Why Eddie Bauer Failed & The OIA Rendezvous Recap Plus: Has Athleisure Finally Peaked?
- 2 hours ago
- 23 min read
In this episode of Outdoor Unfiltered, host and former CEO Eoin Comerford dissects the collapse of Eddie Bauer and the "vampire" licensing model that is hollowing out iconic brands.
Eoin also takes a hard look at the slowdown of athleisure, exploring whether the category has reached peak saturation and what outdoor brands can learn from the rise of Vuori and Alo Yoga.
Later in the show, Kent Ebersole, President of the Outdoor Industry Association, joins the podcast to discuss the reboot of OIA Rendezvous 2026, where industry leaders gathered to tackle shared challenges and rebuild collaboration across the outdoor community.
Timestamps
0:00 – 1:07 | Introduction Eoin introduces the episode's themes: Eddie Bauer's retail closure and the state of the athleisure market.
1:08 – 4:40 | The Eddie Bauer "Vampire" Model A breakdown of Eddie Bauer’s third bankruptcy and how Authentic Brands Group’s licensing model sucks brands drink leaving debt-laden "husks."
4:41 – 8:43 | Has Athleisure Peaked? Analysis of Lululemon and Athleta’s struggles versus the rise of Vuori and Alo Yoga. Eoin discusses why "technical stories" are failing while comfort and social-media-driven "cool factors" are winning.
8:44 – 11:45 | The OIA Rendezvous 2026 Recap Kent Ebersole joins to discuss the reboot of the OIA Rendezvous in Denver and the importance of leadership coming together to solve shared industry challenges.
11:46 – 14:32 | Key Takeaways from the Summit Discussion on the impact of AI (with insights from Microsoft), financial stress on P&Ls, and the core pillars of sustainability and participation.
14:33 – 17:15 | The Soul of the Industry Highlights from Ryan Gellert (Patagonia) and Neil Fisk (Black Diamond) on innovation, stewardship, and the "energy in the room" when the industry collaborates.
17:16 – 20:30 | What’s Next for OIA? Kent outlines the call to action, the upcoming April Town Hall, and why the Rendezvous will likely remain an intimate, leadership-focused annual event rather than a massive trade show.
20:31 – End | Closing Remarks How to stay involved with the OIA and where to follow the podcast for future updates.
Outdoor Unfiltered goes beyond the headlines to explain what’s happening in the outdoor industry and why it matters.
Connect with Eoin:Â https://www.linkedin.com/in/eoincomerford/
Email the show: outdoorunfilteredpod@gmail.com
Outdoor Unfiltered is a production of Rock Fight, LLC.
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Episode Transcript:
Eoin Comerford
00:00:08.160 - 00:11:13.090
Welcome to Outdoor Unfiltered, where we dig beyond the PR speak to see what's really going on in the outdoor industry. Not just what happened, but why it happened and why it matters.
I'm Owen Comerford, a former CEO, advisor to outdoor brands and consigliere to the rock fight. Today we'll be talking about why Eddie Bauer is closing their stores and and has athleisure peaked.
Then later in the show, I'll be joined by Kent Ebersole, president of the Outdoor Industry association, to hear how things went at the reboot of OIA Rendezvous that took place in Denver last week. But before we get into it, I'd like to ask for your support. We are a new podcast.
This is episode four, so your downloads follows and five star reviews really mean a lot. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the pod. So please reach out to me on LinkedIn.
That's Owen E O I N Comerford or, or just email outdoor unfiltered podmail.com all right, let's get into it with the Eddie Bauer bankruptcy, but really how? Active brands and the whole licensing model is broken and making a mess of the outdoor active industry. So first the backstory.
Eddie Bauer's North American retail operation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month and is closing its 175 stores while seeking a sale. Now, of course, Eddie Bauer is an iconic outdoor brand, started in 1920, but let's face it, it's kind of had its ups and downs over the years.
This isn't its first bankruptcy, it isn't actually its second bankruptcy. It actually is its third, having also filed back in 2003 and in 2009. But really since 09 there have been some good times.
So actually Neil Fisk, currently doing a great job as the president of of Black diamond, was president of Eddie Bauer for a time here around the 2010 and 2011 timeframe and really looked to bring back some of the authenticity to the brand. Launching First Ascent, for example. And actually when I was at Moosejaw, we helped with that launch.
So we sold First Ascent as a brand to help it reach a wider audience. And then you've had leaders like Damian Huang, who went on to head up Cotopaxi.
So they've had some good leaders over the years, but obviously we've more recently have fallen into hard times and ultimately were sold to authentic brands, which is sort of the vampire of the industry where they're going to take a brand and milk it for all it's worth and leave the husk behind.
And in this case the husk is going to be the E commerce and wholesale businesses which they carved out just to leave the bad bank, so to speak, which is the retail business.
But those wholesale and E commerce business, they've carved them out and licensed them to a new company but, but left all the crap and all the debt with the old licensee who has all the lease obligations, et cetera. So supposedly they're trying to sell that piece of the business. I just don't see that happening. Right.
Because how are you going to make a business out of it when you're trying to run all these stores but you're basically having to buy the product at wholesale from a different entity? I don't think it's going to happen.
And ultimately, you know, I'm not going to pretend that Eddie Bauer is, is really still a core outdoor brand that the outdoor industry has to care about a lot. Right. I mean, you know, it's been a minute since it was that it's really become kind of an outdoorsy gap. Right.
It's just a mall based, outdoorsy adjacent brand. But let's get to the real story here, which is the whole Authentic Brands model and just the structural problems that exist with this model.
The name Authentic Brands is quite ironic, I guess because it really robs a brand of its authenticity. Basically what they do is they'll take the brand and they will just license it out to really the highest bidder for different categories.
So you'll have brands like Billabong or some of these other surf brands that they own, where you'll have one licensee that does sportswear, one that does swimwear, one that does footwear.
How is it possible to be cohesive and in your brand messaging, let alone authentic, when you've got three, four, five, six different companies that are producing and selling and designing products for those brands? It just doesn't really work.
And then, you know, from a purely financial standpoint, the licensing fees demanded by Authentic really undermine the profitability of these companies. Right. I mean it's, I think, as we know in the industry, margins are tight. Right.
It's tough to make more than 5%, let alone 10% of net income when you're paying a 6%, let's say, licensing fee. That is a real burden and makes it really tough.
And actually looking deeper into this model with Eddie Bauer, not only does Authentiq have licensing fees, but they also have these minimum guaranteed payments that the licensee has to make regardless of how much product they sell. And so when you're in a case of Eddie Bauer as an example, where their sales were dropping. They dropped almost 20% over three years.
Those minimum fees become really, really a big problem. And at the same time, they're just larding up these companies with debt.
At filing, Eddie Bauer had $1.6 billion worth of debt, which is just an incredible amount of debt for a company that had annual sales of barely over $600 million. So really, really tough model and tough end for a really iconic brand. So Eddie Bauer, is it really an outdoor brand?
You can make your own judgment there, but there are implications here for the wider industry. We saw what happened when the licensed brand model took over a large portion of the brands in the surf industry.
And what a complete shit show that was last year. So here's hoping that we don't see the same thing happen in the outdoor industry.
Okay, for our next topic, I'd like to take a look at the Athleisure category. Now, recent results from industry stalwarts are showing a lot of strain.
You've got Lululemon, who just announced their Q4 results with North American comp sales down 2% and gross margins off 550 basis points, while Athleta continued its years long struggles with sales down 10%. So it really raises the question, have we reached peak Athleisure? Basically saturation, I would say.
While there is still a lot of potential growth internationally, the answer for the US Market is maybe especially if your core product leans more technical than lifestyle.
The upper middle market, long dominated by Lululemon and Athleta, have been attacked from the low end by mass players like H and M or Fabletics, and then on the high end by more lifestyle fashion players like Aloe Yoga and Viori. So you may be asking, okay, if this is an outdoor industry pod, why are we talking about Athleisure? Well, outdoor retailers sell a lot of athleisure.
Most specialty stores that I know that sell Viori as an example. It's one of their top brands.
Also, you've got a lot of our quote unquote core outdoor brands, Prana, North Face, Patagonia, et cetera, that actually have quite a bit of athleisure in their assortment. And then finally you've got companies like Wolverine Worldwide, who is the parent of Merrell, who owns a yoga brand called Sweaty Betty.
So it's definitely woven into our industry here.
But I mean, I think the other reason that the outer category should look at what's happening in Athleisure is because I think we can learn from the shifts taking place in Athleisure and why specifically Alo Yoga and Vuori are taking so much share. Okay, so let's start with innovation. For a long time, Lululemon has focused their innovation on technical fabric stories.
But it's turning out that the customer really doesn't care about technical fabric stories, compression, four way stretch, et cetera, or what they care about is the incredible softness and comfort of a Viori or the fashion first silhouettes of an Aloe. That's what they care about. Second thing is the cool factor.
So both Viori and Aloe have really embraced influencer marketing and social media to drive their rise, while Lululemon has really continued to lean more on the classic brand ambassador approach and really only in that core yoga space. Now, I'm not suggesting that the outdoor industry should abandon their athlete programs. Absolutely not.
But I would say that most brands out there really need to raise their social games exponentially, embracing UGC and Influencers that are driving today's buying cycles.
I can't tell you how many outdoor brands that I see that they're trying to advertise on meta with these carefully crafted brand ads and it just doesn't work. Okay. People just scroll right by them. They see it's an ad, they scroll right by. They do not engage. Really.
Brands have to understand that you have to have ads, but they have to look endemic to the platform. Right? They have to look like everything else that's on the platform where people are consuming this content.
And whether that be UGC or influencer created content or just a different type of advertising that hasn't gone through three levels of brand review, that is what you need if you're going to connect with today's consumer. The third thing I would say is having just a wider lifestyle appeal.
So both Fiori and Aloe make products that people want to be seen in outside of the gym because they're comfortable and they think they make them look cool. Right now, from an outdoor apparel lens, that means making products with more comfort, more versatility and more style.
Like you take a look at emerging brands right now, like scenic or hikerkind, see what they're doing.
They are filling a void that is being left by these traditional core brands that are sticking to the same silhouettes, sticking to the same patterns, the same boring colorways, and not really reaching out to that wider customer.
So, you know, I can just hear some folks that are screaming and saying, well, this sounds like we're moving away from the quote unquote core Right, Yeah, maybe a little bit.
But the reality is that our industry needs to embrace these new market realities or slowly fade back to just serving the core, which, oh, by the way, accounts for less than 20% of today's industry. Okay, it's time to welcome this week's guest, Kent Ebersole, president of the Outdoor Industry Association, AKA oia. Kent, welcome to the pod.
Kent Ebersole
00:11:13.690 - 00:11:15.050
Thanks. Great to be here.
Eoin Comerford
00:11:15.530 - 00:11:20.810
How are you feeling? Have you caught up on sleep now that Rendezvous 2026 is officially in the books?
Kent Ebersole
00:11:21.530 - 00:11:34.730
Sleep and food. Food just becomes a weird thing when you're like, on, like from 6 in the morning to 10 at night. It just.
You eat when you can and you're not always hungry. So I've caught up on food last night and at the airport.
Eoin Comerford
00:11:35.530 - 00:11:45.500
Now, to those of our listeners that aren't familiar, can you Describe what Rendezvous 2026 was all about? Like, you know, attendance, what the goals were, that kind of thing?
Kent Ebersole
00:11:46.380 - 00:12:35.640
Sure.
This started a couple of years ago, and it really, truly started with Nora Stoll from Gore Tex Gore and Associates and talking to us about, let's get back. As a group of leadership people in the industry. She and I continued to talk, and it turned into this moment at Rendezvous a couple days ago.
And it was intended to be, and it turned out to be a space in which leaders can come together and talk to each other. Because we all have the same either problems or the challenges in the industry. We all look at them and we want to solve them.
And so the problems we have or the challenges that the industry face, we're all dealing with it. How do we bring a varied group of people together to tackle those issues? And that's what it turned out to be.
Eoin Comerford
00:12:36.120 - 00:12:40.520
So could you give me an idea how many attendants, what kind of constituencies were represented?
Kent Ebersole
00:12:41.200 - 00:13:34.420
Right.
So it's a great question because when you start off and go, hey, let's have this leadership event and where people can come together and talk, you don't know how many. You know, first of all, you don't know how many are going to show up. And second of all, you gotta find space. Right.
And so we were lucky enough to have Smartwell Ultra North Face came forward and they and VF Said, we'll open up our doors for you. So that was a huge relief to have that. But it also meant that the space that they have was the limitations of what we could do.
And that space turned out to be about 75 people. I think at the end of the day, we probably had about 90 in the room.
There was probably 10 or 15 standing around the edges, some of the speakers and some of the staff. The team, the OA team. So about 90 people in the room and it was at capacity. We couldn't have put another person in the room.
Eoin Comerford
00:13:34.740 - 00:13:51.860
And I mean, I've talked to a few folks that were there and it was, it was quite a diverse group. It wasn't just brand presidents, although there were lots of those folks too. But I talked to a major rep group that was.
Represented some PR folks, folks on the retailer side. So it really was a cross section of the industry.
Kent Ebersole
00:13:52.820 - 00:14:18.090
Tried to be, I think, I think we can always get better at that and more intentional at that, but tried to make it so that there were voices in the room. You know, everybody had an opportunity to talk.
I think one of the things that we can do better is we can be more intentional about allowing voices to percolate up. But there were opportunities to talk for all, all those diverse groups. We tried really hard to make it varied. Gotcha.
Eoin Comerford
00:14:18.170 - 00:14:25.370
So I did actually talk to some folks. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit you here with some of the quotes. All right. So, you know, hold onto your hat.
Kent Ebersole
00:14:25.370 - 00:14:25.930
Okay.
Eoin Comerford
00:14:26.780 - 00:15:12.110
So a long time industry PR exec said the rendezvous is back big time. Okay. Somebody from a major sales rep group said it was a great event for everyone to get together.
And then these are some quotes from a few different brand CEOs and presidents mostly.
I think it provided a forum for senior leaders in the industry to compare notes on how we're all managing through the challenges of the past years and to continue rebuilding a sense of shared purpose, community, which I think we've all been lacking since COVID Another one said it laid a good groundwork for the next session. So sounds like there might be another one.
And felt a little bit like a call to arms for the industry to return to its collaborative roots across many areas. So good stuff there.
Kent Ebersole
00:15:12.910 - 00:15:52.950
Yeah, it is good. I mean, I'm humbled by that. The team, the OA team in which every single one of us was involved in this, we're super humbled by this.
We're also cognizant that we have to continue listening and opening that door wide, because I do think there will be another one. But I don't think it's going to be exactly like this one. I think it's going to evolve and I think it can get better.
We've identified things where we can get better and we really appreciate the kind words, but we're humbled and we also think and know that that Energy was in the room, and. And if we can get energy in the room, there's value that we can deliver.
Eoin Comerford
00:15:53.750 - 00:16:01.830
So what were some of the topics that you hit on? Because I know you had sort of a set of speakers or panels or what have you. What were some of those things that you hit on?
Kent Ebersole
00:16:02.630 - 00:17:09.790
I'd kind of divide it into two categories. The first category are areas in which we believe there's challenges in the industry, but it might not be our core expertise.
So we brought those people in. And then the second area were reflective of our pillars. Our core pillars.
They are our core pillars because as we engage with members, they continue to say, help us here, guide us here, or lead us here. So the first half of the day was those areas in which there are challenges that are beyond our core capacity.
So AI, we had Jeffrey Strausser from Microsoft come in and talk about AI. And then we know these last couple years have been extremely difficult. I mean, just on your P and L, your finances, that.
Managing your business, the finances, your business. So we had a couple people that are experts in financial management and somebody from Perkins Cooey come in.
And so Baird and Pulhan Loki, and they came in to talk about the impact of the financial stress on companies. So that was the first part of the morning. And then we went into the core pillars, which is participation, sustainability, and public lands.
Eoin Comerford
00:17:10.280 - 00:17:10.760
Gotcha.
Kent Ebersole
00:17:10.760 - 00:17:16.440
Some of that went into different areas, but for the most part, those three core pillars we covered.
Eoin Comerford
00:17:17.000 - 00:17:25.160
So of those different topic areas, were there one or two that really kind of drove the most discussion or resonance, maybe with the audience?
Kent Ebersole
00:17:26.680 - 00:19:43.860
It's interesting. We're doing a survey and we'll see what the feedback says. But I kind of.
Our team, we stood at the back of the room and tried to gauge that engagement and what we call gravity. You know, when it feels like the gravity's dropping and then we're like, oh, this is really low in any of those three topics.
When there was a Q and A opportunity, we probably. This is a learning point for us. We probably could have had those Q and A opportunities continue for much longer than they were.
So I'm pretty comfortable with the three pillars and the engagement and the questions and the ideas. And we could do this and we could do that. I mean, we got in to. In some situations, tactics of as an industry, we can get into this.
And I didn't really expect that. There were also other times, I think of.
I think I can publicly say this, but I think Neil Fisk, the CEO of Black diamond, was on a panel and he talked about a product and it just was, it really was neat to hear him talk about an innovation in a product that I think the whole room went, wow, that is pretty cool. Because the end consumer might go, oh, it's another duffel.
But the way they went about designing it and their designer and the way they went about putting it together, like, this is what we need to be talking about, this innovation and the impact on sustainability and the impact on everything they do. That's a cool moment. That's one of those moments that you walk away and say, that was neat. One more of those moments.
There was a lot of them, but one more of those moments. I had a really great opportunity to talk to Ryan Gellert from Patagonia in front of everybody for just a short amount of time.
But he was gracious to give us that time. And I think he brought it all back to the soul of the industry, the soul of stewardship.
And to me, that was one of those moments where it's just so great to have someone come in and say, you all are the soul of the industry. Don't forget that. Let's take some action, especially from, you know, a company, a brand that lives and breathes that every day.
I think we all care, but I think that galvanizes the whole room to say, great, we can do this.
Eoin Comerford
00:19:44.580 - 00:20:05.310
I did hear that about the public lands aspect and obviously TCA has been Conservation alliance, has been trying to rally brands there, but you know, in a, you know, zoom meeting type of world. Right. And it just, you know, I think it just is different when everyone's together in a room. You know, just in terms of the energy.
Kent Ebersole
00:20:06.270 - 00:20:38.230
I did hear that also.
And we had Paul Hendricks from TCA and Brian and both Paul talked about it a little bit about we have this group, how can we, how can we get more out of it? How can we make it more engaging? And my team certainly heard that.
And how can we rev this back up this public, help the people that are doing it and really bring it to head. And no accident that we have Tali Harrison back in our group right now who lives, eats and breathes public lands.
So pretty confident that's going to be on a to do list coming out of this.
Eoin Comerford
00:20:39.350 - 00:20:51.750
Speaking of your to do list, I know this was. It was a private event, right?
No media allowed, but will there be like a recap or something that's publicly stated, like, here are the things that are coming out of this?
Kent Ebersole
00:20:52.770 - 00:23:06.910
Yeah, I think that unless there's a call to action, year two of Rendezvous gets really difficult. So there has to be a call to action. What happens next? We as a team met already and we discussed it not in tactical terms, but in broader terms.
So I like the direction that the team is going. We put out a survey to everybody that was there, so we will pay attention. It was a simple survey, like, please answer it because it's only a minute.
So it'll have capacity to guide us. Right. But then we're also sending out personal emails to as many people as we can and asking for feedback.
I've already gotten, probably 10 people have given me feedback already. But we need specific feedback. Our plan is to. Oh, and by the way, three calls to action. There are three things that we're doing.
The fourth, the last hour of the event was breaking up into groups and then having those groups sort of bring, here's what our group thinks is. And we had nine different groups, groups come back together and give us a. Here's a 1, 2, 3.
We codified that and we're going to put that into play also. A lot of it was relatively similar, but there was a couple ideas that are like, we think this needs to happen. Okay, so tons of feedback.
We'll still take feedback. It'll take time to bring that all together. I think our plan is in the.
Towards the end of April, around the time we have our CAP summit, we will do a town hall and the town hall will be public so anybody can come. And we will have that conversation to everybody. Great. Then we'll take this call to action.
We'll take it back to the advisory councils that we have and that will inform the direction that we go. And it may not happen immediately, but our hopes and plan is, does this work with something we're already doing?
Do we need to go out and get help to do this? Do we put KPIs against that? And what are those KPIs against this?
And then lastly we'll come back to Switchback and we'll try to bring a larger group or anybody that wants to be in the room together to continue the conversation. Okay, so that gets us through half of a year and then, you know, then we have to do the work. Right.
And so that starts to inform what the next rendezvous is.
Eoin Comerford
00:23:07.790 - 00:23:17.550
Speaking of that next rendezvous, is it. Are we talking rendezvous, fall rendezvous 2027? I know, I know you just finished, but, but like, where's your head at?
Kent Ebersole
00:23:17.960 - 00:24:22.460
I think it takes a lot of time and energy for people to leave their office, leave their family, leave their home for a day and A half. We had a dinner and an event. I'm so cognizant of that that it just. You, you have to leave your company.
And generally people are not on their phone, you know, during there. And so your company still moves forward. It's still happening. You still have to. I think this is a once a year type event.
I think we can, we have other practitioner events and other participation or consumer events that we can lean on. But I think this is a once a year event. We like the spring or late winter. I guess this would be early spring, that time frame.
But that's one of the questions in the survey. I listen to the industry. The reason I like this time frame, I don't want to be in the buying cycle, buying and selling cycle.
Secondly, I kind of want it to be at the beginning of the year. So we have an entire year with which to move forward. I'm not against doing it in the fall, but I think it used to be in the fall. I don't really know.
I can't remember. I think it used to be in the fall. But we're gonna listen.
Eoin Comerford
00:24:22.700 - 00:24:34.220
The legend of rendezvous of old.
I think like most things, it's sort of morphed over the years into this, you know, mythical meeting that probably isn't anything like what it really was. But yeah, might be.
Kent Ebersole
00:24:34.220 - 00:25:46.590
I went to many of them. I do not see us moving into a situation where there's five or six hundred people here. And listen, I don't, I don't know where it goes.
Like, it's hard for me to imagine value and impact trying to please 600 people in a room. And so. And second of all, we're super cognizant of people's financial situations.
Like, I just know that there's still companies under stress here, right? And it may not resolve itself for a couple years, but, um.
And despite what the Supreme Court says about paying people back, I don't know when that's gonna happen. And so I think that we continue, we, we want to continue to do this in somebody else's living room because we can.
That generosity from VF this year, North Face and those brands helped us cut the cost and it allows us to keep it small. And so I think we'll continue for a couple years and see how much generosity is out there with other brands.
And as long as we can provide value and as long as we can provide that engagement at that high level and keep those gravity moments to a minimum, I'm pretty happy. It gets really hard to do that when you get 150, 200 people in a room.
Eoin Comerford
00:25:47.390 - 00:25:55.390
And not to be, I guess, elitist here, but I think it's important that you keep it at sort of that leadership level to have those sorts of conversations.
Kent Ebersole
00:25:56.110 - 00:27:08.330
I do, too. I'm well aware, though, that, I mean, this is really hard to look at a list and go, who's in and who's not. It's just difficult.
And I know there were people that approached us towards the very end because we did not advertise this and probably should have been in the room, but we just. We ran out of space.
Also, I say this, it can't become Davos, you know, you can't become the elite people in the room talking about what the other people are going to do. So, right. We have to have doers in the room. And that's really what it comes down to. Do you care and will you do something about this?
You could be a CEO or a president, and if you care and you want to do something about it, you have ways to do that. But in some cases, it might be another person in the room that reports to a CEO or a president, but is the one at that company that does it.
I get these things done. So we're small industry. We kind of know who those people are because they're engaged, you know, on a daily basis.
They talk to us about help here, do this, you know, and they're very vocal. But I know there's more people out there and we have to open that door, but we will be limited.
I don't know if that's a great answer for you, because I feel like I like, hey, it's got to be small, but we want to open the door.
Eoin Comerford
00:27:08.970 - 00:27:48.160
No, hey, it is a balance, right? Because if you get to five or six hundred people, you know, I think you lose that intimacy.
And, you know, one of the things I heard from a number of the. Of the folks that I talked to was that it was that gathering and that coming together.
That was, I guess, the core value, that the topics in the programming were great, but really, you know, it was the dinner before, it was the Q and A, and it was those breakout sessions and the chances just to share, I guess, war stories, if you will, around what's happening right now, that's really part of the value. And then coming out of that, that sense of togetherness and a shared commitment to do something about some of these bigger issues that we're facing.
Kent Ebersole
00:27:48.560 - 00:28:08.730
I will say those moments, the dinner, the lunch, I don't really know how good the food was. At dinner, for a wonderful setting. I don't really know how good the food or wine was. It didn't matter.
I think the conversation was a buzz and I think the tables were happy to keep the conversation going. I really enjoyed that. I felt it in the room. Like, this is good.
Eoin Comerford
00:28:09.210 - 00:28:28.780
Absolutely. Well, I think you are going to be dealing with some people with some FOMO coming out of this thing.
And so for those that want to try to make sure they get to it next year, obviously they need to make sure they're a member of oia. That's probably the step one to get on the invite list. When would the invites typically go out for something like this?
Kent Ebersole
00:28:29.660 - 00:29:39.130
If we do this again in like a February, March time frame. If we do this again. And by the way, I'd really like to have that resolved in the next 30 days. So that's part of the answer to your question.
If we have time to better plan, then it allows us to be more thoughtful, intentional about that invite. But here's the thing. It's really simple.
We tend to naturally gravitate towards the people with the loudest voice in the room through their engagement. It's not the people in the room that have the most money. There is a door open for people in the room that just get engaged.
We have advisor councils, we have committees, we have simple ways to get engaged at every level. And if.
If there's somebody that just feels like I can't get engaged or I can't get involved, they should just talk to me or any one of the leaders in each of the pillars because we'll figure out a way to do it. There's not a single person that cares about the industry that shouldn't find a way to get involved through oia.
Now, we do obviously get people to come in. I need help with this and we just don't have capacity for things that might be good things. Just don't have that capacity right now.
Eoin Comerford
00:29:39.130 - 00:29:56.110
So I was engaged with your team on SB707, the Extended Responsibility legislation out of California.
Was chatting, you know, was looking for where the outdoor industry stands, was on that and your team was on it and really was engaged in what's happening there. So that just a great resource.
Kent Ebersole
00:29:56.590 - 00:29:58.830
That's good. I'm proud of the team.
Eoin Comerford
00:29:58.910 - 00:30:06.750
All right, Kent, well, thank you for coming on and letting us know what happened at Rendezvous, as it sounds like it was a great event. And I guess we'll probably see you at TwitchBank.
Kent Ebersole
00:30:06.990 - 00:30:24.480
See, at TwitchBack, we'll have a town hall in April. I know that we looked at the date a few days ago and I wish I could tell you what it is but it conflicted with a couple other issues.
But it'll be around Cap Summit. But if anybody wants to Cap Summit, hit me up on that because we've got a lot of work to do with public lands and tariffs still.
Eoin Comerford
00:30:25.120 - 00:30:59.720
Okay, that's our show again. As a new pod, I'd really appreciate it if you would give us a follow and a five star review.
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If you'd like to reach out with your thoughts, guest ideas, sponsorship or whatever's on your mind, hit me up on LinkedIn or email outdoor unfilteredpodmail.com Outdoor Unfiltered is a production of Rock Fight LLC. For Kent Ebersole, I'm Owen Comerford. Thanks for listening. Hope to see you back here next week.