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The founder of Ridgerunner, Adam Gifford, says tackle manufacturers and distributors must go digital-first. “The outdoor industry is at an inflection point,” he writes for Angling International. “Manufacturers feel margin compression. Distributors feel disintermediation. Retailers feel declining foot traffic. And consumers? They’ve already gone digital.”
Writes Gifford: The uncomfortable truth is this: digital transformation in the outdoor industry is no longer optional. It’s inevitable. The question is not if manufacturers and distributors go digital-first. It’s whether they do it proactively – or get forced into it reactively. The retail model is drying up. For decades, the industry relied on a linear chain: Manufacturer… Distributor… Retailer… Consumer. That system worked when physical shelf space was scarce and consumer discovery was local. Today?
- Shelf space is shrinking.
- Independent retailers carry primarily the top 1% of brands.
- Big-box retail demands thinner margins and higher volume.
- Inventory risk sits upstream with the brand.
- Consumer discovery happens online – first.
Traditional retail isn’t dead. But it is structurally constrained. Manufacturers know it. Distributors know it. Retailers know it. The industry is, quite frankly, eating itself through pride, fragmentation and lack of digital infrastructure.
The false fear is, ‘digital will kill our distributors’. This is the most common objection from legacy brands: ‘If we go direct, we’ll upset our distributors.‘ But what if instead, digital didn’t replace distributors, it super-charged them?
The New Model: Geo-Fenced Digital Distribution
Imagine this:
- A national digital sales engine that reaches 200+ million consumers per month
- Operates 24/7
- Never takes a day off
- Never calls in sick
- Scales instantly
- Tracks attribution with precision
Now layer in intelligent geo-fencing. If a consumer in Des Moines buys, the Iowa distributor receives the sale credit and commission. If a consumer in South Florida buys, the South Florida distributor receives the sale credit and commission. No conflict. No guessing. No ‘who would have owned that account’ debates. We can define territories down to a few-mile radius based on distributor physical addresses. The manufacturer protects the relationship. The distributor gains a new global sales machine. The consumer gets seamless digital access. That is not disruption, that is evolution.
What if every distributor had a global sales machine?
Distributors traditionally rely on:
- Field reps
- Trade shows
- Relationship selling
- Regional retail coverage
Important – but limited. Now imagine layering on:
- National marketplace visibility
- Always-on digital acquisition
- Territory-protected sales attribution
- Centralised data
- Real-time performance reporting
- Direct-to-consumer logistics
Instead of fighting digital, distributors leverage it. Instead of losing margin, they expand volume. Instead of being bypassed, they become digitally empowered.
The industry has to change. Consumers have already changed. They expect:
- Searchable access to every SKU
- Transparent pricing
- Fast shipping
- Direct brand storytelling
- Data-driven recommendations
Brands increasingly prefer DTC because they want:
- Margin control
- Customer data ownership
- Inventory visibility
- Marketing leverage
Retail – as structured today – provides neither efficiency nor scalability for most brands. We all know it. The pink elephant in the room is this: traditional retail is not dead – yet. But the infrastructure is decaying. The brands that survive will not be the loudest, they will be the most adaptable.
How Ridgerunner Solves the Conflict
Ridgerunner isn’t anti-retail. It’s anti-friction. We built a vertical marketplace and operating system specifically for the outdoor industry to:
- Aggregate major brands in one digital ecosystem
- Preserve distributor relationships through geo-fenced attribution
- Provide national consumer exposure
- Offer digital storefronts for each brand
- Unlock DTC and B2B simultaneously
- Deliver retail exposure without retail overhead
This is not Amazon. This is industry-aligned infrastructure. Owners of every major brand should be on the Ridgerunner platform. Why? Because the consumer is already searching digitally. That isn’t going to reverse. The only question is whether they find your brand – or someone else that is leveraging the software.
We offer retail exposure without retail overhead.
Traditional retail forces brands into:
- Cataloging fees
- Margin erosion
- White labeling risk
- Inventory overproduction
- Physical overhead
Digital-first platforms provide:
- Infinite shelf space
- Territory-protected sales logic
- Commission mapping
- Centralised logistics
- Real-time analytics
- Lower overhead
- Greater margin integrity
That’s not retail replacement. That’s retail modernisation. It’s proactive instead of reactive. Manufacturers have the relationships with distributors. That is leverage. Instead of waiting for margins to compress further or distributors to lose relevance, brands should say: ‘We’re building a digital sales layer that strengthens your territory.’ That conversation is proactive. If they don’t? The market will force it – without structure, without protection and without alignment.
Here’s the bottom line. The outdoor industry is one of the last major consumer verticals to fully embrace digital infrastructure. But it will. Because:
- Consumers demand it.
- Brands need it.
- Distributors can benefit from it.
- Retail alone cannot sustain it.
The industry doesn’t need to fight change. It needs to ‘kiss and get it over with.’ Digital-first is not rebellion. It’s survival. And for manufacturers and distributors willing to lean in to the new dynamics – Ridgerunner doesn’t eliminate those relationships. We scale them.
