Internet zaps Tacoma outdoors icon
Guest Editor’s Note by Ken Campbell
With the closure of Tacoma’s Backpackers Supply in July, Ken Campbell will have more time to spend with his son, Micah
I suppose I’ve always known it would happen. With new gear arriving every day and an optimistic feeling that maybe the economy is on the rebound, I wasn’t really expecting it to happen right now but when things end, I suppose it always seems sudden.
Backpackers Supply, the only independently owned gear shop left in Tacoma (and my place of employment for most of the last 18 years), is closing its doors. By the end of July, I will be officially unemployed, along with a dozen other people. If you live in T-town, REI will be the only place you’ll be able to actually put your hands on the stuff you want to buy, if they stock what you’re looking for. Of course, you can always go online.
Then again, finding something online is one big reason why we have come to this sorry end. Over the past three or four years, we have essentially become a fitting room for our online competition.
“Customers” would come to our demo days and try kayaks and spend hours quizzing staff about the relative merits of one particular boat over another. Then, their questions answered and their decisions made, they would go home and order their boats and gear online. Because it cost less. Price was their main concern, and they didn’t see any reason to pay for all the information and experience that their local store had provided.
“Climbers” came in for what would amount to in-store clinics on the use of specialized pieces of protection, asking the person behind the counter about what gear to get, how it worked and where they could go to use it. They would walk in knowing nothing — and I mean nothing — and they would leave with a solid understanding of what they needed. But they wouldn’t actually purchase it from us; why should they, when they could get it online for a few dollars less?
I remember when Tacoma had a half-dozen independently owned outdoor specialty stores. At the end of July, it won’t have any. I’m sure there were different reasons for each business to fold, but in the end, it was the customers who chose to go somewhere else that made the ultimate decision a reality.
I’ll be the first to admit that, as a store, Backpackers Supply could have done more. I think that buying decisions could have been made differently and we could have, and should have, done a better job meshing the new economy of the internet with our established ways of doing business. Our biggest shortcoming was that we did not adapt quickly enough to the changes in the way that the consumer actually consumes.
Manufacturers bear some of the responsibility as well. If the people who make the stuff wanted to stop the online undercutting of their dealers, they could do so. But when you have the makers of a product wanting to sell as many as they can, and the buyers wanting to spend as little as possible, it’s the guy in the middle who suffers. For those of you who just wanted to “cut out the middle man,” that’s exactly what you did.
To those loyal customers I have come to know over the years, the ones who shopped with us because they knew they were getting value they couldn’t get elsewhere, I am grateful. I will miss you all and I wish you all the best.
I know I’ll still see you from time to time, out there, where we belong.
Ken Campbell teaches kayaking and paddleboarding and writes regularly at lastwilderness.blogspot.com.
