Big box outdoor cooking retailers, both on the hardware side and on the sporting goods side, have all noted challenges with the consumer environment. Consumers are under pressure, being selective, and trading down on goods.
Academy Sports + Outdoors Q3 2023 earnings were no different with those themes. They did have one bright spot though, that we didn’t hear called-out at other retailers.
Continuing from their last quarter, they’ve had success in outdoor cooking. Specifically, consumers are still buying newness with Blackstone griddles.
Certainly, what we’ve seen this year, and we talked a little bit about it that the customer is gravitating towards newness. So the categories you talked about are all categories that we were well positioned in for this holiday. We’ve seen them continue into holiday. Other areas, we talked about our outdoor grilling business being really strong. There’s certainly a trend being fueled there by Blackstone and that flat grilling. That continues to be a great category for us.
Steve Lawrence, CEO of Academy Sports
It’s great news for Academy and for Blackstone, but should serve as a warning to other retailers. Academy has big expansion plans and they’re successfully taking market share.