The 2026 Outdoor Brand Report Card! Plus: 118 Years of Paragon Sports

Today on Outdoor Unfiltered Eoin Comerford breaks down the results of his ongoing Brand-Retailer Partnership Score, grading 32 leading outdoor brands including Black Diamond, HOK On, The North Face, Patagonia, and more on how well they support their dealer networks versus pushing D2C discounts.

Then Eoin sits down with Zach Blank, fourth-generation CEO of Paragon Sports, the iconic Manhattan sports and outdoor store founded in 1908. Zach talks through Paragon's history, leading the business through COVID, the chaos of a Knicks playoff run and the World Cup hitting New York, and what the store looks for in brand partners including Nike, Arc'teryx, Mitchell & Ness, Yonex, and emerging women's trail brands like Hikerkind, Scenic, and Half Days. This episode is brought to you by ISPO and Crux Retail.

Show Notes

0:00 — Episode preview: retailer partnership scores and this week's guest, Zach Blank of Paragon Sports.

0:21 — Show intro and host background.

0:50 — How the Retailer Partnership Score is calculated.

2:03 — The April score spike and a season with zero homepage sale messages.

2:58 — Sale messaging creeps back in ahead of Labor Day.

3:45 — Year-over-year score trends across all 32 brands.

4:44 — Product page dealer promotion sees the biggest gains.

5:32 — Discount orientation stays flat despite dealer-support gains.

6:47 — More brands drop prominent sale navigation from their top nav.