Sunday, March 22, 2009
Valley loses friend in Sportsman's
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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As they scrambled to handle the hordes at their store this past weekend, employees at Sportsman's Warehouse probably couldn't help wondering one big thing.
Where were all these people two months ago?
Sunday afternoon the store was a zoo. The parking lot was so full, some customers were parking at Home Depot next door.
At one point, lines at registers stretched 20 people deep back toward the middle of the store, even though most items were marked down just 10 percent at that point.
"Crazy, isn't it?" one department manager told me in passing.
Disappointing, too.
The arrival of Sportsman's Warehouse in the fall of 2007 was heralded by outdoors enthusiasts in the Roanoke Valley, who were eager for an alternative to mail order and to shopping at local stores, such as Dick's Sporting Goods and Wal-Mart, where outdoors gear sections are comparatively small.
When Gander Mountain opened nearby several months later, we were washing in an embarrassment of outdoor riches.
But from the beginning some wondered if the region's sportsmen could support two outdoor mega stores, particularly during an economic downturn. So no one could say they were totally shocked to hear that Roanoke's Sportsman's was one of 23 stores the company was choosing to shut down to reduce debt the company had piled up during rapid expansion.
Sportsman's had inventory issues from the beginning, challenges made more difficult in recent months because of the tight national credit market and national shortages of items in the guns and ammunition sector of the outdoors business.
Still, during the company's short life here they earned a core of loyal customers and also established themselves as a great community partner.
A blog entry I wrote regarding the store's closing prompted reader comments littered with terms such as "terrible," "devastated," and "sad."
The demise of a big box store usually doesn't prompt that kind of emotion.
It's happening in this case because if you looked beyond the 40,000-square-foot size, Sportsman's felt a lot like your neighborhood outdoors store.
That was no accident.
Sportsman's strategy since coming to town was to be like a little guy, a store where you got to know everybody, where you'll drop by just to chat even if you don't want to buy anything.
When the store first opened, then manager Chase Gallentine told me that the company's philosophy is to not do much local advertising.
Instead, the store focuses on connecting with local sportsmen, both on personal level and through outdoors groups.
The thinking is that these connections can create loyal, long-term customers.
Having started in this business in advertising, I still believe that advertising is an important part of any strategic marketing approach.
But it's clear that Sportsman's grass roots approach helped it make plenty of strong connections.
Jack Ward, president of the Roanoke Valley chapter of Trout Unlimited, praised Sportsman's Warehouse for its support of the group and its projects.
"Some of their employees gave much of their own time in support of Project Healing Waters, a group that is dedicated to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled veterans through fly-fishing," Ward wrote on my blog. "They will be truly missed."
At Wednesday's TU meeting, Ward echoed those sentiments as he and fellow members discussed going to the store to ask for gear donations for fundraisers.
In one case a Sportsman's manager led a TU member through the store to get $500 worth of gear. When the total rang up at $1,200, the TU member expected to have to return some of the gear.
"Don't worry about it," he was told.
At last year's Hunters for the Hungry Banquet, Sportsman's had a corporate sponsor table filled with enthusiastic employees, while tables of auction items were packed with donated gear from the store.
The store and its employees recently became involved with the effort to revive the Roanoke Valley's defunct National Wild Turkey Federation chapter.
It goes on.
Simply put, these guys earned plenty of fans because they didn't say no.
Unfortunately, when corporate leaders said it was time to go, saying no was not an option.
