be an award for full-line retailers and designers.
To exclude these demographics from our industry is to do our industry a disservice — especially at a time when specialty retail is shrinking and big retailers bring awareness to the category. The number of U.S. specialty stores, by my calculation, is somewhere in the range of 300-400. And those numbers aren’t growing.
Specialty stores are closing and being sold. If we do not embrace new players and the number of specialty stores continues to decline, the only people left will feel shunned from the industry and there won’t be a cohesive association for the outdoor category.
The casual industry is known as a giant family — everyone knows and loves each other, even direct competitors. Isn’t it time to spread the love?
