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Salt Lake City — By the looks on their faces, you might have thought Tim Coates and Mike Ulawski had a life-or-death decision in front of them as they pondered an order for 39 pairs of La Sportiva light hiking shoes at last week's Outdoor Retailer Winter Market, the largest trade show for cold-weather products in the U.S.
In a way, you'd be right. Coates and Ulawski, manager and buyer for Real Cheap Sports in Ventura, were in Utah to select products for their small store, which sells about $1.5 million annually in gear and apparel for climbers, hikers and backpackers, as well as travel goods.
Only a month earlier they'd had to close their sister store, Mountain Outlet in Pasadena, after a five-year struggle. They didn't need a reminder that longevity is rare for specialty shops in an era of big discounters.
The Outdoor Retailer show is a must-do -- and a must-do-right -- for small retailers such as Real Cheap Sports. Coates and Ulawski need to meet with vendors and hear their pitches to find steeply discounted closeout products and new fall and winter gear that can give them a profitable year.
The spotlight at the massive show usually focuses on the latest and flashiest products from premier manufacturers, such as the North Face, Patagonia and Marmot.
Yet it's the several thousand retailers like Coates and Ulawski, who comb through the aisles trying to divine which items from the crush of options customers will buy, who make the show go. Real Cheap Sports' path through the aisles is symbolic of the dice-rolling journey of small retailers, who are betting against big odds.
"More and more people think it's fine to go to Target and get a tent and Penney's to get tennis shoes," says Michelle Barnes of the Outdoor Industry Assn., a trade group that represents 4,000 manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers and salespeople in the $20-billion-a-year outdoor products industry. The result: fewer sales at specialty stores.
Coates' edge against the big boys is service. It's easy for a customer to get the wrong product, or to get the right product but not know how to use it, he said.
"Say you're going snow camping and you get a zero-degree bag," he said, "but nobody tells you that the bag is rated at zero degrees with an insulated pad under it."
At a smaller store like his, he maintained, you would leave with the right sleeping bag, know how to use it and sleep comfortably. But Coates has to have what customers want, or the service issue is moot.
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