Is the Independent Shop the Future of the Outdoor Industry? Inside Outdoor Retailer’s Big Debate Panel

August 20, 2026

Dana Caraway, owner of independent sales agency Caraway and Co. and a 20-plus-year veteran of West Coast outdoor sales, has sat through the same sales meeting more times than she can count. The brand promises to hold the line on price. Specialty is the priority this season, they say. Then she goes home.

“I look, and the brand side is on sale,” she said. “I start getting the phone calls from my stores. You’re on sale. What’s happening?”

The fallout does not stop at those phone calls. Caraway said the discounting also costs her sales she would have otherwise closed herself as a rep, as business shifts from her stores to the brand’s own site.

Caraway shared that experience during Outdoor Retailer’s Industry Day, an afternoon of education programming that ran ahead of the expo floor’s opening.

The panel, titled “The Big Debate: Is the Independent Shop the Future of the Outdoor Industry?” was part of a full day of education Wednesday at the newly reimagined Outdoor Retailer in Minneapolis, which packed a Retailer Playbook Lab, the Ascent Summit for emerging brand founders, and four Industry Day sessions into a single day ahead of the expo floor opening. SHOPeatSURF