Fourteen months after it opened, an Outdoor Gear Exchange satellite store in Essex is set to close next month. The popular business, which turns 30 this year, will instead refocus on its flagship store in downtown Burlington and online at GearX.com.
Splitting staff, inventory and time between the Essex and Burlington outlets “just couldn’t provide the full brand experience,” said Marc Sherman, the store’s president.
Shoppers looking for the entire Outdoor Gear Exchange service and selection were not finding it at the Essex store, Sherman said, and he was concerned that was “somehow chipping away at our brand identity instead of enhancing it.”
Sherman plans to close the 5,000 square-feet of retail space that opened at the Essex Experience in November 2023 as an “augmentation” effective Feb. 17. No staff cuts are expected.
“It was a success. It just isn’t where we feel our energy is best focused right now,” Sherman said. “We really enjoyed being in Essex and our customers enjoyed having us in Essex.”
With 77 people currently on the company payroll, the Essex store is typically staffed by two to three. If any of them are unavailable, the business has to pull staff from Burlington. Inventory and staff in Essex will be relocated to the busier 50,000-square-foot Church Street store.
The 2023 expansion to Essex came as Sherman planned what he described at the time as a “compression” of its Burlington business. In an interview with VTDigger then, he cited a loss of downtown traffic due to the pandemic and years of delays at the adjacent CityPlace development. At the time, several businesses were considering leaving the city, an economic development official told VTDigger.
Since then, Sherman said Tuesday, business at the flagship outlet downtown “has stabilized and has begun to move in the right direction.” He said he hopes the renewed focus on the downtown store would support Burlington and the local economy.
Outdoor Gear Exchange also plans to continue its seasonal operation at the MadBush Falls lodge in Waitsfield, called The Riders Outpost. It’s set to reopen in April, according to a press release.
“It’s become a real hub for the mountain biking community there,” Sherman said.
Emma Greenwood, a manager at Madbush Falls, said the seasonal shop has been a boon for their visitors by providing reliable gear and tuneups locally — as well as a community of “awesome workers.”
“People love the way that they’ve set up their shop to have more of a hands-on, visual experience of what it looks like when their bike is being tuned up,” she said.
What started out in a small 800-square-foot space on Main Street in Burlington three decades ago is now a well-known business serving the Vermont outdoor community, including partnerships with other Vermont staples such Skida and Slopeside Syrup.
Outdoor Gear Exchange has been “an essential fixture” of Vermont’s outdoor ecosystem, according to Corinne Prevot, the founder of Skida, headquartered in Burlington. “Especially when our industry is so adjacent to the environment, I’m grateful to have this offering in a world of mass-production,” she said in an email.
Besides counting on OGE’s bike and ski service department to keep her gear in prime condition, Prevot said she appreciates the 13-plus year partnership that helped expose and grow her small business in the Vermont outdoor community.
Sherman was 29, he said, when he moved from New York to Vermont and worked in marketing for Vermont Teddy Bear before he started the business.
“I decided that I was interested in focusing on my own interests and my own dreams, instead of those in the businesses I was working for at the time, and I sought to build a community within the business and within town around the things that I love to do — hiking, backpacking, climbing, skiing, paddling, etc.,” he said.
Sherman modeled the business on a California new and used outdoor gear outlet called Wilderness Exchange that worked much the way Sherman’s now does. The owner generously shared contacts, information and even a business plan, he said. It went out of business in 2010.
“And that was it. I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Sherman said with a chuckle. “I’m still not sure I know what I’m doing.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Outdoor Gear Exchange to close Essex outlet, refocus on Burlington flagship store.