Remembering the Slow Rise of Dick Cabela’s Guns-and-Gear Empire
This article is for subscribers only.
Putting an ad in a small-town newspaper offering free fishing lures doesn’t seem like the begining of a $4.5 billion business. But that’s how it panned out for Dick Cabela, the longtime Cabela’s chairman who passed away yesterday at age 77.
Cabela’s is to hunting and fishing what Home Depot is to do-it-yourself home improvement—a platform that coalesces thousands of small-scale, niche suppliers. Cabela’s probably put plenty of independent retailers out of business along the way, but it also created a market much bigger than the sum of its parts.