Rick Brooks: I appreciate the question, Mitch. And it’s a good question. Skate is while it’s not our – anywhere closest to our biggest department, it’s an important department for kind of the essence of what we’re about. And it’s also, I think, the young skate kid continues to kind of lead that young person, both male and female, who like the lead on trend. And so that’s particularly why I think that customer is so important to us. And so I get – I’ll add a little bit more color to what you said because as you know well, right, we had a huge state run up in the first part of the 2010 running all the way up there. We had the big long board trend that got boomed up there, and then it all collapsed in ’15 and ’16. And then we had some fallow years.
And then literally in February ’19, the skate cycle took off every war for us around the globe. We couldn’t even actually pin down what it was. But we had a huge year in skate hardgoods in 2019. We’re up about close to 50% over 2018 and 2019. And then with the pandemic, much like with bikes, I think we move demand for skate hard goods forward. And I think this did accelerate the women’s participation in skateboarding. But I think a lot of demand got moved forward, and we ran up close to another 50% gain in 2020. Then even with the stimulus spending in 2021, which, as we all know, was gigantic for our business, and we ran up 20-plus percent in 2021, skate hardgoods declined. And that reflects the nature of, I think, what you’re talking about, Mitch, the impact of the pandemic on skate hardgoods.
And you layer all of that over the fact that I think we own more share than ever in the skate hardgoods world in the specialty retail world of skate hardgoods. I think we own the biggest share that there is out there today. And we peaked at our highest share, I think it was in 2020, Chris ?
Chris Work: Yes. At 19%.
Rick Brooks: 19% of sales. That we never got close to that, but that speaks again to the demand pull forward that happened during the pandemic. Now today, and I think we’re going to forecast this year, I won’t give you the exact percentage, but I do think that as we forecast the decline with a decline in ’21 despite stimulus decline in ’22 in ’23, which have been significant and I think even outsized for our sales declines. I think we’re very close to – as you’re suggesting, Mitch, the lowest penetration may be an all-time low. In skate hardgoods as penetration of our mix. Now that said, finding the bottom will be really good here because we don’t have to drag right, of the big declines we’ve taken over the last three years.
So finding the bottom, there’s just flat a benefit in that. But our experience is that we’ll probably bounce along the bottom for a couple of years before we see it next – for 12, 18, 24 months before we see the next upcycle would be what our experience skate hardgoods would tell us.
Mitch Kummetz: All right. Thanks again.
Rick Brooks: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. I’m showing no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Rick Brooks for any closing remarks.
Rick Brooks: All right. As always, we always appreciate your interest in what’s happening here in our business. So we thank you all, and we wish you the best for a great holiday season. We’ll talk to you in March. Thank you, everybody.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s conference. Thank you all for participating, and have a great day. You may now disconnect.
