It鈥檚 both exciting and difficult to watch your kids grow up. At a certain inevitable point, the thing you made, so carefully molded at the start, begins changing at a pace you can hardly wrap your head around, let alone control. What happens after that is anyone鈥檚 guess.
I imagine that鈥檚 how some outdoor industry veterans鈥攖he pioneers who have been working in this world for decades鈥攁re feeling right now. Thanks to the boom brought on by the pandemic, the rise of direct-to-consumer sales, and the general mainstreaming of once-niche adventure sports, it鈥檚 safe to say our market is enduring its adolescent growth spurt. We鈥檙e not quite , but gone are the hippie days of this industry鈥檚 beginnings. We鈥檝e hit economic puberty.
Just look at all that happened last month鈥攇rowth so fast you can almost watch it in real time. Solo Brands, the Texas-based outdoor portfolio company (Solo Stove, Oru Kayak, Chubbies Shorts), formed in early September, on the New York Stock Exchange in just eight weeks. Big Agnes in Colorado, long considered a small-town business in spirit, is now in years to come.聽Even well established players like Patagonia are continuing to mature in eccentric new directions; a few weeks ago, the gear company its entry into the wine market with聽a line of natural vinos to be sold through its food and beverage business, Patagonia Provisions. The outdoor economy, it seems, is entering adulthood.
But not quite. As teenagers have done forever, our industry is tiptoeing the line, half in and half out of the grownup world. Last month, Yeti, a multibillion-dollar, publicly traded company, mustered enough kiddish gumption to take out a funny billboard above its headquarters in Austin, Texas, which in an attempt to say, 鈥淲e鈥檙e not one of them.鈥 To be clear, Bezos and Musk鈥攖he implied targets of the lark鈥攑robably deserved it, and the juggernauts they helm are orders of magnitude larger than Yeti. Still, there鈥檚 something charmingly mischievous about a company鈥檚 being able to straddle that divide: sitting at the big kid鈥檚 table but finding the time, every now and then, to pull pranks鈥攁nd getting away with it.
Are the old timers wringing their hands over these fits and starts of maturation, fretting about where this is all headed? I hope not. As I鈥檝e written before, this industry faces some very adult issues, climate change chief among them. A confirmed that our warming planet poses an existential threat to outdoor recreation (as though we didn鈥檛 already know). Several of our largest companies are now , urging our nation鈥檚 leaders to take more aggressive action. Bright spots exist here and there鈥擯resident Biden recently from lingering Trump-era attempts to shrink and pillage them, for instance, which drew widespread industry applause鈥攂ut still, . Reactionary support is not enough. Responsibility is knocking.
As an industry, we鈥檒l probably cling forever to some vestige of the childish spirit that started this whole thing off, and I think that鈥檚 a good thing. This is a business built on play, after all. But if we鈥檙e to survive in the long term, we鈥檇 better make that seat at the big kid鈥檚 table a permanent one, and fill it.