The Background of Bass Pro's Buyout of Cabelas: You all probably knew this; I didn't

Larry Eckart

Well-known member
Guys and Dani,
I'm not a Fox News guy but I happened to run across this telecast by Tucker Carlson from December, 2019 on what happened that Cabelas, making a huge profit each year, was bought out and taken over by Bass Pro. It involves hedge funds and a lamprey named Singer who made millions and in the process, ruined a town named Sidney, Nebraska and what was once our favorite store. This is enough to make you want to form a posse and go get this bleep.

And that from a preacher!

Larry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UatnTSwEUoc
 
Larry,
Thanks for that, i was aware of the sale but not the circumstances behind it. I thought it may have been a family decision based the founders aging.
If you don't watch Fox News i shudder to think what organization you do watch. For the large part Fox is "Fair And Balanced".
 
We have a new Cabelas (Chesterfield, Michigan) just 15 minutes from us.
Cabelas used to be my go to place for hunting/fishing supplies.
Ever since Bass Pro bought them, Cabelas has gone seriously down hill.
Their customer support on warranty work has become terrible.
I was interested in a buying a long bow. I asked if I could shoot it...nothing has strings with them.
After he rummaged around, he found a string, stung it and pulled it partially several times.
When he handed it to me, it was obvious that he strung it backwards.
Pulling on it as he did, will case micro fractures in the laminations.
The old guy was clueless and didn't even understand what I meant.
As I was leaving...very irritated...another associate asked me what was wrong. Guess it was apparent.
I explained about stringing it backwards and pulling it. His first response was..."he just destroyed the bow".
Exactly. I'm not impressed with their personnel.
I was in just before the end of our deer season (ended Jan. 31) for some "base layer socks" (wicking).
The boot/sock guy didn't even know what I was talking about. Had to find it for myself.
Pretty disappointing developments.
Lou
 
My biggest problem with Bass Pro is that they forced the Capitol One credit card down our throats.
The previous cc processor was great to work with.
It has been a continual problem. I pay off my balance every month and end up on the phone with C.One once every two months as they continually screw up my account.
I have 4 different budget sections for what I purchase. That means 4 different checks. Cap.One will only allow you to pay on your account with no more than 3 payments in one day.
No idea why that rule is in place. Very irritating.
It used to be that Capital One, at one time, would not allow you to use their cc for a firearm or ammo purchase.
Go figure.
Lou
 
Lou Tisch said:
We have a new Cabelas (Chesterfield, Michigan) just 15 minutes from us.
Cabelas used to be my go to place for hunting/fishing supplies.
Ever since Bass Pro bought them, Cabelas has gone seriously down hill.
Their customer support on warranty work has become terrible.
I was interested in a buying a long bow. I asked if I could shoot it...nothing has strings with them.
After he rummaged around, he found a string, stung it and pulled it partially several times.
When he handed it to me, it was obvious that he strung it backwards.
Pulling on it as he did, will case micro fractures in the laminations.
The old guy was clueless and didn't even understand what I meant.
As I was leaving...very irritated...another associate asked me what was wrong. Guess it was apparent.
I explained about stringing it backwards and pulling it. His first response was..."he just destroyed the bow".
Exactly. I'm not impressed with their personnel.
I was in just before the end of our deer season (ended Jan. 31) for some "base layer socks" (wicking).
The boot/sock guy didn't even know what I was talking about. Had to find it for myself.
Pretty disappointing developments.
Lou

I have to agree with Lou. I bought 2 pair of Cabela's waders recently. 1 pair the fall before last and then I managed to get in on a great sale around this past Christmas on a pair of Cabela's SuperMag 1600 waders. I have always had good luck with their boots sizes but not this time. I had to go up a size in the breathable and 2 boot sizes in the neoprene so I could get my ankles into them with extra layers. Also the boot material on the Supermax is a different durometer and somewhat flimsy feeling. We'll see how long the last.
 
View attachment Media-Bias-Chart_Version-3_1_Watermark-min.jpg The Morris family's holdings were significantly less that Cabelas worth, as well as being a privately held company (Bass Pro Shops), which required no shareholder check-off as the entered the market to seek a source of financing for a highly leveraged purchase. I strongly doubt they will achieve the annual growth rate necessary to make this business venture consistently profitable, since their market is shrinking an, as described here, they fail on multiple fronts to provide the level of service and quality that Cabela's was known for. The Redhead brand gear I have purchased from them was mediocre, at best, moving me to stop purchasing from them over a decade prior this merger' occurrence.
 
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Lou Tisch said:
My biggest problem with Bass Pro is that they forced the Capitol One credit card down our throats.
The previous cc processor was great to work with.
It has been a continual problem. I pay off my balance every month and end up on the phone with C.One once every two months as they continually screw up my account.
I have 4 different budget sections for what I purchase. That means 4 different checks. Cap.One will only allow you to pay on your account with no more than 3 payments in one day.
No idea why that rule is in place. Very irritating.
It used to be that Capital One, at one time, would not allow you to use their cc for a firearm or ammo purchase.
Go figure.
Lou

I dropped my Cabelas card as soon as the change was made to Capitol One. Back story behind this is; I always pay my account in full every month. Payment is sent to them using the envelope provided (critical point). Out of the blue one day, my card was no longer being accepted when making a fuel purchase and then later that day at a big box store. When I called the phone number on the card to inquire, I was told "the card was suspended due to non payment."

After much discussion they determined that; "I had not mailed the payment to the correct facility." (They hinted at and implied that most likely I never actually sent a payment).) The person I was talking with, had no answer or response when I reminded them, the on time payment was sent in the envelope and to the address they had provided. Their supervisor nor that persons supervisor could not resolve the situation. At that point in time, I cancelled the card and made a final total payment.

 
I had not bought much from Cabela's in the years leading up to their sale. My view was that they would sucker a young company with a good product in, then knock it off within a year or two and dare the supplier to sue them, which a small company couldn't afford to do. I just saw more and more private label goods coming through in their catalog/website, and the product I wanted wasn't available anymore, but a copy was. I think this happened to someone that used to be here that built a product called the invisalounger, which was there for, again, a year or two, then replaced by a private label product. Maybe it worked out fine for the owner of that company, and maybe it didn't, I don't know. But it was a pattern that I didn't like, and I wouldn't support them.

Cabela's way over-expanded in the years leading up to this, i believe their balance sheet deteriorated over that time, they were probably over distributed, and commoditized their product offering in search of longer margins to support their growth. The thing that was interesting about Cabela's was that initially, their stores were marketed and run as a destination that people would travel to and spend a day at to buy. Motels and restaurants would sprout up around them, as they were often in area's distant to major metro markets. That ended when they were everywhere, still chasing the same customer, which is a niche and not a market like selling jeans that half of the population buys. My guess is that over this period of expansion, their average ticket dropped, their inventory increased, their profitability suffered, their debt load increased, and the shareholders forced a sale because of the trajectory their finances were on. Of course, I could be totally wrong......
 
I remember when the cabela brothers started up in 1961 operating out of a one car garage. I was one of those that would travel to the nearest store to spend the day shopping, eating in their restaurant and gawking at all the goodies. Today i do very little business them because of the high prices, it is my belief that the credit card business kept them afloat.
Concerning their capitol one card i have to say they get an "A" rating from me. On two occasions they caught fraudulent charges on my card, removed the charges and issued me new cards as they notified me of the illegitimate activity. Can't ask for more than that.
 
I've never had an issue with capital one card. They have a better app than Bank of America did that is more user friendly. The customer support has been better from the times I've had to use it and they send reminders and updates on payments upcoming or payments pending and fraudulent activity which just happened to me this past weekend. Got the new card a couple days after the call and they fixed the fraudulent transactions.

As far as the sell out I was unaware of the back story. I was always a bass pro fan because that was the closest one of the two near me. Wasn't until a few years ago that they built a cables in Cary, about 2.5 hours away, whereas the closest bass pro is about 1.25 hours and in an area in VA that we frequent more often.
I did enjoy the fly fishing section of cabelas better the couple times I have been.
 
That is quite a segment of that program. I feel a need to little mea culpa on what I wrote before, looks like Cabela's was quite profitable. A very sad story, and one of ultimate greed. Carlson makes an excellent point about vulture investors, and an even more poignant one about how everybody works everybody in Washington for money.
 

I have bit on insight on this, back in the early 2000's I had a small tackle business, trying to get a foot hold in the fishing tackle business mainly salmon tackle but we also did titanium leaders and anything else we could sell. Our first break came when the then Gander Mountain bought all 18 products we had, that quickly become 207 then we stalled, until a call from Sydney, NE showed on the caller ID in 2006, they wanted a meeting, we made the drive and made a deal putting our products in the catalog, three years later we were gobbled up by a bigger company on our terms PERFECT! Thank You Cabela's! I am convinced the Cabela's catalog laying on every coffee table was a very good thing, you were in if you were there, especially for small company, now it is probably not even printed.

Now what I do know is they liked private label, easier to work with them then against them. We fished several years ago with a advisor to Mr. Morris, I think the credit card was what made the deal work. Sydney is a ghost of it's past and that is a bad situation, I still know many people in the industry that went thru Sydney, and still have Cabela's as a good client in my charter operation. Bass Pro will change things for sure, the high end Cabela's stuff is probably thinning to a middle of the road product that they can turn over on the shelves faster. I would not bet against Bass Pro they are deeper in the fishing industry than anyone and if they lived thru 2007-2008 their business model probably works.
 
Actually, Greg, a lot of what you said is related to the stream of events that drove the sale. Cabela's went public, which initially brought them the huge cash infusion they expected, since they were a household name to most of North America's sportsman and women. As a publicly traded entity, they soon discovered that growth was a requirement to attract investment, forcing the store in every city expansion period. Same store annual and quarterly sales is how retail sales growth is tracked by the investment community, which, for Cabela's began to tail-off as they saturated the market with stores nationally. If you look at their market CAP in the two year interval prior the massive recession of 2008-2009, you will note that it was nearly twice the estimated value of Bass Pro Shop's at the time (as a private entity, data did not exist to accurately estimate market cap, so it was estimated from net worth of the Morris clan members who held the company.) The Great Recession arrested sales growth at Cabelas and put it into a negative numbers trend interval, significantly dropping Market Cap, which enable the Morris Clan to move to seek investment capital to make the purchase offer.''

I take Fox News commentary from Tucker Carlson, et al. with a large dose of skepticism, since he and his colleges do not operate under the same level of source and data verification as many other news outlets, noted on several occasions by their former boss Roger Ailes during his responses to queries and critiques of story coverage by Fox commentators. He has repeatedly stated that they are not subject to reporting standards which are the norm within the print and spoken journalism field because they are not reporters, but commentators-a point both Carlson and Hannity have publicly stated in support, theirs is news commentary, not reporting. Ailes prided himself on never printing a retraction, despite several instances where they were warranted... and did occur. For comparison purposes, Dina Temple-Raston of NPR once stated during an interview that their news and editorial board's requirement is three independent sources of verification prior approval to run a story on their news segments, which, too have still had to post clarifications on stories run.
 
[size 4]Just watched the movie "The Big Short" last evening. It deals with the conditions and scenarios that resulted during the sub-prime mortgage collapse that ruined the economy in 2007-08. Something we have yet to recover from.
Coming on the heels of watching that, I'd have to say Larry's post was very timely. Those type of folks and their methodology, haven't gone away people. They just keep changing their 'angle.'

Aside from all our personal bias' about what Cabelas WAS and has become, the "expertise" or lack of it by employees we have dealt with, our nostalgia for the catalog we always awaited , the change in quality and pricing, yada, yada, yada.... I think the video link Larry pointed us to is a telling and true wake up call about what plain ol' hedge fund greed has done to destroy the lives of a lot of American towns & workers...... and the way the average citizen ends up paying through the nose as a result of some powerful dirt-bags with little or no conscience.
 
Such a sad tale. I understand the drive to have more (more defined however an individual wants to define it) and I believe in the opportunity for everyone to do better. I hate when ?businessmen only look at the bottom line or how much money they are going to make off of any given deal. I can?t believe I am saying this but there is a point where enough is enough. I just read where Jeff Bezos just bought a house for $165m and adjoining average for $90M more. The total for both represented 1/8 of 1% of his net worth. Really. I?m sure he is using the average he bought to build affordable or free housing for those in need.

Personal note. A friend was a Pilot for Cabelas and lived in Sidney. He loves the job, the people and the town he lives in. Much changed with the purchase.

When I was in grad school in Lincoln NE, a buddy lived in Alliance NE and we would travel through Sidney occasionally when going to Alliance. Nice town, nice vibe, friendly Midwesterners. I feel bad for them.
 

Not good, but it has happened over and over again in almost every segment of business and industry, under different guises, and names.

As for the old business & industry icons, and tycoons that are mentioned. They did much good, but when you dig deep they were no saints. Business is business $$$$$$$$$$$ talks BS walks.


The old Cabelas sold and made fine quality products, many of which I still use every season. They were made to last.

Their Prestige Premier Fly Line is a quality product, at a very good price. It is about the only item I purchase from them these days.
 
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