INSIGHTS NOW

NSGA Report Provides Insight into Soft Goods Categories for Dealers and Brands

By Nick Rigitano

NSGA Director of Insights and Analysis

Team dealers often face the difficult task of evaluating their product offerings and which brands they should carry. To make decisions even more difficult, the soft goods market is highly saturated with an abundance of brands and products. To give team dealers a better idea of the brands being carried, along with their ratings for certain attributes for soft goods, the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) conducted the Team Dealer Trends: Brand Ratings Survey in the spring of 2022. Whether an organization is an existing team dealer, a start-up dealer, or a retailer considering the addition of a team component, the resulting insights can aid in understanding the current landscape of the soft goods segment. This includes competition levels serviced, brands carried for select categories and how those brands measure up against others based on certain attributes. This report can also be used by manufacturers to get a better idea of where they stand with their dealer customers.

Here is a glance at the information contained in the report:

Soft Goods Sales Overview

This section provides an overview of soft goods sales among dealers for the most recent year in 2021. Included is information on the median number of teams serviced by competition level (high school, college, recreational league, etc.) and the percentage of soft goods sales from each level, along with the percentage of total soft goods sales among respondents broken out by product category. According to the study, the high school level was the mostserviced level, with team dealer respondents servicing a median of 60 teams, followed by the recreational level at a median of 55 teams.

Soft Goods Brands Carried

This portion of the report examines the average number of brands carried by dealers for each of the six product categories displayed in Figure 1, as well as the percentages of brands being carried by dealer respondents for the given categories. As shown in Figure 1, uniforms and performance apparel were the categories in which dealers carried the most brands on average (7.8 and 7.5 respectively). Dealers carried an average of 6.8 brands for the categories of hats (baseball-cap style), followed by 6 brands carried for jackets/ outerwear. Categories with the fewest brands carried were winter/ knit/beanie headwear and socks (4.9 and 4.3 respectively). This section also includes a look at the percentages of respondents carrying given brands for soft goods. As seen in Figure 2, Augusta Sportswear Brands, CHAMPRO, Founder Sport Group and SanMar were the most popular brands carried, with 9 of 10 dealer respondents carrying those brands for at least one of the categories surveyed. Eight out of 10 dealers surveyed carried Twin City Knitting, Outdoor Cap and Richardson products while 7 out of 10 carried A4, Under Armour and adidas, rounding out the top 10 brands carried. FIGURE 1 FIGURE 2

Soft Goods Brand Ratings

The final section of the report explores the ratings given to 24 soft goods brands by dealers carrying them, based on six different brand attributes of:

• Value for the price • Timely delivery • Product innovation

• Brand-name recognition • Sell-through • Customer service (toward the dealer)

An overall attribute score is also given for each brand based on their average scores among these six categories. This section also includes ratings of brands carried by dealers based on overall feelings toward them. The ratings are on a 5-point scale (5=very positive, 3=neutral, 1=very negative) as shown in Figure 3. SanMar received the top spot in this category after dealers carrying the brand rated them most positively (4.53 average). Next were Founder Sport Group (4.45) and Twin City Knitting (4.21). Rounding out the top five were CHAMPRO (4.18) and Cap America (4.16). The report is available to NSGA retailer and team dealer members as a complimentary benefit and can be downloaded at the Research Offerings section of the NSGA website (www.nsga.org). Other organizations interested in obtaining the report may contact Nick Rigitano, NSGA Director of Insights and Analysis, at nrigitano@nsga. org or (847) 296-6742, ext. 1080.

FIGURE 3