Cabela's, Inc., describes its nine giant stores filled with stuffed animals as "an appealing and highly productive destination retail store model." Their large format stores average about 150 thousand square feet in size, though Cabela's opened a 250,000-square-foot store along I-78 in Hamburg, Pennsylvania in 2003 and a slightly smaller store -- with wildlife museum and TV studio-- along I-70 in Wheeling, West Virginia in August 2004.
Last year, the stores did $400mm in revenue (including its large direct marketing business, Cabela's had $1.3b in 2003 sales). Originally founded in the small western Nebraska town of Sidney back in 1961, the first destination store was built in 1987. Cabela's went public at the end of June, in a deal led by Swiss behemoth, Credit Suisse. Originally slated to sell 7.8mm shares at $16 per share, the "price talk" kept increasing, and the shares were finally priced at $20, which valued the entire company at $1.3 billion. By mid-July, the shares had appreciated 40%, to $28.
Earlier in the year, a smaller outdoor retailer, Gander Mountain went public, and its shares have also done well, up 30% from the offering price.
But the biggest is still Bass Pro Shops, according to Sporting Goods Business. Its 21 superstores allowed the company to book $1.6 billion in sales in 2004. The stores get 60 million visitors a year, and the 300,000 square foot store in Springfield, Missouri is the industry's largest.
The CEO of Gander Mountain says that "The fittest will survive and the fittest with customers is Gander Mountain."
Yet our read is that Gander Mountain -- with its puny regular-sized stores -- is a Darloser, not a Darwinner.
