Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the American Outdoor Brands' first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. As a reminder, today's program may be recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's program, Elizabeth Sharp, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good afternoon. Our comments today may contain predictions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements. Our use of words like anticipate, project, estimate, expect, intend, should, indicate, suggest, believe, and other similar expressions is intended to identify those forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements also include statements regarding our product development, focus, objectives, strategies, and vision, our strategic evolution, our market share and market demand for our products, market and inventory conditions related to our products and in our industry in general, and growth opportunities and trends. Our forward-looking statements represent our current judgment about the future, and they are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Risk factors and other considerations that could cause our actual results to be materially different are described in our securities filings. You can find those documents as well as a replay of this call on our website at aob.com.
Today's call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of this time, and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Our actual results could differ materially from our statements today. I have a few important items to note about our comments on today's call. First, we reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Our non-GAAP results exclude amortization of acquired intangible assets, stock compensation, transition costs, COVID-19 expenses, technology implementation, related party interest income, and the tax effect related to all those adjustments. The reconciliations of GAAP financial measures to non-GAAP financial measures, whether or not they are discussed on today's call, can be found in our filings as well as today's earnings press release, which are posted on our website. Also, when we reference EPS, we are always referencing fully diluted EPS. Joining us on today's call is Brian Murphy, President and CEO, and Andy Fulmer, CFO.
With that, I will turn the call over to Brian.
Thanks, Elizabeth Sharp, and thanks, everyone, for joining us. I am extremely pleased with our strong start to the new fiscal year. We delivered first quarter growth in net sales and profitability, results that reflect our dedication to building authentic lifestyle brands that help consumers make the most out of the moments that matter. Our first quarter net sales grew more than 20% over Q1 of fiscal 2021 and 83% over Q1 of fiscal 2020. We believe our results demonstrate the alignment of our brands with strong consumer trends in personal protection and popular outdoor lifestyles, as well as the ability of our Dock and Unlock process to fuel innovation and drive organic growth.
The markets we serve, personal protection, shooting sports, camping, hunting, and fishing, have all benefited from a new, higher level of participation that began in our last fiscal year and continues to provide us with an expanded consumer base containing millions of new firearm owners, campers, and fishing license holders. Not to mention our increased reach into adjacent markets with wholly new consumers such as land management, meat processing, and home security. As a reminder, our brands are organized into four distinct brand lanes, Defender, Marksman, Harvester, and Adventurer, each focused on a particular consumer type. In the first quarter, 16 of our 20 brands delivered growth over the same period in fiscal 2021, and 19 of our 20 brands delivered growth over the same period in fiscal 2020.
Our top-selling products this quarter came from each of our four brand lanes, demonstrating the diversity of our brand portfolio, as well as our diversity across multiple consumer activity driven markets. We believe this diversity will serve us well as we continue to expand into larger addressable markets that have the ability to transcend near-term secular trends. Our growth reflects our ability to deliver consumers a steady stream of innovative new products driven by our Dock and Unlock process. Our sales and marketing teams were very busy in Q1, safely traveling and attending physical shows for the first time in over a year, unveiling a wide range of exciting new products and rolling out ramped up advertising and social media campaigns to connect with our consumers.
During the first quarter, we attended ICAST, the fishing industry's premier trade show, where we unveiled a wide variety of new products from Bubba, our lifestyle brand known for its high-quality fishing equipment designed for water-to-plate anglers. These included kitchen cutlery, an expanded apparel line, and premium storage packs and bags. While at the show, we also proudly received a Best in Category award for best cutlery, hand pliers, and tools for our new Bubba Pro Series Cordless Electric Fillet Knife.
Designed to meet the demands of the hardcore angler by delivering industry-leading power and performance technology for unparalleled cutting efficiency. Lastly, and perhaps most exciting of all, at ICAST, we announced Bubba's entry into the $700 million retail market for saltwater fishing rods, reels, and components, and unveiled our first rods featuring the iconic Bubba Grip, with rod blanks designed entirely in-house, which we anticipate will be available to consumers this coming February. Our entry into fishing rods is the direct result, and just one example, of employing our Dock and Unlock strategy to drive innovation and provide entry into new markets. Our other brands were busy in the quarter as well. Our Old Timer brand is a historic, everyday carry brand known for its premium quality knives.
During Q1, in time for Father's Day, we launched the brand's first ever electric fillet knives, which can be purchased in lithium ion and 110 V versions. This expansion of the Old Timer brand delivers the benefits of our award-winning Bubba fillet knives to freshwater fishermen and women under a brand they've trusted for generations. Just after the close of Q1, we attended the Outdoor Retailer show, where we unveiled some exciting new products from UST, our survival, camping, and outdoor gear brand. New products included our double-wide fillmatic sleeping mats, an expansion of our popular fillmatic mats at double the width, and our UST 1- and 2-person blankets, made of eco-friendly materials and featuring our unique UST color and design. This was just a sampling.
Our new product pipeline remains robust, and we have a number of new products launching over the next few months from several of our brands, including Crimson Trace, MEAT! Your Maker, and Hooyman. Some will expand our offerings, and some will take us into completely new categories. Our teams are putting the finishing touches on their launch plans and working hard to ensure we have the inventory on hand to support these exciting new products, and I look forward to sharing their successes with you on our next call. An important part of our strategy is to place our brands wherever consumers decide to shop for them, whether online or in a physical retail store. This approach is particularly important in our current environment, when the impacts of COVID are dynamic and consumers alternate between in-store shopping and online options. In our first quarter, our strategy delivered results.
We believe strength in our traditional channel in Q1 was driven primarily by store reopenings. Net sales in the channel grew 70% over the prior year and 96% over the first quarter two years ago. We believe store reopenings positively impacted our international business as well, where recent investments to expand the size of our team and enhance our ability to source new customers are paying off. Our international sales grew from 4% of Q1 net sales last year to 7% of Q1 net sales this year. On a two-year basis, international net sales delivered remarkable growth of nearly 239%. As we've said before, we believe the international market holds tremendous growth potential for many of our brands, and we continue to aggressively explore those opportunities.
Sales into our e-com channel declined in Q1 versus the year-ago quarter, largely the result of an anomaly that occurred in the prior year. You'll recall that Q1 of last year included the strong replenishment of inventory for one of our largest customers, a major online retailer, who hadn't placed orders for a full month in the preceding period, instead choosing to purchase only items they deemed essential during that time. Our e-com results for Q1 of last year reflected our ability to quickly replenish that retailer's inventory. We believe a more accurate comparison for our e-com growth in the current period is the two-year comparison, which removes that anomaly and reflects growth of 55% over our first quarter of fiscal 2020.
It's also important to note that our direct-to-consumer platform, which is included in our e-com numbers, exceeded our expectations in the quarter, delivering solid growth over the prior year and demonstrating that the investment we made long ago in our websites continues to drive results. Turning to logistics. Our teams here and in Asia, again, did a great job continuing to navigate supply chain constraints and port congestion issues. We incurred increased freight costs in Q1, which is nearly impossible to avoid in this environment. With that said, the team effectively employed a variety of freight alternatives, ensuring we invested appropriately to get the products we needed. Their work helped us build up inventories, an initiative we've been working on for the past few quarters.
That effort will continue in Q2 as we further invest in inventory of our highest volume products, support product launches I referenced, prepare for seasonality in our business, and further mitigate supply chain risk. With an outdoor industry that has experienced unprecedented levels of consumer participation over the past year, our unique Dock and Unlock strategy in place, and a strong first quarter under our belts, we are excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. We look forward to sharing our progress as we take our brands from niche to known. With that, I'll turn it over to Andy.
Thanks, Brian. I'm happy to share the results from our first quarter, which showed growth in net sales and adjusted EBITDA. Our performance for the quarter, combined with our outlook for the balance of fiscal 2022 and beyond, continue to support our long-term growth and profit expectations. Net sales for Q1 were $60.8 million, compared to $50.5 million in the prior year. This represents an increase of 20% over last year and 83% over the first quarter of fiscal 2020. This increase was driven by higher demand in the outdoor products market, combined with a consumer preference for the 20 brands across our portfolio. Turning to gross margins. Q1 gross margins were 47.7%, a 70 basis point increase over the prior year. This performance was driven by improved manufacturing efficiencies, favorable excess and obsolete inventory adjustments, and lower spending, offset by customer mix and increased freight costs.
The absence of promotions we experienced throughout fiscal 2021 continued in the first quarter of fiscal 2022, helping drive higher gross margins. We expect a return to more normal promotional levels in fiscal 2022. That expectation is incorporated into our guidance. On gross margin, you'll recall in the second half of fiscal 2021, we worked to clear out some slow-moving inventory at little to no margin. We largely completed that effort in Q4 of fiscal 2021. You will see that impact reflected in the sequential increase in our gross margin from Q4 to Q1. GAAP operating expenses for the quarter were $24.8 million, compared to $21.3 million last year. This increase was driven primarily by higher variable selling and distribution costs from the increase in net sales.
New employees hired over the course of fiscal 2021 to support our growth and increases in stock compensation and standalone G&A costs, offset by a reduction in intangible asset amortization. Non-GAAP operating expenses in Q1 were $20.3 million, compared to $16.6 million in Q1 of last year. Non-GAAP operating expenses exclude intangible amortization, stock compensation, and certain non-recurring expenses as they occur. GAAP EPS for Q1 was $0.24 as compared with $0.13 last year, and non-GAAP EPS for Q1 was $0.48 compared to $0.36 last year. Our fiscal 2022 figures are based on our fully diluted share count of approximately 14.3 million shares. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $9.6 million at a margin of 15.7% and was consistent with our expectations. This compares to adjusted EBITDA of $8.7 million or a margin of 17.3% for the prior year.
Please note, prior to the August 2020 spinoff, the lease of our Columbia facility was treated as a finance lease, whereas now it is treated as an operating lease. Excluding this change, adjusted EBITDA margin would have been 15.8% last year or roughly flat year-over-year. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the quarter with $56.3 million of cash and no borrowings on our line of credit, compared to $60.8 million in cash at the end of fiscal 2021. We're very pleased with this result, considering that we were able to strategically invest in inventory of high-volume products by $17.7 million in Q1. Recall last quarter we discussed our plan to build inventory in fiscal 2022 in support of new product launches and to mitigate the numerous risks in the supply chain from port congestion and container shortages.
This is an important investment designed to protect our business as we foresee a likely continuation of these challenges in fiscal 2022. Accordingly, in Q2, we will continue to work toward building up our inventory of high-volume products along with our typical seasonal build. Our spending for CapEx and patent costs of $1 million in Q1 was in line with our expectations, and we still expect total capital expenditures for the full fiscal year of between $7.5 million and $8.5 million. Now, a brief update on our IT infrastructure and ERP build-out. You'll recall that our spinoff last year included an agreement with our former parent company that provides us with two years of IT support while we stand up our own independent platform by August of 2022. I'm happy to report that our IT infrastructure and ERP implementations projects are both on time and on budget.
As a reminder, we expect the total cost of this project to be about $8 million over the course of fiscal 2022 and 2023. In fiscal 2022, we expect CapEx of about $3.5 million and one-time operating expenses of about $1.6 million. We also expect to record $1.2 million of duplicative expenses in fiscal 2022 as we operate both our existing and our new platforms in parallel during the system changeover period. We will treat both the $1.6 million and the $1.2 million as technology implementation costs in G&A when calculating our non-GAAP operating expenses and adjusted EBITDA. We ended the quarter with no outstanding bank debt and the full capacity available on our $50 million line of credit.
This facility provides an additional $15 million of availability under certain conditions. Our cash balance combined with our line of credit capacity provided us with over $120 million of available capital as of July 31st. Our strong balance sheet positions us well for future opportunities. Brian and I continue to seek out acquisition targets that have the ability to supplement our organic growth with brands that operate in large addressable markets, have runway for growth, and can benefit from being plugged into our Dock and Unlock process. While we continue to see a large number of targets coming to market, we remain disciplined in our approach as we assess those opportunities, and we look forward to identifying opportunities that match our criteria. Turning to our guidance. We believe that our strong balance sheet, combined with the consumer preference for our brands, positions us well for future growth.
Today, we are reaffirming our fiscal 2022 guidance. We estimate that net sales for fiscal 2022 will be in the range of $280 million-$295 million, which at the midpoint would represent growth of roughly 4% over the prior year and growth of nearly 72% over our fiscal 2020 results. With net sales in that range, we expect full year GAAP EPS in the range of $1-$1.24, and non-GAAP EPS in the range of $2.02-$2.26. We also expect adjusted EBITDA of between 15% and 16% for the full year. Just a few additional details on that outlook. Historically, our quarterly net sales amounts reflect the seasonality in our business, with Q2 typically delivering the highest net sales and Q3 the second highest net sales. However, in fiscal 2021, Q3 net sales was higher than Q2 by almost 5%.
We expect to see net sales in fiscal 2022 follow that same general path, with Q3 net sales slightly higher than Q2. With regard to gross margin, as I mentioned before, our guidance also takes into consideration an expected resumption of more normalized promotional activity in the market during the remainder of our fiscal year. As we've discussed before, we plan to invest in sales and marketing initiatives in fiscal 2022, including business travel and trade shows at more normalized levels than we did in fiscal 2021, when pandemic-related restrictions eliminated those valuable opportunities to connect with our customers. We expect those investments to continue throughout fiscal 2022. Accordingly, we expect Q2 and Q3 operating expenses to increase from Q1 levels due to increased travel, advertising, and brand initiatives, and trade shows, including SHOT Show in January 2022.
In conclusion, virtually all of our international sales are made in US dollars. We expect our fiscal 2022 effective tax rate will be approximately 25%, and our fully diluted share count will be about 14.5 million shares. With that, operator, please open the call for questions from our analysts.
Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen if you have a question at this time please press star then one on your touch tone telephone. If your question has been answered and you would like to remove yourself from the queue please press the pound key. Our first question comes to the line of John Kernan from Cowen. Your question, please.
Excellent. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the nice top-line results on obviously a difficult compare from Q1 last year.
Yeah. Thanks, John.
Congrats on the entry into saltwater fishing rods and reels. It sounds like obviously a natural extension for Bubba.
Thank you.
Maybe can you talk to the top-line guidance embedded for the rest of the year? Obviously, very difficult comparisons from last year, maybe both for traditional channels and e-commerce that's embedded in the guidance. You talked about a more normalized promotional environment in the industry. Are there any specific categories where you're seeing promotions pick up a bit now?
Yeah. Hey, John, this is Brian. What I would tell you is if you do the implied math for Q2 through Q4 over the two-year period, that's really how we're looking at it.
Yep
With our opening remarks and a lot of other companies are doing something very similar, implies nearly 70% growth for that period of time over the two-year period, which is still remarkable. We're seeing, you asked about mix, kind of e-commerce versus traditional. A big part of that too is international. International, like we said in our Q1 remarks, is opening up pretty dramatically. If you look at the two year compared to, we've also seen increased distribution. We're seeing a mix of international take place there. Obviously, that's mostly traditional, how we classify that. Plus e-com. E-com has been in a little bit of a flux, right?
We had this last quarter a little bit of an online retailer that last year kind of bulked up coming out of our Q4 of FY 2020, and then also that online retailer has also been, with the Delta variant rising, has been prioritizing or reprioritizing some of that PPE. It's kind of a mix of things, but our direct-to-consumer business continues to thrive and do incredibly well, exceeding our expectations, offsetting some of that. It's going to be a quarter- to- quarter. At the end of the day, our goal is to be where the consumer expects to find us.
Understood. Maybe Andy, just on gross margin, obviously supply chain costs are ticking up. We're hearing it from all the different consumer-facing companies. Curious what the incremental headwind from supply chain is for the remainder of the year, and how you think this is going to normalize as we exit 2022 and into 2023.
Yeah. That's a great question, John. As we talked about, we're definitely experiencing increased freight costs. We have an internal team dedicated. They meet numerous times a week, really looking at freight costs, what the different options are to maximize the profitability. We look at air freight when we need to, when we need to make sure we're getting good turns with customers on certain products. Obviously, again, trying to maximize our profitability there. With respect to, you talked before about promotions. I'm not sure we would really break out what specific product promotions, but it wouldn't really be anything out of the ordinary than what we've done in the past, when you go back to fiscal 2020, certain promotions during holiday seasons, those types of things.
Okay. maybe just to get to maybe a little bit more detail on the gross margin adjusted SG&A. You did mention in the prepared remarks, adjusted SG&A will rise as we go into Q2, Q3, Q4, which it seasonally always does. I guess, is there the flow of gross margin? Can you provide us any more color? The gross margin comparison's pretty tough the next several quarters. Is there going to be some year-over-year pressure relative to where you were in 2021 that we should expect in the coming quarters?
Yeah, another great question. When you look back at Q2 last year, that was almost 47%. I would expect the year-over-year comp in Q2 will be lower than 47%.
Sure.
Q3, Q4 was kind of 44% , 45%. I think you could probably model somewhere near that. Like you said, the OpEx, we do expect in Q2 and Q3 to rise a little bit because of those trade shows, those types of things. Level off a little bit in Q4.
All right, great. Congrats on the progress. Look forward to seeing what the rest of the year has in store. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, John.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Eric Wold from B. Riley. Your question, please.
Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. A couple questions. I guess one on the entry into the $700 million market, for fishing equipment, rods, and reels. What is your expectation for reasonable market share over the next three to five years in terms of your kind of decision to enter that market in the first place? Where would you want to see that, and where would you be disappointed?
Hey, Eric, this is Brian. As much as possible, we want to take as much market share. This is actually something that we've had on the list since we acquired the business. Andy actually, he remembers I had a slide in there that had the Bubba Grip on a rod, and we had talked about the market potential for that business. We wanted to follow that kind of niche-to-known progression. We felt it was going to be too disruptive to the consumer if we just came out with rods. We took our time, we worked on it, we developed all the rod blanks in-house, did it the right way, came out with the FKs, expansion into Nets and Gaffs to create that logical next step for the consumer.
I think we're as well positioned as we can be right now versus if we had done this three years ago. For us, it's a big market. I think that we have a very distinctive-looking product versus others in the market. I think people will automatically recognize that red-handled rod. We're very optimistic when it comes to how much market share we can take. I think I'd be reaching too far if I gave you a percentage of what we're going after, but we wouldn't enter a market like this unless we plan to disrupt it. We've got some big plans.
Makes sense. On past calls, you talked about kind of an expectation for share gains as kind of early participants into some of these activities over the past 12, 18 months, kind of stick with it, become more avid and kind of maybe move up the chain. Can you talk about what evidence you may be seeing from your retail partners and on your own e-commerce sites in terms of that happening, ASPs getting larger, moving up into price points within categories?
Yeah. I can speak to that. This is Brian again. We are absolutely seeing some of the higher ASP products. That's been part of our plan too, I obviously Dock and Unlock, but as part of that, moving up into these higher ASP items, which is part of our longer-term growth plan. We are seeing that consumers, at least in our direct-to-consumer business, are taking on those higher ASP products that we're introducing, which is great. We were in a good spot last year. I think some of our competitors were struggling with inventory. We have, like Andy talked about, very tight line with our inventory management and analytics team to have that inventory.
Some of the lower priced products, and this is feedback from our customers, from primarily our brick and mortar customers, is some of the lower price point products just weren't on shelves. We were able to take some share with some higher price point products that we've been able to retain. I think there's also just, we have more share when it comes to the customer options. When they're walking into that store and they see one of our products versus if you rewind 18 months ago, it might look a little bit different. We are hearing that anecdotally from our customers. We're seeing it in our numbers. A few data points to give you there, but we are seeing it.
Got it. Just one final question, if I may. On international, obviously you saw a big growth there year-over-year over the two-year stack. Talk about how you're able to do that now efficiently, given just the such the high level of demand you're seeing here in the U.S., being able to allocate product over there that may be in demand here. Are there meaningful differences in product category demand between the two markets, and can you get to similar, if not better margins overseas than you can here to make that decision make sense now versus possibly delaying a little bit?
Sure. Yeah, great question. This is Brian again. Our international strategy really began three to four years ago, and our goal was to ramp up that team, make sure that we had adequate resources. Working internationally also comes with some additional challenges, right? Distribution, whether you have boots on the ground or you're going through distributors, each country has different requirements, even when it comes to things like voltage. If we sell a Bubba electric fillet knife here, it's going to be a different configuration overseas, most likely. Those plans have been in place for several years. To be able to get what we saw in the first quarter, that was really in motion over the last couple of years.
That wasn't a, "Hey, let's figure out and allocate inventory international versus domestic." That was already in the pipeline, and we're servicing the growth that we expected internationally. Does that answer your question?
Yes. Makes sense. Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Stember from CL King. Your question, please.
Congrats on the quarter, guys, and thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks, Scott.
Maybe when you're looking at the four brand lanes, can you maybe just talk about what you're seeing on the demand side and maybe also from an inventory perspective? You did say that about four of those brands, you had 20 brands were down year-over-year. Would that suggest that maybe some of them are getting closer to having the inventory that they need?
Sure. This is Brian, again. Scott, Andy, feel free to chime in. What I would tell you is that if you look at Q1 versus last year, there was civil unrest that was apparent last year that has seemed to have died down a little bit. We had 8- 10 million firearm owners that entered the market. On top of that, obviously, all of the great trends we saw in camping, fishing, and hiking, and things like that. I'll tell you that on the firearm side, we're seeing less of the spikes that we saw last year, but we're seeing a nice mix towards some of the hunting and fishing and camping categories.
I think it just speaks to the diversity of our brand portfolio, the brand lanes really hitting their stride to be able to, again, I kind of mentioned, kind of alluded to it in my prepared remarks around some of the near term trends. That's kind of what I'm speaking to. Still solid demand when it comes to firearm accessories, things like that from those new firearm owners. We are seeing a pretty balanced mix across our entire portfolio.
Got it. Regards to inventories, I know that we've been playing catch up for quite some time. Are you seeing any pockets where things are starting to get closer to where folks want them, or are we still way off?
Scott, this is Andy. I don't think we're way off. I think that the replenishment that we're seeing is very healthy. Like Brian said, kind of pretty balanced replenishment across the brand lanes. Again, I know we said in the prepared remarks, once again, the top sellers that we had in the quarter represented all of our four brand lanes, so we're very happy with that.
Yeah, we talked about kind of the ramp up in inventory. This was a strategy of ours because of all of the uncertainty in the supply chain. What you're seeing in the quarter is that ramp up strategically to be able to prepare us for what might come next. It's anyone's guess, but we at least want to have the product to ship. We're still seeing a pretty tight line between what we have and what our customers are selling through at POS.
Got it. Last question on the international side. Nice to see that starting to take a nice jump up, which of your product lanes are the biggest beneficiaries there? I imagine that shooting related stuff is probably the least, just give us an indication of which brands are doing particularly well.
It might surprise you a little bit. This is Brian. Shooting is actually performing incredibly well internationally right now, in particular in places like Canada, which you'd probably expect. We're also seeing some really good penetration on our hunting and camping and fishing brands. I'd say it's across the board. It mirrors pretty closely with what we're seeing domestically. I think what would be a surprise to you is that shooting is performing incredibly well internationally.
Got it. That's all I have. Thank you.
Thanks, Scott.
Thank you.
As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star then one. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Smith from Lake Street Capital. Your question, please.
Hi, guys. I wanted to just dig a little bit deeper into new customers. Can you talk about new customer trends? Are you still seeing new entrants into some of these markets? More so here in the first quarter was a lot of this driven by strength from existing customers?
Yeah. Hey, Mark, this is Brian. I'll tell you that getting new distribution is one of the four pillars that we outlined last call to really support that 8%-10% growth over the next four to five years. We are seeing customers' continued interest, I would say, from home and hardware, where the consumer that's going in there has an expectation that they are going to start to see more outdoor-related products and brands, which is great for us. There's an interesting crossover. We have land management under our Hooyman brand that we've talked about in the past. Well, that same person, there's good overlap there with a hunter. We are being asked from certain customers to present and to offer them a solution, essentially, to help address that customer's wants as they go into some of those stores.
I think in large part too, because you had some folks that exited the space a few years ago, that I think maybe are turning that a little bit, but exited the space. Home and hardware, farm and ranch stores, things like that, we're seeing great penetration and interest from, and some nice customer wins. Also, continued growth. You asked about kind of the core base of customers.
We're seeing on the traditional side especially, just across the board, we were looking at kind of our customer base and what grew in the quarter across our traditional channels. It was like a paintbrush. It was across the board from a lot of our core customers. It's strong there. We are getting some great new customer wins as well.
Okay. As we look at, we've talked about within firearm and maybe within the Defender brand lane, these 8 million-10 million new customers. Are you seeing conversion from people who maybe just bought a firearm to people that are becoming kind of avid users? Any idea kind of what that conversion looks like for these people into, instead of just buying a firearm, but buying safety products, storage solutions, cleaning, targets, et cetera?
Yeah. This is Brian. You hit it on the head. That's what we're seeing is folks moving up the chain, getting more interested in accessories. Rewind to a year ago, they went into a store and bought whatever was available. Maybe they weren't as loyal when it came to the brand of firearm. Now they get home, they've learned more about it. They want to shoot it safely. They want to secure it safely. We offer all of the products for that consumer. The other interesting thing that we're seeing is they bought their first firearm, again, sort of brand agnostic. They've done more research, now they may want to go back and get a specific brand. They'll go in, now they're a little bit wiser, too. They say, "Okay, well, I'm not just going to go buy a firearm.
I want to get something that comes equipped with a red dot or a laser because I'm going to need it. I went to the range, and I shot terribly. We are seeing a higher attachment rate when it comes to things like that as well. A little bit of a shift. The same consumer, but coming back a second or third time with more knowledge than they had the first time, which I think we're definitely seeing the benefit from.
Okay. The last question from me is, and you've talked about it a little bit, but what gives you your confidence and your, as you guys say, permission to play in fishing rods and reels? As you look at this kind of evolution within Bubba in fishing, what are the other places and categories where you feel like you have permission to play in kind of a broader assortment of products?
I'll give you a tease and say, we refer to Bubba, when we established its permission to play, we talk about this water-to-plate lifestyle. Whenever we do an acquisition or when we went through kind of this full Dock and Unlock process a few years ago, and we're now kind of marching down that road, but it's a good insight into how we look at acquisitions, too, is we establish what that permission to play is. For Bubba, it's water to plate. Just this water-to-plate lifestyle. Just like there's a field-to-table movement, really there's no brand or has not been a brand that has addressed, we feel, this water-to-plate lifestyle, which is very much a real lifestyle, whether it's freshwater or saltwater.
When we had this in mind, like I said, a few years ago, when we first acquired Bubba, then Bubba Blade, is we felt that we didn't have permission at that time to introduce that to the consumer. That's why we came out with Nets and Gaffs, which is basically same grip. Our consumers can have a preference for that. It seems like they do. It's very distinctive. You see it on the boat, and that's really become a hallmark of a Bubba product is seeing that red handle on a boat. You can't miss it when you walk by a boat. For a lot of people, it is like having a YETI cooler on your boat. It gives you some legitimacy.
We think that the Bubba Rods, which came from several years of development, doing it all in-house, and these grips, once they hit shelves in February is what we're expecting, you'll see the difference. You'll feel the difference. It comes with the quality you'd expect from any Bubba product. That's why we feel confident. Obviously, we do a lot of consumer research as well. We're very confident that this will hit the mark. We've gotten good reception from our customers, too, our brick and mortar customers and e-com customers.
Excellent. Thank you, guys.
Yep. Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. This does conclude the question and answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Brian Murphy for any further remarks.
Thank you, operator. Before we close, please note that we'll be attending two conferences next week, the CL King Best Ideas Conference September 14th and the Lake Street Best Ideas Growth Conference on September 15th, both virtual events where we hope to meet some of you. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.