Adam Gerken swept the floor of the Tactics shop in Bend, Oregon, one last time this fall and handed off the keys. He had moved to Bend from Seattle in 2016 to open that store, Tactics’ first new location in 15 years.
Gerken, former Retail Director at Tactics, went on to open the Eugene, Oregon-based retailer’s Portland shop in 2019 and its Seattle shop in 2024. He left the company Oct. 15 in an exit he said was mutually agreed upon.
With Bend closed, Gerken said Tactics has one store left, in Portland, alongside its website.
A Model Built Around the Website
Tactics started online. Its founders launched Snowtraders.com in the late 1990s, and it became Tactics in 2001. E-commerce made up 88% of sales in 2019, the founders told SESO in a previous interview. It was a high-volume and important account for skate and snowboard brands.
Before joining Tactics, Gerken was a partner in the well-respected Seattle shop Snowboard Connection before it closed. Tactics co-founders and former owners Matt Patton and Bob Chandler later signed a lease in Bend, where Gerken had already hoped to move.
Gerken said he took the Tactics job because the company backed its shops with a strong website.
“The stores need to be additive, but they don’t need to make tons of money,” Gerken said. “They need to be a community center and a locus and a place that drives sales to the website as well as sales to the store.”
He pointed to Evo as another retailer that has figured out the same model.
“The core retail experience for snowboarding is super important to me, and if I can’t make it work on my own, maybe I can make it work in this model,” he said.
Boom Years, Then a Reset
TSI Holdings, a Japan-based public company, acquired Tactics in April 2020, at the start of the COVID pandemic. Sales took off.
“It was unbelievable how much business we were doing,” Gerken said.
The company hired a large group of talented people and invested in stores and events. When the COVID boom slowed, spending kept going, however.
Marc Roca, owner of skate shoe brand Lakai, bought Tactics from TSI Holdings in 2025. Roca, who has a background in private equity and e-commerce, told SESO at the time that Tactics lost money in 2024.
“It would be incorrect to say that when Marc bought the company, it was in perfect condition, and he ran it into the ground,” Gerken said. “We were spending too much money (under TSI ownership), just like a lot of people were post-COVID.”
At the time of the deal, Roca told SESO he planned to raise growth capital and open more stores, and said the skate industry needed more retailers.
Gerken said Roca’s focus turned to margins. Gerken agreed the economics are difficult.
“This is a very hard business, and the margins do suck,” he said.
Gerken said plans often changed from one week to the next under the new ownership, while people who cared about the company were laid off or left.
“The only reason I’ve been here this long is because I’ve been trying to preserve jobs,” he said.
Closing Seattle and Bend
One of the first stores to close under the new ownership was Seattle, a 5,000-square-foot shop in the Ballard neighborhood, in its second year. TSI had put $250,000 into its buildout, Gerken said.
Gerken had projected the Seattle shop would turn a profit in year two at best, with year three more likely. That second year brought what he said was the worst winter he has seen in the Northwest since he arrived.
Bend was a different case. Gerken said it was the chain’s top store for sales per square foot and for traffic, with roughly four times the foot traffic of the Eugene shop. He called its downtown spot one of the most sought-after pieces of retail real estate in Oregon.
The store ran in 2,800 square feet for about eight years. Tactics then took over a 1,600-square-foot suite next door, cut an opening between the two, and ran both for a couple of years.
This year, Gerken said, Roca wanted to close the Bend store outright. Gerken argued to keep it, and Roca instead told him to shrink to the 1,600-square-foot space, which meant dropping snow.
“I can’t do the same amount of business in 1,600 square feet as I did in 4,400,” Gerken said he told Roca.
Gerken spent two months on the transition, closing the opening, building new shelving and reducing staff.
As Tactics’ financial challenges continued, Gerken said the company did not pay its rent, and the landlord told the store to leave within days.
Tactics posted once on a Saturday morning that the store was closing, with everything 50% off. The line ran from the register to the back of the store for six hours, and the shop sold 158 skateboards that day.
“You couldn’t mobilize that kind of response with any amount of advertising,” Gerken said. “It’s because everybody was like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ and they all coalesced around the space.”
“It was a tough day,” he said. “It was emotional.”
Where Tactics Stands
Gerken spent his final weeks wrapping up projects and helping the manager of the Portland shop through the next transition.
The exit came out of a conversation with Roca. With one store left and a manager already running it, Gerken said, it made no sense for the company to keep paying him from Bend.
“I don’t think everything he’s done is wrong,” Gerken said. “I don’t think that every idea he had was a bad one. But he’s had too many ideas, and he doesn’t execute.”
(Editor’s note: SESO tried to reach Roca for comment and was unsuccessful. You can read our previous interview with him here.)
Still, Gerken said the past stretch has been hard.
“This has been deeply distressing for me,” Gerken said. “I’ve done as best I can. I’m not perfect, but at the end of the day, some of Marc’s ideas were novel and interesting, but many of them missed the mark.
“I wish he had leaned more on the experienced people in the room, me included. More than 100 people have lost their jobs at the company. These are good people, some with more than 20 years at Tactics. Vendors have also lost business they had forecasted, and that hits their sales reps directly, too. It’s really sad that it went down this way.
“I really hope that the website and the Portland shop can find a way to find their footing and keep this cool company going,” he added.
What Core Retail Needs Now
Gerken said he would not open his own shop in Bend.
“I just don’t know if I understand the model that works anymore without the backing of a (high-volume) website,” Gerken said. “Now that doesn’t mean there’s not a model. It’s just not a model that I understand.”
His goal since his Snowboard Connection years has been a shop with something for every snowboarder at every level. He estimates that would take $500,000 to $750,000 to get off the ground.
“That’s a big undertaking,” he said. “It’s hard to do, and it’s hard to do well.”
Gerken said Tactics still has a great name, and he would welcome a new buyer.
“What I would love is if someone were to read this article and decide they should buy Tactics because it can only get better,” he said.
Doors Close, Doors Open
Gerken said he does not know what he will do next and is not worried about it.
“I feel like I should be very nervous,” he said. “I’m just not. I really do believe doors close, doors open.”
He hopes others in core retail can take something from his decade at Tactics.
“If people can learn from my experience and mistakes, that’d be great,” Gerken said. “And maybe someone will figure out how to open a core store better because of it.”
