… and while the mini Big Box’s are squabbling over table scraps, along comes the Dragon and ate ‘em all up …
Cabela’s Incorporated, the World’s Foremost Outfitter® of hunting, fishing and outdoor gear, along with the Federation of Fly Fishers, announced today plans to offer industry-leading instruction for beginning fly anglers at 13 Cabela’s retail locations – and online – starting in May.
– via PRWeb.com
My take on all the SIMM’s drama suggests the big fly fishing vendors have cast their lot with the Big Box fellows already, they’re simply waiting for the right time to tell their “old girlfriends” they’ve had enough. But that’s okay, as we knew they were “for profit” companies and how loyalty, tradition, or sentiment, finds little purchase in the boardroom.
Earlier I’d heard Cabela’s was testing a new kind of mini-store, that smacked of the neighborhood variety, smaller sized to make inroads into smaller markets, the last bastion of the little shop.
Cabela’s Outpost stores, designed for efficiency, flexibility and convenience at around 40,000-square-feet, will open in markets with less than 250,000 people, bringing the same quality products and customer service for which Cabela’s is famous to hometown markets too small to support Cabela’s popular next-generation stores.
– via MarketWatch.com
(40,000 square feet is half their normal store size – KB)
Deep down I’d have to say our community essentially asked for this outcome. A fractured and contentious group, selling a luxury hobby into the face of Great Depression II, unwilling or unable to band together, leery of the Internet, change, and each other – until the big assed mean Dragon ate them all up …
At least it will give me someplace to wander through when Sweetpea is at Walmart …
In the end, there can be only one GloboMegaCorpGov.
Oh Reno Cabelas how I despise you. Let’s forget the fact that the store was subsidized by the City of Reno (to the tune of a 40.5 million dollar grant) and Cabelas has not made good on its promises to in turn generate taxable sales back into the local economy, because people are not shopping their in the droves that Cabelas told the City was going to happen(in almost cannibalistic fashion the city also granted lots of money to competing Scheels in sparks).
What did the fly fisherman in Reno get from the “worlds foremost outfitter” in return? We got the closing of the Reno Fly Shop.
Really sad to see a local buisness that has been in Reno for years and years have to shut its doors due to something bigger and richer (but not smarter) moving in on taxpayers dollars.
Oh yeah, stop by the Cabelas Reno and ask the guys in the “fly shop” how the river is fishing, what flies to use, or spots to fish. If you get a blank stare back it’s not because they don’t like you, it’s because they don’t know.
It’s a logical turn of affairs. So long as we prefer our food “fast” versus “good”, so long as customer service is swiping a credit card through a register, versus “knowledgable” – we earned this …
I wish it weren’t so … but it is.
I think the biggest surprise isn’t that this is all happening to fly shops, it’s that the big manufacturers (e.g. Simms) are doing such a poor job of making it seem natural and even palatable.
It doesn’t say much for their ability that they can only convince half the fly fishing public they’re not slitting throats, they’re actually helping.
And yes, there can be only one — but it’ll be ConGlomCo.
I’ve fallen intro the sifi, distopic, industrial complex. We were right back in the sixties, and what I, therefore, may have left as a “retirement” job is asking, “Hackle or Mariboo” instead of “paper or plastic.”
I think that I’ll just go fishing…
i don’t think it matters much. judging from the size of the current cabela’s “fly fishing cave,” the “outpost store” version will be about on par with the fly fishing at my local walmart, except with LST rods instead of Shakespeare.