Key Points

• Tariffs shake supply chains: looming duties spark pre-emptive buying today but freeze orders for 2025, risking price hikes and thin backpacking-gear inventory.
• Sales snapshot: outdoor retail rose +1% to $20B in 2024 while equipment slid -1.3% to $5.6 B, yet gear demand began rebounding in Q4.
• Demand drivers: 25M new outdoor participants and budget road-trip vacations boost car-camping and entry-level backpacking, though growth still hinges on tariff clarity.

The outdoor industry as a whole enjoyed modest growth in 2024, according to a recent analysis by the Outdoor Industry Association, but headwinds continue to cloud the outlook, the foremost being tariffs.

“All that tariff talk and the uncertainty has made it so that everyone is very concerned about their finances,” said Casey Taylor, Vice President of Client Services for Civic Science, a consumer analytics firm, during a recent webinar hosted by OIA.

Despite anxiety in the outdoor retail space, there were promising signs for the market, as it grew by approximately 1% to reach $20 billion in sales in 2024, according to the 2025 Outdoor Retail Sales Trends Report. This modest increase followed a 3% decline in 2023, suggesting the industry is stabilizing after post-pandemic fluctuations.

“We were up about 1%, which is an improvement over last year when I came out and I had to report that we were down 3% in dollars sold”  said Kelly Davis, OIA Research Director. “We’re in much more turbulent times than we were in 2024 right now, and I wanted to think about that. I didn’t want to ignore that.”

The outdoor industry is particularly vulnerable to tariffs and trade wars that could affect manufacturing supply chains, and the cost of raw materials, said Davis, who expressed skepticism whether the industry could effectively onshore manufacturing in the near term.

“It’s not so easy just to uproot and move a factory, especially in the tariff environment, considering many of the inputs in outdoor products are going to be sourced from outside of our market no matter what,” she said.

One of the near term silver linings of the current economic uncertainty is that some consumers are choosing to purchase outdoor equipment before tariffs hit and prices rise.

“I think right now and since about a week and a half ago, and for the next few weeks, we’re seeing spasmodic buying in the outdoor market,” Davis said.

Ed Ray, from Run Newport, an outdoor shoe store in Rhode Island, said he saw an immediate impact in consumer buying patterns the day after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on a bevy of America’s trading partners.

He described a customer who came into the store and asked to see his favorite running shoes in a variety of colors with the intended purpose of buying them all. When Ray asked him what was behind the unusual one-time purchase, the man responded: “Sir, these shoes are never going to be this price ever again. So I’m going to buy what I know I’m going to need and what I want.” 

While tariffs and the attendant economic uncertainty may provide a short-term bump in sales, the longer-term outlook remains less optimistic, particularly for certain sectors of outdoor equipment that rely on specialized manufacturing.

“We’re also seeing orders being paused or canceled, waiting for clarity with tariffs,” said Matthew Tucker, with Circana, a market research company.” Unless there’s a change (and a change could happen at any moment or any day in the near future), I expect that we will see some categories with limited inventory, empty shelves at a variety of stores.”

Furthermore, while the market analysis provided some positive news for the industry as a whole, most of the growth in 2024 was attributable to apparel and footwear, as sales of specialized outdoor gear, including backpacking gear and tents fell in 2024.

Equipment sales, which include backpacking tents and related gear, declined 1.3% to $5.6 billion in 2024, with units sold dropping 2.5%, according to the report. Sales began to recover in the last quarter of 2024, a recovery that has continued into the first quarter of 2025.

“I was seeing sales of equipment start to recover as we hit November and December, and I’ve continued seeing that as the year has gone on,” Davis said.

Specific to backpacking and tents, other broad macroeconomic trends could provide a boost to sales in the current year.

“When consumers pinch pennies, they hit the road,” Taylor said. “When they hit the road instead of flying, the outdoor industry tends to do a lot better.”

This trend could boost car camping and potentially serve as a gateway to backpacking for newcomers.

Another source of optimism can be derived from outdoor participation numbers, a metric the OIA tracks as an indicator of potential demand.

“There are more than 25 million more participants in the market than we had in 2019,” Davis notes.

Nevertheless, tariffs have outdoor retailers preparing for another period of uncertainty after two years of declining sales due to post-pandemic fluctuations.

“We finally found some equilibrium, and we felt pretty good about how business was turning around and getting back on track,” said Erica Gerald, co-owner of Pure Stoke, an outdoor retailer in Hood River, Oregon. “However, moving ahead into this season recently, just like everybody else, a disproportionate amount of wrenches got hurled at us.”