Beloved Snowboard Shop in Bend, OR, Closes

It’s been a difficult week for snowboarders in Bend, Oregon. On September 27, the beloved Tactics Board Shop in downtown Bend permanently closed its doors. For 10 years, Tactics provided Bend’s skaters and snowboarders with equipment, apparel, and a place to meet friends and talk snowboarding with the staff. According to the Tactics management and the Bend Bulletin, financial issues forced the store to close despite efforts to keep it open.

Tactics commemorated its final day with a 50% off store-wide discount and a pop-up punk concert featuring local band Cptn Over. 

“Thank you, Bend,” the shop wrote in an Instagram post announcing the closure. “It has been our honor to have helped serve such an amazing skate and snow community. Thank you for welcoming us to town a decade ago and all the support throughout the years.”

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For the Bend snowboarding community, the news was heartbreaking. Tactics had sponsored dozens of professional athletes, with many of them based in the Bend area. The store also supported the local snowboarding scene through nonprofit partnerships, film premieres, and other events.

The decision to close was especially tough for the store’s assistant general manager, Grant Stein. Stein saw the store as an integral part of Bend’s skiing and snowboarding community, believing its disappearance would “leave a hole in the community.” And to add salt to the wound, Stein and the other Tactics employees were notified of the store’s closing just days before it happened.

“We’ve seen it coming just a little bit, but a three-day notice was the last way we thought it was going to unfold,” Stein told the Bend Bulletin. Typically, stores notify their employees months in advance to give them time to find employment elsewhere.

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A group of around 20 snowboarders founded Tactics in Eugene, Oregon, in 1999. The brand opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Eugene in 2001, and later opened its long-running flagship retail storefront and headquarters at 4th & Lawrence in 2005. It expanded into Bend in 2016.

Since its founding, Tactics has grown into a large and well-known online and in-store seller of skateboard and snowboard equipment. Over its 27-year history, the company has served millions of customers around the world.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Tactics was acquired by TSI Holdings — a Japan-based lifestyle company that owns the popular apparel brands HUF and Stüssy. Five years later, in 2025, TSI Holdings sold the company to Marc Roca, the CEO of Inversal — another private holdings company.

Since Roca took over, things at Tactics have been anything but stable. He closed the Eugene store in May after the store had operated there for over two decades. Weeks before that, Roca closed the Seattle store, which had only been there since 2024. The Bend store marks the third store Roca has closed in just a matter of months, leaving Tactics with just one store in Portland, Oregon, to go along with online sales.

According to Stein, Roca “ran the business into debt,” leaving the Bend store to liquidate its inventory and close. 

Tactics is not the only thing that seemed to go through a big transition phase under Roca’s leadership. Roca acquired the popular skate shoe brand Lakai back in 2024 and has since axed team manager and well-known skateboarding filmmaker Luis Mora, as well as general manager Ivan Moreno. In a video regarding his exit, Mora explained that Roca decided to liquidate Lakai’s inventory and that he was not notified of this decision until the liquidation sale appeared online and in Lakai retailers. Similarly to the Bend case, Lakai experienced heavy struggles after being purchased by a private holdings group, and communication between employees and executives was apparently lackluster.

Stein believes that the downfall of the Tactics store occurred for the same reasons. He alleges that the private equity model was to blame for the Bend store’s shutdown, causing Roca to incur too much debt and resulting in cash flow problems for the enterprise. Stein also cited neglect and indifference as an issue between Roca and the store, stating that Roca had “never met one of us.”

Tactics Bend is just one of many snowboard shops that have been forced to close over the past several years. Many local ski and snowboard shops around the United States have been closing due to rising financial pressures and competition with online retailers. The costs of operating shops are continuously increasing, while online retailers offer the convenience of shopping from the couch and offer lower prices. And it’s not just ski and snowboard shops that are suffering, but retail stores and other local businesses across all industries are closing for the same or similar reasons.

With the Bend store’s closing, the town’s snowboarders are left with just two main options for purchasing equipment in-store: Powder House and Mount Bachelor’s retail store. 

As a town located just 30 minutes away from Mount Bachelor and known for its snowboarding scene, the closing of the Tactics store is a tough pill to swallow for the community. The shop had a deep impact on the community and the town’s snowboarding scene, and while it may be closed, the memories remain.

“Whether you regularly stepped through our doors to grab a new deck, swung through for a quick hang with our amazing staff, or attended one of our many local events or premieres over the years, we truly appreciate each and every one of you,” the shop wrote in its Instagram post.