Whereas with this, you are getting some scale when you sell to the retailer, as you know, slightly lower gross margins, but overall pretty similar EBITDA contribution. So no major delta between the two.
Eric Wold: Thank you, helpful. And then just last question, you mentioned that some of the net sales outside the quarter was driven by retailers ordering earlier in the season than you saw last year. I guess, what do you think drove that and does that indicate anything around kind of more opportunities to unlock, open to buy dollars? And I guess, as you talk to the partners, are you getting any sense of optimism about return to kind of more normalize ordering patterns, or is that just something seasonally this year that we should be ready to?
Brian Murphy: Yeah. It’s a really good question, so Brian again here. I think it’s a few things. One is, you probably saw yourself that you were getting pinged earlier than usual with different promotions that retailers are running to try to draw on consumers and brands are doing the same thing. And I think the retailers looking around at each other really felt they had to get out ahead of that in anticipation. So we saw more interest from retailers earlier than we typically do to bring out product. That in combination with the fact we’ve got a stellar analytics team, sales ops team, that is constantly looking at our inventories in the channel. And while these retailers have undergone a lot of change, sometimes you need to prompt them and say, look, here’s where your inventories are at, and it would make sense if you want to hit the timing and based on what everybody else is doing, for you to make this buy, a little bit of FOMO, but it’s real.
They don’t want to miss the mark and they want to make sure they have every opportunity to get the most out of the consumer’s wallet. And so it’s really those two things. I think just observing what their peers were doing, promotions going out earlier than planned, some retailers having more inventory and wanting to get through that more quickly and seeing this as an opportune time to do that, and everybody kind of playing catch up from the retailer’s standpoint. So it really ramped up very, very quickly in terms of that interest which we were pleased to see. But as a result it led to, I guess, heading out of October we had more sales than we expected because of those orders.
Eric Wold: Perfect. Thank you.
Brian Murphy: Thanks Eric.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Matt Koranda with ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.
Matthew Koranda: Hey, guys. Sounds like maybe we are starting to get a little bit of restocking activity in the traditional channel just based on the POS comments that you made and some of the comments you made in the Q&A here. Just wanted to see if maybe you could unpack for us where we’re seeing the best lift in terms of brands for you guys or categories more broadly.
Brian Murphy: Yeah. Hey, Matt. Brian here. So really, if you look at outdoor lifestyle category versus shooting sports, outdoor lifestyle is outperforming, 60% of our sales in the quarter came from outdoor lifestyle. In particular, the brands and products that have what’s new, we alluded to it last quarter. It was our strong belief that as retailers were coming out of this trough and beginning to right-size inventory, seeing potential food traffic decline, really emphasizing what’s new. In fact, Academy had their call earlier today, which we obviously listened to, and that was one of the takeaways that I heard was, look, we need to be showing these consumers what’s new, getting them into our stores, and really separating ourselves from the pack.
You’re hearing that pretty consistently across the board, and so our outdoor lifestyle brands have, we’ve done a really good job of introducing, keeping that continuous pipeline of innovation. So we have seen as part of that as evidence, and I didn’t say this in the prepared remarks, but when we look at our POS data, it’s the higher-priced products, and most of those higher-priced products have come from recent product introductions, and that’s where we’re seeing some really good traction. So new products at higher ASPs, and I think that helps the retailer, obviously, make up for some of the lower traffic numbers. And then within shooting sports, pretty solid, I would say, results from our Marksman brands, Tipton, Wheeler, Frankford, Caldwell, and it’s got a very similar story there.
It’s new products, really shine bright in the quarter. And then aiming solutions, that just seems like a category right now that consumers and therefore dealers and retailers are just a little bit shy in kind of investing in a big way there. So it will come back. It always does. But right now, those are some of the takeaways that we have.
Matthew Koranda: Okay. That’s really helpful Brian. Thank you. And then I guess help us square that with the forward look that says, hey, we’re likely to get a little bit more promotional over the next couple of quarters. I guess with the newness and the innovation you bring, I would assume that would bring less discounting. So maybe just talk a little bit about sort of the planned promotional strategy that you have. It did sound like, I guess, to be fair, a little bit of it was more shooting sports related, but maybe just unpack it for us so we can understand what the puts and takes are there.
Brian Murphy: Yeah, Matt. This is Brian. I can start and then Andy, feel free to chime in. So I think the promotions that occurred in Q2, the way that everything kind of came together in a way, I think retailers were experiencing a little bit of FOMO (ph) and making sure that they had their incentives out earlier, and therefore placing those orders was, it’s really, really important, especially in the online channel with our e-commerce retailers, to capture that moment. Because if you capture that moment correctly, you see a lot of consumer pull-through in this current period of time, it gives you this nice sort of visibility for the rest of the year, for the most part. So this is a really critical time of the year to make sure that you’re front and center, in front of the consumer.
As they come back, they post reviews, and honestly, you just have relevancy. It’s a great billboard for that. So one, wanted to make sure that we were capturing that. So as we look in the second half of the year, will there be promotions? Certainly, there are going to be smart promotions, but I think it’s going to be a slightly different flavor than what we did here in the second quarter, which was very strategic, and really taking advantage of that trail that we’re really going after to stay in front of the consumer. So Andy, anything you want to add on the second half?
