As the CEO of 30-plus-store retail operation Watson’s and founder of outdoor manufacturer Plank & Hide, Erik Mueller knows the pressure each side feels in an uncertain economy.
There are not many people in the casual industry who can see the industry from a manufacturer’s standpoint while also running retail stores along the Eastern half of the U.S. Because of his unique perspective, we checked in with Mueller to get his view on the industry and how he thinks it will fare for the remainder of the year.
What are you seeing when it comes to the state of the industry?
“We had five consecutive coldest days in May, and April wasn’t any better. Weather plays a large part in getting the season going early. We’ve had more rain than we’ve had in many years, specifically in most of the Midwest. And then you lay on the tariffs and a possible recession, and you end up with a consumer that isn’t really excited about getting out there and spending money. But I would say that the net result is better than it could be. It’s not what we want or what we expected, but if we’re to go back to January and February, it could surely be worse.
In 2022, Watson’s acquired Allstate Home Leisure, adding five Detroit-area stores to the mix. Then in 2024, Watsons bought Florida-based Recreational Warehouse. How did the expansion affect your view of the industry?
We’re mostly in the Midwest, but now we’re in Florida and have a few stores on the upper East Coast, so we get a pretty good reading of what’s going on. But we can only control so much. We can’t control what happens in the macro economy. We can’t control the weather. What we can control is what’s in front of us, and that’s what we need to focus on. My concern is that as the inventory starts to flow through the retail stores and the consumer starts to feel the impact of the tariff, what will that look like?
What opportunities do you see in the casual industry this year?
The best opportunity for retailers and wholesalers is to understand who their customer is and create unique, realistic value compared to competitors. You could create that value in a lot of different ways. You can create it in your store. You can create that through innovative product. The challenges are what they are, but as a business person, your job is to figure out how to mitigate the challenge and continue to create value for the consumer or for the retailer. When you have the mass chaos that we all have going on in our country, sometimes you need to focus and take a bit more of a simplistic view.
What do you think the two Casual Markets will be like this year?
The marketplace is going to be different next year, which is even more reason you should get to the show, shop hard and consider changing up your mix by looking for values. We have to go out and we have to buy furniture. I think it would be a big mistake for retailers to skip the market this year. That’s just kind of putting your head in the dirt and not understanding what’s happening in the marketplace. We could have a really good 2026, and we could get through this over the next six months. Some of the new tax policies could create additional free cash flow for middle-class America, and that could lead to a pretty good economy. And in ‘26 there’s no reason business has to go down.
