5 Trends Shaping The Running Event (And How Retailers Are Preparing)

As the run specialty community heads to San Antonio for The Running Event, retailers will be doing more than discovering brands and products. They will be making buying decisions for the seasons ahead while navigating a changing customer base, tighter inventory discipline and growing pressure to protect margin.

Whether you’re finalizing your itinerary for San Antonio or looking for tactical insights to apply in-store today, here are five topics that are top of mind for run specialty retailers—and actionable strategies to navigate them.

• Balancing core brands with challengers on the shoe wall
• Demand for accessories and apparel is heating up
• Smarter stock control becomes a profit lever
• New consumer demographics enter the chat
• Turning community engagement into a commercial advantage

1. The shoe wall is getting more strategic

With challenger footwear brands surging in popularity alongside industry giants, shoe wall real estate has never been more competitive. Retailers face a delicate balancing act between keeping inventory fresh to capture emerging demand, and protecting relationships with the legacy brands that drive core volume.

Instead of locking up 100% of their Open-to-Buy (OTB) budget in pre-season futures commitments, an increasing number of buyers are maintaining an OTB cash buffer to allow them to jump on mid-season at-once reorders for breakout models.

Executing this strategy effectively requires granular data. Variant-level reports can help teams analyze sell-through velocity down to the exact size, width and colorway, ensuring every brand earns its shelf space based on margin contribution. 

2. Accessories and apparel are back in focus

Footwear remains the foundation of run specialty, but between wholesale pricing structures and inbound freight, gross margins can leave something to be desired. Accessories and apparel are bright spots: the Running Industry Association reported 11 consecutive months of accessories growth and six months of apparel growth through mid-2026. 

To boost overall store profitability, many buyers at TRE will be on the hunt for running adjacent, high-margin products—like technical socks, insoles, recovery gear and curated soft goods—that can extend a shoe sale into a more complete purchase.

Bundling strategies and tracking cross-category sales metrics by employee, managers can gamify staff performance and turn the fit stool into an active profit center.

3. Smarter stock control is becoming a profit lever

With operating costs rising across everything from labor to rent, top-line revenue isn’t enough to ensure profitability anymore. To stay in the black, run retailers are turning their attention to plugging silent profit leaks by taking an active, data-first approach to how they buy, hold and move stock.

Buying based on actual demand

Moving away from guesswork and historical habit is the first line of margin defense. By analyzing sales data and local size-run velocity, buyers can align pre-season commitments with true customer demand and reduce the risk of over-ordering risky colorways or edge sizes that eventually force heavy markdowns. 

Leveraging platforms with AI-powered insights and analytics helps buyers identify style, size and color velocity patterns, ensuring purchase orders reflect true demand curves rather than guesswork.

Ordering for agility 

Instead of committing entire seasonal budgets to upfront orders, many running shops are placing smaller initial orders and relying on agile, in-season replenishment where possible. Keeping order sizes lean reduces storage overhead and leaves room to pivot toward high-demand models mid-season. 

Many modern inventory systems enable agile ordering with automated reorder thresholds on core SKUs, automatically generating purchase orders the moment stock hits a pred-determined threshold.

Flagging and clearing lagging stock early

One of the costliest mistakes an independent retailer can make is holding stagnant footwear in hopes that it will sell at full price next season. Trapped inventory is trapped capital. A small, early intervention is often easier to recover from than a deep end-of-season markdown—especially when old inventory prevents a retailer from buying into current demand.

POS data and analytics like aging inventory reports allow retailers to spot slow-moving SKUs faster, while automated inventory workflows help ensure stagnant wall stock is cleared long before it hits the clearance bin. 

4. The run consumer is expanding

The demographic profile of the run specialty customer is changing fast. Today, run specialty retail sits at the intersection of performance running, hiking, recovery and everyday active wear. 

Increasingly, this shift is driven by a younger, highly engaged demographic: over the past 12 months, two-thirds of the growth in adult running shoe sales came from consumers under 35.

Capturing a wider variety of run consumers means evolving fit-stool messaging—focusing on daily standing comfort, arch support and trail versatility—so walkers, everyday wearers and younger consumers feel welcome rather than intimidated. 

Younger, digital-native shoppers also want to do their research, price compare, and confirm local inventory on their phones before stepping inside the store, making omnichannel tools essential to turning this new market into revenue.

5. Community is becoming a commercial advantage

Run clubs, races, youth programs and training groups have exploded, serving as massive foot-traffic engines for local shops. However, as these programs scale from 20 to potentially hundreds of runners, store operators are running into major operational hurdles around liability, route safety and permits.

Community programs need to be both legally protected and drive revenue for the store. Waivers, run-leader safety protocols and structured post-run programming can help to convert casual group runners into paying store clients.

By using integrated customer relationship management (CRM) and loyalty tools to handle registrations and check-ins, stores can easily capture runner contact details, segment their community and send targeted communications that bring club members and event attendees back to the register.

From the show floor to the sales floor

Among the topics that are top of mind ahead of TRE this year, few matter more to run specialty retailers than boosting operational efficiency and speed. 

A great product creates real value when it can move quickly from a line showing to an accurate purchase order, then into the hands of customers. Connected wholesale and retail workflows can reduce manual product entry, keep costs and inventory data current, and give retailers a clearer view of what to reorder.

At TRE 2026, visit Lightspeed at booth #5067 to see how Lightspeed Wholesale connects NuORDER buying with Lightspeed POS—from sourcing and purchase orders to inventory and checkout.

Can’t wait for the show? Get in touch to schedule a live demo.