Wilson Love opened his store, The Practical Outdoorsman, at 327 New Leicester Highway in Asheville, North Carolina on June 1st, 2011, at age 58. In doing so, Love accomplished a lifelong goal to become an entrepreneur. Love explained, “I had always been an outdoorsman, and I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.” Along the path that led him to opening the store, Love raised a family while working multiple other jobs, to include service in the United States Air Force, selling insurance, driving a delivery truck, and working construction. For a long time Love liked the idea of being his own boss, but it was not until his wife made a suggestion that his business plan took shape.
Approximately one year prior to opening the doors of The Practical Outdoorsman, at a time when Love was in between jobs, his wife suggested that Wilson open a hunting/fishing/camping gear consignment store. Once his wife mentioned the idea, Love charted the course.
In opening The Practical Outdoorsman, Love, a lifelong hunter, camper and fisherman, managed to achieve goals that many never realize; he became his own boss, and he transformed something he loved into a livelihood. In addition to this, Love emphasized the fulfillment he enjoys from manifesting integrity into all aspects of his business.
After settling on the business idea, Love and his wife began research to determine how common and viable was the concept of an outdoor gear consignment store. In the course of their research, Love and his wife only found eight to ten examples of such stores nationwide with any sort of web presence, the closest of which to Asheville was over an hour away. Furthermore, the Loves found even less examples of outdoor gear stores that sold both retail and consignment. They saw in this information a way to differentiate their local business.
Starting as a consignment sale business inherently limits inventory. However, as retail inventory grows, the consignment aspect becomes a greater asset. Customers may first be inclined to search for a good deal on a hiking backpack in the consignment inventory. However, if they don’t find what they’re looking for, they can always search the retail side of the store. Although Love’s store does not yet have the full retail complement he envisions, he is on his way.
Additionally, there’s no telling what good deal on a lightly used item may compel someone to buy something they didn’t know they needed. As someone who has patronized Love’s business on numerous occasions, the author can attest to the appeal of wondering what you may find. Strictly retail establishments cannot quite compete with this element. I have never seen a vintage, handmade, redwood strip canoe for sale in any major name outdoor store, but I found one in The Practical Outdoorsman.
Love explained that consignment is synonymous with recycling, and such activity is a large part of the economy. In addition to enjoying favor as a responsible and longview initiative, recycling in the business sense is very practical, as the business name implies. Love is often able to secure rare and lucrative goods, and quickly move them through his continually growing network of return customers. Love gets to know his customers, so he knows who to call when he gets a vintage Remington .22, or a nice right-hand recurve bow.
While The Practical Outdoorsman began solely as a consignment store, Love set out with the ultimate goal of growing the business into a full service hunting/fishing/camping store. Two years in, Love’s business is moving towards his goal. Consignment selling has been critical to The Practical Outdoorsman, and Love enjoys the customer relationships be builds as a consignment seller. However, not long after opening, Love learned that consignment sales would not be sufficient to keep the company viable. Love cannot meet all of his customers needs with consignment inventory alone. Although Love originally planned to add retail sales to his business, the limitations of consignment sales helped to drive this progression. Since reaching this conclusion, Love has been steadily growing the retail side of his business.
As he adds to his retail inventory, Love has found another manner in which to differentiate his store. In addition to carrying gear made by major manufacturers, Love sells locally made items such as handmade fly lures, antler-handled, custom-made bone and wood-handled knives, and custom turkey, crow and deer calls. These are items one typically does not find at the large box stores whose sales flyers are in the Sunday paper.
In addition to growing the source of his inventory, Love has expanded the scope of his inventory. The Practical Outdoorsman has remained true to the outdoors theme, but has taken hunting, fishing and camping, and added to it hiking, biking and paddling.
Love’s business has survived on a very small advertising budget, but it has managed to grow steadily. Love attributes his growth largely to individualized customer service and word of mouth business referrals. Additionally, Love has found other means to increase customer traffic in his store. The Practical Outdoorsman became a North Carolina Wildlife Service Agent, which enables Love to sell hunting and fishing permits, as well as boat registration and titling. Love noted that his business is the only North Carolina Wildlife Agent in the northwestern quadrant of Buncombe County. Becoming a North Carolina Wildlife Agent has proven to be an excellent way to bring customers through the door. And even if they visit only to purchase a permit, they nearly always look around before leaving.
The Practical Outdoorsman also attained its Federal Firearms License (FFL) in order to meet customer demands. With the steady flow of hunters that enter Love’s store, many are looking to buy and sell guns. Owning an FFL enables The Practical Outdoorsman to provide this service.
Although growing his young business has not been without its challenges, the competitive advantages of The Practical Outdoorsman such as offering used and retail inventory, and supplying locally made, one of a kind outdoor gear, have helped the business prosper. Love cited individualized customer service as another competitive advantage of The Practical Outdoorsman. Love is the business’s owner and presently the sole employee. Despite this, Love still takes the time to wind fishing line on the reel for a return customer, as well as helping turkey hunters to pick the right call, and fisherman to select the best hooks and lures.
It is important to Love to meet his customers’ demands as best he can. After ordering a number of longbow strings for his archery customers, Love found it more efficient and profitable to make his own strings, which he now sells in his store.
When he was getting started, Love was given advice that he has found to ring true. Love was advised that, as a small business, he would need to do the small things that large businesses did not want to do. Love has found in the course of doing these small things, winding fishing line, and making bowstrings, he has generated customer loyalty. Love prides himself in doing honest business, and notes that people keep coming back when they trust you. He described consignment as a trust-based business.
Love also enjoys the opportunity to reciprocate customer loyalty. The Practical Outdoorsman has a core of top consigners. Love learns what these customers are looking for, and will often notify them of new inventory, and sometimes offer them deals that may come at the expense of his bottom line. However, Love believes that such deals are an investment in his customer base, which has value beyond dollars and cents. Love explained, “I am not in the sporting goods business. I am in the people business.”
Cash flow was cited as a primary challenge of a young and growing business. This challenge has been augmented by constraints Love has placed upon himself. The only growth Love wants for his business is “debt-free, cash only growth.” Love incurred no debt to launch his business, and he remained debt-free at the time of the interview. This is a source of pride for Love, and he enjoys the comparative lack of stress from the absence of business debt.
Love identified doing business in the city of Asheville as another challenge. He qualified this by citing the taxes, regulations, and the business privilege license. Love explained that, when he expands to his new location, he would certainly relocate outside of the city limits for these reasons.
Spreading awareness of his business with a limited web presence is another challenge for Love. Love has paid for target market direct mail service, although he acknowledged that the results were difficult to measure. He has also taken out ads in local classified periodicals such as Iwanna, on occasion. The Practical Outdoorsman has advertised in local high school football game programs and has used Craigslist ads since the company began. Love acknowledges the need to expand his web presence, but finds the challenge daunting, as he is a one-man show. Of all the advertising channels used to date, Love has seen the most measurable results through Craigslist ads.
Love strives to increasingly manage his inventory to coincide with seasonal demand. While Love is always looking for good gear in his store, he achieves quicker turnover when demand is at its peak. A good example cited by Love was three new-in-the-bag tents he received the week before the Memorial Day holiday, which is a popular time for camping. All three tents were reputable brands and in brand new condition. Love placed Craigslist ads, and was able to move all three tents in less than a week.
A good metric for the growth of The Practical Outdoorsman is the number of consignment accounts maintained at the store. Consignment accounts have grown from 10 at the time of opening, to 159 by late May of 2013. As the company has grown, Love has been able to grow more selective about the inventory he accepts for consignment.
Since opening, Love has been building the infrastructure for the growth he has planned. Love has sourced multiple suppliers from whom he can buy and serve as dealer. However, his plans remain to take on their products at an incremental and measured pace, in order to manage cash flow and avoid debt.
Love is confident that he will realize his goal of operating a full service retail and consignment outdoor goods store, whether it takes 10 months or 10 more years. Love is well on his way, and has deliberately metered his rate of growth by his insistence of only realizing debt-free, cash only growth. Love believes this conservative pace also ensures that he does not incur debt and expand to a size that the local market will not support. He acknowledges that a challenge of growing will be to find the right employees that have the proper combination of outdoor experience and knowledge, people skills and character. However, since the rate of growth is entirely at Love’s discretion, he is confident that he will only graduate to the next step when he is properly equipped.
Being an entrepreneur has been a learning experience for Love, and it has also been a success. Love explained that it is eye opening to learn as a small business owner that you dump money into your business in chunks and get it back at a trickle, but Love also expresses the gratification of having the courage to launch his own business, and the perseverance to make it work. While Love acknowledged the comfort of certainty previous jobs held with regard to the paycheck, he now prefers the allure of the unlimited potential a new deal can bring. Some days Love makes profit at margins less than a few dollars per transaction, but on some deals he can effectively make hundreds of dollars the moment he makes a trade. It is the thrill of the hunt and the knowledge that, as an entrepreneur, the only boundaries are those drawn by himself, which drives Love.
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