This virus has made many retail outlets including archery take a long hard look at how they operate and sadly online is probably the direction everything is going. I say sadly because to date this has resulted in many people buying the wrong stuff and getting the wrong advice, a reason there is a buoyant archery section on eBay with many items being bought and relisted many times.
As an aside one of my neighbours is moving and their 3 year old came out shouting "Daddy I have found some more stuff for eBay", proof that times and consumer retail expectations are changing.
The Archery market is very very small and expected to get a lot smaller over the next 12 months until new archers can be introduced to the sport at the same levels as last year (we still have not got to the bottom of membership churn that plagues our sport). So any comparison to multi national organisations to me are meaningless, there is no direct comparison. Amazon probably does in a week/day? more turnover than archery does in a year.
Past models were for dealers to carry loads of stock and in all the colours/variations and actually recommend and support the products they promote and sell. But this has now become impossible because archers now have so much choice and the new stuff is so fast moving the perception of the stock on the shelf becomes obsolete in a short time period - even if that is not the reality.
At a time of falling membership numbers and a possibility of it getting a lot worse with the lack of new archers coming into the sport, but fixed costs still going up, cashflow is one of the biggest priorities, so many dealers are now operating a very small core of stocked products and everything else is bought in to order. This is not ideal but a reality and it is a brave owner to tie up cashflow when those buying in to order are more flexible on pricing, options available at the cost of a small delay in delivery.
Dealers are looking at reducing or working with less staff, which again will lead to delays on items that need making especially arrows strings bow set ups, it is a time to reflect on a businesses profitability, even this week we have seen the closure of Apps Court (Quicks). A dealer that had all the facilities including stock, proper shooting ranges indoors and out and staff that understood archery. This model of a dealer is now very expensive to operate at a time when archers are even more cost conscious - if we end up all operating online then our sport will lose any independent sources to go to for reliable support. The content online is full of contradictions, egos' and varies in accuracy even from what I would consider more trusted sources. It is hard to find the really good stuff amongst the noise - I have watched a lot of noise these past few months.
To date archers have been very understanding, but I do wonder if this new way of working will be acceptable and good for archery once this pandemic has past and what shape the archery dealer environment will look like.