Delay Everything

by: Wes Allen, The Rock Fight's Retail Correspondent

Years from now, when I look back on however many Trump administrations we end up living through, what I’ll remember most is not the policy chaos or the tweets—it’ll be how tired I was. Tired from making decisions. Over and over.

And not just big, strategic decisions. I’m talking about the daily avalanche of small, urgent, sometimes contradictory choices we’ve all been feeling like we have to make in outdoor retail because of what’s happening in the news.

It’s exhausting.

This past week, I watched people make decisions that didn’t survive 24 hours. And I’m not just talking about the president. I’m talking about us—the people trying to run businesses in a wildly unstable environment. We make the best call we can with the information we have, only to walk it back when the ground shifts. Again.

I got five emails today from brands either announcing price changes or warning me that price changes are coming. Two of them already emailed about prices earlier this week. Nobody knows what’s happening. And nobody will for a while.

So I’m giving you an out. 

Do the research. Know your numbers. Watch the landscape. But then: wait. Delay the decisions. Hold the line until you absolutely, positively must make the call.

You’ll still need to do your homework. You’ll still need to understand the playing field. But you do not need to act early. In fact, acting early might be the worst move right now.

Remember the pandemic years? Remember the constant recalculations, the emergency pivots, the sheer mental drag of trying to stay afloat? The tariff era is delivering a sequel—and it's the same exhausting story: too many decisions, too little stability.

And here’s the kicker: humans only get so many good decisions in a day. We burn them out on backorders and price sheets, and then we’re asked to make the ones that actually matter. It’s no wonder so many of us feel like throwing our hands in the air.

Because let’s be honest—if you’re making a call today, you might be re-making it tomorrow at 2 a.m. when someone decides to exempt Azerbaijan from cotton tariffs.

When I’m not losing sleep trying to figure out how to sell wool socks with a 938% tariff, I love playing games. Strategy games. And one of the marks of a great player is knowing when to wait—when to hold back on committing to a plan until the last possible moment. Not out of indecision, but because timing is part of the game.

And I’ve realized: I can’t control the trade policy game. But I can control when I place my pieces on the board.

So I’m taking a stand: I’m not making any big decisions unless I absolutely have to. And I suggest you do the same—or you’ll run out of decision-making stamina before you even get to the stuff that really matters.

If you’re a brand that just emailed all your dealers with pricing six months before the product ships? Cool. Just make sure you’re ready to send another email next week. Because only one of those emails is going to matter—the one with the prices you actually ship at. So do us all a favor: hold off until that one’s ready.

Of course, eventually, you will have to send that pricing email. When you do, you have two choices:

- Guarantee your pricing no matter what.

- Be upfront that prices may change if, say, a cable news segment lights up the next round of policy whiplash.

What you don’t get to do is pretend both are true. You can’t be “locked in” and “flexible.” That’s not strategy—that’s chaos.

This brings me to one final point: I’m hearing a lot of push from brands for earlier order deadlines. I get it. But here’s my counteroffer: don’t ask for preseason orders until the day you can guarantee that pricing won’t change between order and delivery.

If you can’t promise that? Then have the grace to let us wait.

Wes Allen is the Principal at Sunlight Sports in Cody, WY. Follow him on LinkedIn for more insights into the outdoor specialty retail world.