OWATONNA, Minn. - Some look like they want to take their hats off and genuflect before entering. Others simply stop in their tracks, saucer-eyed at the wonder of it all. One man spreads his arms wide, tilts his head back and beams in the universal body language for "Honey, I'm home."
Cabela's is the outdoors store as cathedral, the blissed-out headquarters for the cult of the gun, rod and bow.
Begun and still most familiar as a catalog company, Cabela's has drawn masses of devotees to its doors since it began operating megastores such as the one here, about an hour south of the Twin Cities. Soon, those on the East Coast, far from the rural heartland that is Cabela's home base, will get their own outpost - the company announced last month that its ninth store, a 225,000-square- foot behemoth, will open next year in Hamburg, Pa., about 135 miles from Baltimore.
As when Cabela's competitor Bass Pro Shops opened its megastore in Arundel Mills in Hanover a year ago, expect hunters, anglers and campers from miles around to line up to be among the first inside. The opening of a large outdoors store has become an event for such enthusiasts, who have made this the sporting-goods industry's hottest sector.
"They know how to romance the product," said analyst Robert E. Carr, editor of Inside Sporting Goods newsletter.
The Cabela's here is typical of the state-of-the-art outdoors store: Dominating the rustic, cavernous space is a soaring fiberglass mountain on which exotic, stuffed animals are arrayed - near racks of guns that might be used to bag one yourself. Off to the side is a walk-through aquarium of fish found in local waters - hard by the display of rods that promise to help you reel in the big one. The customer is transported to a world of fantasy, but also sold the real-life tools to achieve some measure of it.
This formula has drawn hordes of shoppers to the large outdoors stores at a time when other retailers go begging. Cabela's and Bass Pro are, respectively, the sixth- and seventh-largest sporting-goods companies in the country, by one industry estimate, following more general-market companies such as Foot Locker, Sports Authority and L.L. Bean, which are the top three.
Fewer fishing, hunting
What makes their sales performance even more impressive is that it comes as the number of Americans who hunt and fish is declining, in part a result of the increased suburbanization of the country.
"You don't have the open land that you had 30 years ago. It's all posted [no hunting] now," Carr said. "It's harder and harder to fish as well. It's not like before, when you could walk out of your house to a stream."
But the good news for Cabela's and its ilk is that those fewer hunters and anglers are spending more in pursuit of their trophy elk and rainbow trout.
About 37.8 million Americans hunt or fish, down from 40 million in 1991, according to a survey released last month by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Census Bureau. The amount they spent on such things as equipment, licenses and travel, however, has jumped - from $53 billion in 1991 to $70 billion last year.
That's a lot of Black-Powder Double-Barrel Shotguns, Green Butt Skunk Flies, Fool-Proof Turkey Calls, E-Z Hang Tree Stands and Mother's 2-Hour Jerky Makers - just five of the 120,000 items sold at Cabela's. The merchandise ranges from the basics, such as lures and tents, to the high-tech, such as sonar fish-finding devices and GPS navigators.
You can order any of those products from Cabela's catalog or through its Web site. But then you would miss out on the whole in-store experience: The walls lined with amazingly antlered animal heads. The restaurant serving bison bratwursts and smoked ostrich. The hushed wine cellar-like atmosphere of the Gun Library, where antique and collectible firearms are displayed, and where, amid leather wing chairs, a studious-looking expert sits at a desk ready to answer questions and dispense wisdom.
The stores have become tourist attractions, despite their locales in proverbial middles-of-nowhere such as Mitchell, S.D., and Sidney, Neb., Cabela's headquarters.
"It took us just six days after opening to get someone from all 50 states here," said Al Dorn, a Cabela's regional promotions manager who is based at the Owatonna store.
The guest book at the store contains signatures of shoppers from as far afield as Norway and Costa Rica. It has become the state's second-most-popular tourist destination - after that other retailing phenomenon, the Mall of America - drawing 4 million visitors a year. Such is Cabela's lure that shoppers will camp out overnight in the parking lot to be the first inside for annual sales.
Having started as a catalog company about 40 years ago, Cabela's had a loyal customer base on which to draw for its retail stores - and it knew where to find them.
"We know where our customers are from by their ZIP codes," Dorn said.
The 75 million catalogs that Cabela's sends out every year lure many to the retail stores. Customers frequently wander the aisles with their well-thumbed catalogs in hand, Post-it notes on the products they want to check out.
"For years and years, I've ordered from their catalog," said Stan Keller, who with his wife, Cathy, occasionally makes the 3 1/2 -hour drive from their home south of Des Moines, Iowa.
On this particular day, they've picked up a few shirts and sweaters. Sometimes, they'll bring their 3-year-old grandson, who thinks the fish are "cool," Cathy Keller said.
Other children arrive with notebooks, using the store's computerized information on various animal species for school reports, Dorn said. And yet, despite the numerous children who accompany their parents to the store, the atmosphere remains fairly tranquil - nothing like the crazed pre-Christmas season at Toys 'R' Us.
"We don't have the neon and all the things that wire them up," Dorn said.
Still some restraint
Despite the huge size and head-turning displays, Cabela's retains a certain Midwestern restraint. There are plenty of staff members on duty, but they hang back until they're approached. All of them are outdoors enthusiasts, Dorn said, and can speak from firsthand experience.
"When we opened, we had applicants from 42 states," said Dorn, an avid fisherman eagerly awaiting the start of ice-fishing season in Minnesota. "Wherever you're going, we have people from that area."
The stores are away from the big city, right off the highway on sprawling lots with plenty of parking, even for RVs.
"Our customers don't like parking ramps," Dorn said, using the Midwestern term for parking garages, "or messing with going downtown."
The company is still owned by the family that started it on a kitchen table in Nebraska. Dick Cabela first ran a classified ad in 1961 offering some fishing flies for sale. Eventually, he and his wife, Mary, began selling more items by direct mail, and Dick's brother Jim joined the burgeoning business in 1962.
Its first retail outlet was opened in 1969 in Sidney, a small showroom in a building that housed their warehouse and shipping operation. The Cabelas didn't open their second store until 1986, in Kearney, Neb.
The company has grown quickly since 1990. It opened a new Sidney store in 1991 that is now Nebraska's most popular tourist attraction, featuring a stuffed African lion and Cape buffalo, shot by Dick and Mary Cabela, respectively, on a safari.
That was followed by stores in Owatonna; Prairie du Chien, Wis.; East Grand Forks, Minn.; Mitchell, S.D.; Dundee, Mich.; and Kansas City, Kan. The stores tend to spark surrounding development - next to the Owatonna store, Holiday Inn opened a hotel, conference center and water park.
Cabela's competitor Bass Pro Shops started in similar humble fashion: In 1971, Johnny Morris, a tournament fisherman, began selling gear in a small section of his father's liquor store in Springfield, Mo., and several years later began offering mail-order catalogs. In 1984, he opened a new headquarters and showroom in Springfield, which, of course, has become the state's biggest tourist draw.
While Cabela's is largely based in the Upper Midwest and the Plains, the 15 Bass Pro Shops are found mostly to the south and east of there.
The Bass Pro at Arundel Mills mall follows the familiar formula - a staggering range of merchandise, a 30,000-gallon aquarium stocked with fish, an archery range, a 40-foot rock-climbing wall and a putting green. (Unlike Cabela's, Bass Pro sells golfing gear.)
Both companies are privately held, but the industry group Sporting Goods Business estimated similar sales figures for both. Last year, Cabela's sold $875 million worth of merchandise and Bass Pro Shops $850 million, according to the group.
Such sales probably don't surprise customers, who find themselves whiling away many a Saturday afternoon in the stores.
"Every time you come down here, it's at least two hours," said Travis Tousignant, who lives about 45 minutes away from the Cabela's in Owatonna. On this trip, he bought a shopping cart full of ammunition.
"They've got everything you need," he said. "I must spend a couple thousand dollars a year here."