11/29/2016
'Little guy' perseveres: Outdoorsman thrives despite large retailers
By [email protected] on Aug 23, 2005 at 12:00 a.m.
Kevin Steen has been selling outdoor sporting goods for 25 years from a small store in Fargo's Village West mall.
A dozen customers roamed the Outdoorsman shortly after noon Monday, including Fargoan Jesse Janz, who hoped to upgrade rifle scopes.
Janz, who hunts annually in Wyoming, said he has purchased guns and supplies from the store since moving here from Alexandria, Minn.
"I like the customer service. Most of the people are knowledgeable of what they are selling," Janz said. "I'd rather go to the little guy for better service."
The recent emergence in Fargo of big-box sporting goods stores Sportsman's Warehouse and Gander Mountain hasn't dented Steen's customer base, he said.
"My business hasn't been affected," he said. "We seem to keep our customers over the years. What separates us from the other stores is we've got 90 percent full-time employees and 10 percent part time."
Steen opened the Outdoorsman with partner R.G. Lyngstad in May 1980.
He bought the business eight years later and has been a Village West mall anchor ever since.
"It's kind of a family run store. My wife, Bonnie, does the bookkeeping," he said.
Steen - who graduated in 1974 from Minnesota State Community and Technical College after studying sales and marketing - grew up hunting and fishing.
"My first job was basically working at southside Scheels in the gun shop," he said.
Scheels All Sports is now building its largest store in Fargo, a $32 million, 265,000-square-foot flagship expected to open in 2006 on 45th Street South.
The Outdoorsman initially catered to hunting, fishing and camping enthusiasts, Steen said.
"Now we're into hunting and hunting clothing," which includes a full line of fi****ms and archery equipment.
"Archery has become much more sophisticated," he said. "And we're selling more and more guns every year."
Fi****ms have also changed, he said, with gun stocks made of stainless steel and composites instead of the traditional wood-stock firearm.
"That gun over there is camouflage. You never saw that 20 years ago," Steen said.
A larger variety of guns are available today, he said, including more caliber variations than there were 10 years ago.
The technical aspect has carried over to outdoor clothing, he said. "When we first started selling it, there was leafy-brown camouflage. Now you can buy camo for every season and every part of the country."
Employee Tom Wilson specializes in fitting and selling figure skates to ice skaters.
"These are more the competitive skates," Steen said.
Kurt Pagel has been the Outdoorsman's gunsmith for 24 years.
More machining goes into today's fi****ms, which are probably more accurate, Pagel said.
Most of his business this time of year involves cleaning and oiling guns -"smoothing out actions and getting things working a little better," he said.
Pagel, a 1977 graduate of the Colorado School of Trades in Denver, was busy Monday adjusting the trigger spring on a R***r M77 rifle.
"I took close to 50 to 60 thousandths out of it just by shortening it a little bit," he said.
The Outdoorsman employs nine full- and part-time employees and is open seven days a week, Steen said.
Readers can reach Forum Business Editor Craig McEwen at (701) 241-5502
