Essay About Economic-Development Impact Of Cabela And Brother Company Chairman Dick Cabela

Marketing Case
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Some marketers would be happy just to get “I hate to shop” consumers into their stores. But Cabelas, the
sporting goods retailer, doesnt draw only a few reluctant-and mostly male-shoppers from a few miles
away into its eight stores. It has made those stores into block-buster destinations around the country.
The Michigan store, for example, is the largest tourist attraction in the state. Six million people visit
every year, more than visited New York City to shop in a typical year. The Cabelas store in Minnesota is
second only to the Mall of America for tourist-drawing power in that state. The Sidney, Nebraska, store
has revitalized the once-depressed town of 6,000, where not even Wal-Mart has opened an outlet. About
150 miles from Denver, Sidney now boasts new restaurants, hotels, and other business that cater to
Cabelas visitors and shoppers, and it has 200 more jobs than residents. Its also Nebraskas secondlargest
tourist attraction. “The economic-development impact of Cabelas is off the Charts,” says Sidney
city manager.
Cabelas began as a catalog marketer in 1961 and opened its first retail store, in Sidney, 30 years
later. At the time, says president Jim Cabela, “We didnt expect the store to make any money.” Jim and
his brother company chairman Dick Cabela, intended the store merely to showcase the catalogs decoys,
lures, lines, reels boots, camouflage, dog shoes, tents, boats, fishing vests, archery bows, ammunition,
and every other kind of hunting and fishing equipment an outdoorsman would want, along with dozens
and dozens of new, used, and antique guns. With that purpose in mind, they spent lavishly on furnishing
the retail outlet, covering the selling floor with museum-caliber wildlife displays and about 400 stuffed
trophies worth tens of thousand of dollars, arrayed in realistic action poses amid authentically decorated
setting. Four massive aquariums, holding 8,000gal-lons apiece, showcase a variety of freshwater fish.
There was even a kennel and a corral