Marathon Sports

I started to wonder or I don't know if panic is the word or whatever you call it.

I don't know if you followed what happened with Marathon Sports.

Oh, yes.

With Tom Hoopers.

haven't been, I've been to that mountain, but I haven't, haven't been to that race

yeah

um but it's you know i guess marathon sports which you when you think of that company in new england you think of road running and now they're i think they're probably realizing that a lot more people are running trails now and they want to kind of inject themselves into that and and see what they can uh get out of it

Yeah.

Um, but I will tell you, so that's what I loved about it.

I think it was really a very inspiring environment, which we've talked about on, on the last couple episodes, particularly as it relates to the new Marathon Sports store.

Mm-hmm.

Is something rubbing you the wrong way? Chafe of the week, brought to you by Body Glide.

We're seeing a lot of brands, Asian brands, European brands and American brands focus more on trail.

I saw news today that Marathon Sports is opening a trail event.

store in Conway, New Hampshire.

And Roadrunner Sports, despite having Roadrunner in the name, is focused on trail as well.

At REI, quote, 'Trail running is the fastest growing category within footwear year to date,' Emily Frugi, divisional merchandise manager, told Retail Brew.

Sales are up about 12% to 19% year to date depending on gender and merchandise type." Before tossing it to Corrine, there was another story that came up in Retail Brew here, this being about Marathon Sports, sort of a regional running retailer with 32 doors, I think relegated mostly to the Northeast, sort of the New England part of the country.

Brad, I think you have the headline from this one, too.

It says, "How Marathon Sports brought the trail indoors for its new concept store." Cutting to the chase, effectively Marathon Sports opened a new trail running-focused retail store in North Conway, New Hampshire.

It was inspired by their president, Ben Cook, his visit to Chamonix during UTMB.

He came back and said, "We need to recreate Chamonix in the East Coast of the United States," settled on this small hamlet in New Hampshire to open a trail running-focused retail store.

So two fun data points here that are related to something we talked about a couple of weeks ago, just in terms of things showing up in the real world that show that the trail running business and e- economy is growing and healthy.

If REI says their sales are growing, if Marathon Sports is expanding and is specifically targeting trail running, two more, uh, positive indications in the direction the, the sport is going.