This commentary is by Drew Simmons, of Waitsfield. He is the president of Pale Morning Media, a public relations and strategic communications agency specializing in the outdoor world. He is a board member of the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance and a founding steering committee member of the Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative.
In late May, as the first wave of tariff impacts seeped into the outdoor industry, The New York Times profiled two Vermont business owners, Carina Hamel and Robby Ringer of BIVO, who detailed how the erratic and weighty new tariffs had fundamentally changed the math of their business.
“I still feel super optimistic we can make it through this,” said Hamel, explaining how she could only afford 8,000 of 30,000 bottles in an incoming order because of the tariffs. “But I think it’s going to be really freaking hard.”
Tariffs are fees charged to manufacturers the moment a product arrives in the United States. When tariff levels go up or go down, so does the amount of fees charged on arriving shipments. Like a pebble thrown in a pond, every tariff adjustment has a ripple effect, adding a fresh layer of complexity for the manufacturer.
When dozens of pebbles are thrown? The overlapping ripples can make planning for the most basic business efforts a daunting task.
Early on, outdoor gearmakers absorbed the new fees in hopes they would vanish by mid-summer. Yet as tariffs have risen and fallen (and risen again), gearmakers understandably began adjusting prices and passing along some of the new costs to their retailers. But along with passed-down costs has come a passed-down dilemma: Raise prices and risk losing customers? Or hold the line and risk losing your business?
Caleb Magoon, owner of Waterbury Sports, recently told me about “nearly daily updates” on price changes, speculations on price changes and changes to existing changes. He likened it to “whack-a-mole” and expressed how huge the challenge has been. Jen Roberts, co-owner of Onion River Outdoors, got more specific with me about the impacts of these retroactive price changes: “Will we trim our fall orders and carry less to meet our budget? If so, will our sales decrease and threaten a death spiral? Will we pass on the price increases in whole or in part to our customers?”
In Vermont, outdoor recreation delivers $2.1 billion of annual economic impact, and retailers make up around 20% of that total number. They hire your family, your friends, your neighbors. They fix your flat tires and give friendly tips on the best place to see peak foliage. They pay local taxes that support local things, and they regularly donate far beyond what’s owed to their communities.
According to Grassroots Outdoor Alliance, a national organization of independent specialty retailers, 95% of stores give back at least 1% in gross sales to their community, and more than half give back at least 2%.
“People say there are only two expenses you can realistically control in a retail business: inventory and payroll,” Roberts said. “I guess I’m seeing that in action now. With inventory prices going up dramatically due to the tariffs, we have no choice but to cut our payroll expenses. I can’t stomach lowering anyone’s already meager wages or even freezing them at their current level, so we are going to get by with fewer staff.”
Retailers are a resilient bunch, as they’ve endured plenty of uncertainty in the past from rainy summers to Covid-19 shutdowns. But those previous challenges were always external, not eating away at profitability from the inside. They also have not happened during a time of rising inflation and historic drop-off in Canadian visitors.
The hard truth is that Vermont is not going to be able to bake sale its way out of this. It’s time to do more than make an occasional, feel-good purchase at a local store, and it’s time for a permanent mind shift in how we think about local businesses and how we value their role as economic cornerstones. Who owns a business matters just as much as what that business sells, that money capable of building a future for the local community.
“People appreciate having local businesses, and for many, I suspect this makes up part of why they live in Vermont,” said Hal Ellms of Pinnacle Outdoor Group, an outdoor industry sales representative who works directly with outdoor retailers throughout Vermont and the region. “But they buy their bikes, shoes, clothing, skis and more from online businesses based thousands of miles away. It’s as if they don’t make the connection between their definition of local Vermont and what their actual actions are.”
This month, Vermont retailers are once again stocking cozy sweaters, hiking boots and wool socks for the fall season; for locals and visitors, it’s a scene as predictable as the changing of the leaves. But as predictability went out the window months ago for those behind the cash register, it is on us to provide some stability of our own.
We need to think about our dollars in the same way independent retailers do — as money from today that goes toward building the realities of tomorrow.
These are not just purchases, but investments — investments that fill the shelves for next winter and spring, that build our roads and trails and schools and that support the people and places we need. Because without those investments, that future is in doubt.
