The economy is devastated, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors and Americans aren’t in a spending mood. This is not the kind of environment in which you’ll hear about retail start-ups enjoying amazing success. But Nexgen Outfitters in Sidney, Nebraska, is not your typical retail start-up.
Early in 2018 the community of Sidney suffered a huge setback. A competitor had purchased Sidney-based Cabela’s and initiated major downsizing at its facilities in the community. Hundreds of positions were eliminated, phased out, retired or relocated. Among those suddenly without a job were four men determined to succeed in creating a new sporting goods retailer in Sidney. Trent Santero, Mike Riddle, Ryan Wellman and Jeremy Nesbitt formed Nexgen Outfitters, initially a web-based business with a goal of becoming a major player in the sporting goods industry. But the fledgling company was dealt a series of setbacks almost immediately.
There were legal challenges aimed at the founders, delays in establishing a permanent home, and difficulty getting a complex customer-facing website with more than 25,000 SKUs to perform as desired. Just when one problem appeared to be resolved, another came up. Sales suffered, and by the summer of 2019, the future of Nexgen Outfitters was in question.
The company opted to build a new building on the east side of Sidney to house corporate offices and an archery pro shop. Soon after, archers from the area started dropping by and were impressed by the skill and service provided by the staff. It wasn’t long before visits from curious outdoors enthusiasts in the area increased. Nexgen Outfitters had obtained a FFL to sell firearms through its website but word that the company could place custom firearm orders spread.
As interest in Nexgen’s physical location grew, the staff the staff began to recognize potential for a larger local brick-and-mortar retail effort. Many in the region were unhappy about losing more than a thousand local jobs. About 90 percent of new customers came from an area within a one-hour drive of Sidney. They saw Nexgen Outfitters as a viable alternative to big-box stores, offering expert advice and quality gear at affordable prices.
By fall of 2019 Nexgen Outfitters saw hope. A robust local following of eager outdoor enthusiasts offered a customer base and there was plenty of room in the new building, so a decision was made to bet it all on a retail store and showroom. A grand opening took place October 10-12 when hundreds of shoppers showed up not only to see the store, but to spend money to support it.
As these events unfolded, Nexgen Outfitters was helped by other industry developments. Decisions by Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart, the latter of which had a store within sight of Nexgen Outfitters, to restrict or stop sales of certain firearms and ammunition drove traffic to whoever had the guns and ammo people wanted. And if there’s one thing the staff at Nexgen Outfitters knew how to do well it was leverage professional experience built over decades to get what people wanted.
As Nexgen Outfitters’ new store saw merchandise fly off the shelves, Jeremy (Jay) Nesbitt and Stacy Schumacher, the company’s tech gurus, made a critical decision. They leveraged information Trent and Mike picked up at SHOT Show, and took direct in-house control over all elements of the website. After a few weeks of crash-course learning, Jeremy and Stacy had a fully functional, user-friendly e-commerce website up, running and taking orders. Over the next three months www.nexgenof.com saw sales increase exponentially.
As Nexgen Outfitters grew, so did its services and product line. The staff, all of whom identify as displaced “Cabela’s refugees,” developed several store-brand products including apparel, souvenir items such as tumblers, and an innovative daypack engineered by deer hunters for deer hunters – The Whitetail Caddy. By the start of August 2020 hundreds of Whitetail Caddy packs had been sold, largely online.
When asked to what the turnaround and success of Nexgen Outfitters should be credited, Jeremy Nesbitt cited several factors. “Early on,” he explained, “Having an archery pro-shop staffed by such a knowledgeable guy as Dan Gurr was an asset. More and more serious archers showed up, got to know Dan and see the quality of his work and the great guy he is. Many of those were not only bowhunters, but also gun hunters. They got to talking with Mike Riddle and soon we had a very small gun business going. That contributed to word-of-mouth advertising locally, and more and more people started dropping by.”
Another endearing characteristic of Nexgen Outfitters is the “plain folks” feel you get from the staff. All employees hunt, fish, camp, shoot, know their stuff and really do want to see your pictures of outdoor adventure and hear your stories. Using a calculator we found the total cumulative outdoor experience under its roof to be more than 100 years. And they all are seriously devoted to family. That’s why the store is closed Saturday afternoons (so they can hunt and fish) Sundays (for church and family time) and holidays.
I asked Jeremy what he’s learned from the near crash, quick turnaround and rapid rise of Nexgen Outfitters. “You have to trust your gut,” he replied. “Our former employer demanded data for everything. Every decision had to have a metric to back it up. While that may be the way we started out, I mean that was our background, we came to realize there’s limited room for innovation, creativity and risk when you have to have numbers all the time. We were supposed to be an internet company. A retail store wasn’t planned. And if you look only at numbers, what sane person would have started a new brick-and-mortar sporting goods store late in 2019? In any other market, we likely would have failed. But we listened to our customers, the community and our guts. Ultimately, that was the right move in spite of national retail metrics.”
The right move indeed. Nexgen Outfitters is now a multichannel sporting goods store focusing on the hunt, camp, shoot sectors. It has gone from a bleak situation a year ago to being in the black and on-track for a profitable year in 2020. The company has been praised by local and state economic development officials, and Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts stopped in to commend Nexgen Outfitters on its success and commitment to the state and Sidney. The governor even let Dan Gurr show him how to shoot a crossbow.
As to the future, Nexgen Outfitters is close to outgrowing its year-old building but has no expansion plans for 2021 in terms of real estate. The staff will focus on honing vendor interactions, customer service, inventory management and space allocation. It hopes to increase traffic to its website by posting information, blogs and tips hunters, shooters and campers want to read. Oh, and it also plans to streamline checkout by having more than one cash register.
The Nexgen Outfitters Team
— Dan Carlson
Dan Carlson is a freelance blogger and producer of written content for clients in the sporting goods industry. Learn more at www.dancarlson.net.