Sporting Apparel: A Front Runner for the Industry

At first glance, with stores like Sports Authority and MC Sports filing bankruptcy over the last several years, it would appear the sporting goods industry is on a decline. A few months ago, adding to the list of struggling retailers, Modell’s Sporting Goods announced plans to hire a restructuring advisor in hopes of pulling the store above water but soon after published their intentions to file bankruptcy. CEO Mitchell Modell was able to keep the business afloat just a little longer by personally speaking with each of their 300 vendors. Three suppliers decided to withdraw their products from the shelves leaving an opening for new products; this means Modell’s will need new merchandisers.

CSG’s Apparel Specialty Stores database has over 870 retailers that sell sporting goods. The top five companies in this category (Ross Stores, VF Corporation, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Foot Locker, and Academy Sports & Outdoors) each bring in over a billion dollars a year in revenue, and all five stores are seeing growth from the previous year. The growth rate for these five retailers averages to 4.46% in sales and 0.56% for new stores. With numbers this impressive it proves that while some sporting good stores are struggling the industry is far from being in trouble.

The current numbers are forecasting a 50 billion dollar industry increase between 2018-2023 in large part due to athleisure and sportswear that’s become so popular. A quick search on Twitter found an “athleisure” post being tweeted every three minutes with hundreds of comments and retweets. Instagram had similar results with 1M posts using the hashtag “athleisure” and 105K posts using “#athleisurewear.” Searching “#sportswear” on Twitter is pulling in on average, three tweets per minute with 3M Instagram posts. CSG monitors over 870 sporting good companies, indicating there are plenty of opportunities for suppliers, and plenty of customers willing to purchase.