When Plans A & B didn't work, Dick Cabela didn't give up. The son of a furniture store owner in a small Nebraska town, Cabela had come across a vendor selling bulk fishing flies at a furniture trade show he attended with his father in 1961. He bought a couple thousand flies with plans to sell them in his dad's store. Finding little market there, he tried a classified ad in a local paper, offering a dozen flies for a dollar. That got one taker.
Then came Plan C:
Cabela changed the ad to read "FREE introductory offer!!! 5 popular Grade A hand tied flies. Send 25 cents for postage and handling to..." and placed it in a national hunting and fishing magazine. The response was big and immediate, and Cabela and his wife, Mary, began filling orders from their kitchen table. They also built their new business by reinvesting profits in various hunting and fishing gear and sending a list of offerings with every order of flies.
Within a couple of years the lists developed into the first true catalog, that about the same time that Dick and Mary Cabela convinced Dick's younger brother Jim to join the business. Cabela's, the World's Foremost Outfitter, was on its way. From the beginning, customer service and quality products were top priorities. Fifty years later, Cabela's is a $2.7 billion a year company with thriving catalog, Internet and retail store businesses and more than 14,000 employees.
As a self-employed writer and father of five children, each with unique gifts and interests, I appreciate Dick Cabela's entrepreneurial way and his unwillingness to give up when things didn't turn out as planned the first time.
Be sure to check out the Cabela's website. The company is offering some cool limited-edition 50th anniversary merchandise, doing a "Cabela's 50 Years, 50 Trucks Sweepstakes" and much more! Cool stuff.
Happy 50th, Cabela's
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