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<title><%site_title%>: Survey of Tech Run Retailers, July, 2013</title>
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<center><h1>Survey of Tech Running Retailers:  July 2013</h1></center>
<center><h2>Authored by Dan Empfield</h2></center>

<font = "verdana"><font size = "2">Many of you, as of this writing, are getting ready to head to Outdoor Retailer. To that end, here are the results of our state-of-the-industry sampler poll.  We just conducted a fairly decent-sized poll of bike retailers, about 170 shops participated.  We don’t have the same deep relationships with footwear retailers that we have with bike shops, however, we did poll 36 retail stores and below is what we found.
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First, some disclaimers.  As there are probably 700 tech running footwear retailers in the U.S., for us to poll only 36 of them means you can leverage these results only so far.  Also, we publish Slowtwitch.com, and it’s a portal read by triathletes.  It's only natural to assume that the poll respondents were stores trending toward triathlon-centricity.
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Maybe that’s true.  We asked this in our poll, and we’ll lead with a chart telling us who the respondents were.
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<p><div align="center"><img src="http://www.slowtwitch.com/images/surveys/footwear_retailers_0713/trimarketimportance.jpg"></div>
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<p><p>Each store was asked to rank 11 footwear brands by revenues.  A store would place a 1 by its largest revenue brand, 2 for second-largest, and on down, with an option to indicate that the brand is not sold. The chart below tells you more about who are respondents are.
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Brooks is the largest revenue brand in these 36 stores when considered in the aggregate.  Asics and Saucony are close behind in revenues.  This probably sounds about right.  However, look how far down we see Nike, and Adidas even further down.  Obviously this is not representative of these companies, which taken together probably total near $40 billion in annual sales.  However, none of the 36 stores we polled were mass marketers, or sporting goods stores, or Foot Lockers.  None sell basketball or soccer shoes.  All 36 polled were independent running footwear sellers.  Independent running footwear resellers and running footwear manufacturers can look at this chart and determine better than I whether this chart rings true as a proxy for these kinds of businesses in general.
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<div align="center"><img src="http://www.slowtwitch.com/images/surveys/footwear_retailers_0713/brand_prominence.jpg"></div>
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<p><p>While others are better equipped than I to critique the above chart for relevance, I find this chart matches quite closely the trends we see among our readers.  If you consider polls taken of Slowtwitchers over the past 6 years, shown below, Asics has fallen in brand use, Saucony has grown, so has Brooks, and if you look at our most recent polls, our readers are telling us that they’re buying what the retailers are telling us they’re selling.
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<div align="center"><img src="http://www.slowtwitch.com/images/surveys/footwear_retailers_0713/brands_over_time.jpg"></div>
<p><p>We can see from the poll above the trajectory of each brand by looking at the circuitous lines each brand is scribing, each time we ask the question of our readers.  Asics has gone in one direction, Brooks and Saucony in the other.  Is this also what we see when we ask the retailers we polled this same question?  (Neither the retailers, nor anyone, has seen our aggregate polling of Slowtwitchers prior to its publication above.)
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<div align="center"><img src="http://www.slowtwitch.com/images/surveys/footwear_retailers_0713/Brand-Performance-in-store.jpg"></div>
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<p><p>In the poll just above, this is how our 36 running retailers answered the question.  We simply asked these retailers whether a running shoe brand was ascendant in their stores, or whether it was in decline.  The obvious ascendant large brands were Brooks and Saucony.  In the smaller brands, the clear ascendant upstart is Hoka One One.
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We also wanted to know what trends these retailers sensed in the engineering or architecture or technical style of running shoes.  We didn’t present them an exhaustive list, we just asked two questions:  Is the minimalist shoe in ascendancy or decline?  Second, is the lower-drop, or low-ramp, shoe trending up or down?  Some folks may think this is confusing, because minimalist shoes have as one feature low-drop.  However, our retailers had no trouble parsing between the two terms.
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<div align="center"><img src="http://www.slowtwitch.com/images/surveys/footwear_retailers_0713/shoe_engineering.jpg"></div>
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<p><p>Finally, I wanted to know what activities these retailers themselves personally engage in.  Maybe this is not relevant, however, I suspect it is, because in my own 25 years in this business I’ve noticed that a lot of buying and selling is personal.  When a brand honors or conversely dishonors a particular market (whether high school runners, walkers, triathletes, ultra or trail runners, newbies, oldsters, women, the frugal, the spendy) through its ads, its sponsorships, its price points, the engineering and models of its shoes, or simply through the words and attitudes of its employees and sales reps, I think that has an effect on how that brand is treated and positioned in the store.  That effect can either be positive or negative.
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<div align="center"><img src="http://www.slowtwitch.com/images/surveys/footwear_retailers_0713/respondentshabits.jpg"></div>
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<p><p>True, we only have answers from 36 stores, but I think it’s notable, surprising to some, but not to me, that so many shop principals do personally engage in both footraces and multisports races.  Even those who indicated that triathlon is neither their largest or even a vital market (more than half) are nevertheless personally engaged in multisport on a competitive level.  Therefore, I think brands adopt a dismissive attitude of any market at their own peril, even if they are not as a business engaged in that market.
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I think Asics has turned a corner in its approach to and interest in multisport, probably helped through the Hyperspeed winning the men’s Hawaiian Ironman World Championship twice over the past 3 years.  Asics is closing in on $1 billion in annual sales, but while Nike has a stronghold in basketball, Adidas’ is in soccer, Asics has always hung its hat on running.  Running has always been its core.  I think Asics correctly sees this and is eager to reverse some of the trend lines above.
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My takeaway, just looking at all the charts above, is that Born to Run’s impact on running technology – specifically minimalism – is waning.  But it opened the door – it forced open the door – to new ideas of how to build running shoes, and in so doing made a way for existing second-tier brands (like Saucony) to move into the top tier, while allowing new brands (like Newton and Hoka) to get a leg up.
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“Hold on!” you might complain, “These specialty stores, even all 700 of them, still only represent well less than half of the sales of tech running shoes in the U.S.”  True.  However, I’ve never known Foot Locker, Zappos, or Sports Authority to take a flier on an unknown, unproven product.  They all only order deep in shoes that these 700 stores first made popular.  In a way, these tech running stores hand permission slips to running footwear brands.  Until these specialty stores – through their front-line efforts in each community – green light the sale of these models to the mass merchants, these new models aren’t getting sold in any significant numbers.
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For this reason I pay attention to what these small, independent tech running stores say, because they’re the industry’s bellweather.  I hope you found this small survey illustrative.

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