TSMA Yearbook 2019

33 Taiwan Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association State of the American Industry In 2017, the American sporting goods industry bounced back from what has been a tumultuous few years. Our research shows that the sporting goods industry increased by .9% from 2016 (2.0%) to 2017 (2.9%). The industry continued to outperform the Real GDP (% reflects total sporting goods market in U.S. Whole Sale Shipment) in 2017 by .4%. It seems that most companies in the industry can fall into three buckets, companies thriving in today’s market, companies “grinding it out” and holding their head above water, and companies that are having an extremely difficult time in the industry. This year more than other years, it seems that the companies “grinding it out” and holding their head above water is significantly larger than the other two. This can be attributed to the disruption that the industry faced Tom Cove President & CEO, SFIA & Vice-President Americas, WFSGI & Member of the Executive Board, WFSGI the last few years and companies adjusting to the new normal. E-commerce and direct to consumer continued to be big trends in 2017. A majority of sales still take place offline, but e-commerce sales continue to grow. This year, for the first time, mobile checkout surpassed desktop checkout in 2017 with 52% of all global e-commerce taking place on a mobile device. Brands continue to sell more directly to consumers with the largest companies taking the lead. Nike announced that they are going to focus their efforts to only 40 retail partners while adidas is closing stores to focus on online sales. Some companies, like allbirds, have a business model to completely bypass retailers and only sell direct to consumer. The retail market has been relatively quiet com- pared to the disruption that dominated previous years. This year major foreign retailers entered the American market. JD Sports acquired Finish Line while Decathlon entered the North American market by opening stores in California and Canada. Decathlon is planning to open more stores in the US in the next few years. The SFIA continues to invest substantially in sports participation research. We want to know which sport activities and categories are likely to grow in coming years. We also closely study the demographics of American sport enthusiasts. The good news is, the “sports look and lifestyle” is still very popular. The trend toward “athleisure” in the past several years rein- forces this conclusion. The bad news is too many peo- ple in the USA are not physically active on a regular basis. We need to reverse this trend.