Switchback has wrapped its first standalone trade show, growing out of The Running Event to gather the outdoor industry over three days this week in Nashville.

Nearly 1,300 attendees represented 194 brands and 290 retailers from 41 states and 9 countries. The trade show opened Monday with a series of educational panels and presentations, and the programming continued through Tuesday and Thursday while more than 30,000 feet of exhibition state was open for previews from brands.

On Wednesday, Footwear News highlighted the top 17 shoes revealed at Switchback, and now we’re taking a broader look at key business takeaways from the outdoor trade show.

Switchback Is What the Industry Needed

A prevailing sentiment throughout the trade show was that it was great to be back together in one place. With the disruption of COVID and Outdoor Retailer’s profile diminished, brands and retailers relished the opportunity to once again meet face-to-face.

“I think this show is exactly what the industry needs,” Jessica Adler, vice president of sales for Merrell, told FN. “It’s great to have a national show that is relevant, gets everybody energized and excited about the future. I love the traffic, love the energy.”

Although the list of exhibitors carried some heavy-hitters — including show sponsors Merrell and The North Face, as well as Asics, Arc’teryx, Birkenstock, and Skechers — the exhibition hall was intentionally kept intimate. Booth space was limited to 20 feet by 20 feet, with an exception made only for Merrell’s double plot.

“We wanted to create this inclusive floor plan that would be easy to explore and easy for discovery, to really keep everyone connected and together,” said Christina Henderson, director of Switchback and The Running Event. “We wanted something that we will build upon.”

Lee Cox, vice president and general manager of Teva and Ahnu, appreciated the scope of Switchback and said it comes at an important time for Teva. “It feels like a big regional show,” Cox said. “Sometimes trade shows can get a little too big and it becomes more of a marketing tool versus a selling tool. For us, this is a selling tool.”

Away from the business conducted in the exhibition hall, a full slate of educational panels and presentations offered insights on vendor-retailer relationships, tariffs, sustainability, and consumer profiles. Those at the front of the room spoke candidly on their respective topics, and the audiences weren’t shy in their questioning and outlining some of their own difficulties.

The next Switchback will return to its place within The Running Event in December in San Antonio, and next year’s standalone spring show has already been announced for June in New Orleans.

Specialty Retail Is a Real Priority

In a Monday afternoon panel on improving wholesale relationships between retailers and vendors, specialty retailers were in the spotlight. Direct-to-consumer sales have added competition, and one thing is clear: retailers want vendors to stop stepping on their toes.

Minimum advertised pricing (MAP) policies are a major point of contention, as specialty retailers are often unable to match the discounts offered by the brands themselves and operate with slimmer margins.

“We started trying to match and coordinate, and I’ve drifted more and more to I don’t care, and I can’t,” said Brian Mildenstein, owner of Fin & Feater in Iowa City, during the panel. “It’s impossible for me to do that, so we’ll just focus on ourselves and do our own thing to make sure we’re still relevant.”

Adler acknowledged that Merrell has been strict about MAP pricing, sometimes even “too diligent at times,” but said the brand is open to working with retailers if something’s not working.

“We’re trying to become more channel agnostic,” Adler said. “DTC is a good test run for us to see what works — how do we connect [it] and see if it’s worth scaling, how do we continue to build upon that faster with our wholesale channel. It’s no longer about just having these transactional relationships in wholesale. It’s really about partnerships and strategic partnership and understanding that alignment.”

Specialty retailers have the advantage of being able to educate consumers in-person, and both sides of the panel expressed a desire to work together more on community-building events such as run clubs and pint nights. There’s also a strong desire to return to more face-to-face interaction, which Switchback was able to provide.

The Core Consumer Has Been Overemphasized

A Monday afternoon presentation from Kelly Davis, director of research for Outdoor Industry Association (OIA), put forth a new system of categorization for consumers: Core, Active and Casual. Whereas consumers were previously categorized purely based off of frequency of activity, this system also accounts for intensity of approach, spend levels and desired effect.

Core consumers average an annual spend of $2,200 on gear and apparel, while Active and Casual come in $1,600 and $1,400 respectively. But the Core consumer, the hardcore participant so often the emphasis of marketing and product design, accounts for just 5.1 percent of the market. What remains is a vast majority falling into either Active (49.7 percent) or Casual (42 percent).

Decreasing sales from 2021 to 2024 can be attributed to a misunderstanding of the Active and Casual consumers who account for the most purchases. Whereas the Core consumer is seeking excitement, the two other categories are motivated by something else.

“We are happiness dealers,” Davis said. “We’re not selling climate, we’re not selling a running shoe, we’re not selling any of that. We’re selling experiences and beyond experiences, we’re selling happiness, calm and balance.”

Tariffs Remain the Great Unknown

Brands, retailers and consumers are all waiting to see where tariff policies land.

The announcement of tariffs, the reversals and the ongoing windows for negotiations have made it hard to plan for the long-term. A presentation from Jaclyn Levy, senior directory of advocacy and government Affairs for OIA, zeroed in on what can actually be done in this period of uncertainty.

Levy underlined the importance of reaching out to elected representatives to advocate and educate. Noise needs to be made to highlight how the outdoor business will be affected by tariffs, as 98 percent of apparel and 99 percent of footwear sold in the U.S. is imported.

“It’s easy to close your eyes if somebody’s not sitting in your office telling them exactly how many jobs were lost in their own constituency,” Levy said.

Innovation is also at the core of the outdoor business, the expense of which becomes harder to tackle with the threats of tariffs.

To help businesses communicate with their representatives, OIA has resources available including webinars and toolkits on top of the advocacy it’s undertaking on its own.

Even among the uncertainty, some brands such as Arc’teryx and Birkenstock made the point of noting that their prices are already set for spring 2026.