“If you build it, they will come.” The line is very similar to one made famous in a popular baseball movie — but that very mantra is now being realized by one of the archery industry’s longest-running success stories. Veteran archery distributor Western Recreation, with business roots that date all the way back to 1928, recently made the leap to add a brick-and-mortar retail location in the wide-open, sparsely populated West. And against some sizable odds, the gamble is paying off handsomely.

Come again? You wouldn’t guess “brick and mortar” and “sparsely populated” are ingredients that would add up to retail success in 2024, but hold on. In a launch that was both hurt and helped by yet another major obstacle — the recent covid pandemic — the Western Recreation retail store based in Poncha Springs, Colorado, is currently humming along to the tune of record retail sales — numbers that have far outpaced its projections since the shop opened its doors in July of 2022. The full-line sporting goods store currently offers archery, guns and fishing gear, but also hiking/camping and touristy/souvenir items that have been a pleasant and profitable surprise.

A New Chapter

“We had a vision, but it’s kind of been a ‘Build it and they will come,’” said Brad Love, shop co-owner. “If you told me 10 years ago that I would be selling kayak paddles, energy bars, wool socks, t-shirts, chainsaw carvings, firestarters and fly fishing stuff, I would have told you that you were crazy.”

The vision, as Love describes, began innocently enough about 25 years ago, as Western Recreation moved its successful archery distributor business from the densely populated outskirts of Denver, to a remote Poncha Springs industrial park area, about 140 miles from its original headquarters outside Denver. At the time, the company also purchased some additional land in the Poncha Springs area, including a parcel that it would not begin to develop until years later, beginning in 2019.

“After we moved here, about 25 years ago, we invested in some other area real estate, and then kind of sat on it,” Love explained. “We soon realized this is a part of the world that everybody comes to play in, so we decided to try opening a true full-line sporting goods and outdoor center. And it’s a great location, at a major highway intersection. If you’re going anywhere in southern Colorado, eventually you’ll be stopped at the stop light, looking into our front window. Anybody who plays in southern Colorado passes by our front door.”

Of course, a prime location is a time-honored ingredient to retail success, but Love and his team could not predict just how well the new shop would be received. But their gamble has been rewarded.

“Did we have some concerns starting this up? I would be crazy if I told you no,” Love said. “However, being in such a high tourist area, people are on vacation, and a lot of what we sell are ‘impulsy’ items. They’re going to get it here and now. Plus, we offer quality service; that’s the backbone of our business. We’re all only as good as our worst employee.”

Leaning On Family 

Speaking of employees, Love has leaned heavily on family for shop staff, a move that has been more or less critical in the sparsely populated Poncha Springs area.

“Our staff numbers about 20, but that’s for the whole facility, including the warehouse and retail. I work with my son and daughter and brother, so we’ve got a lot invested with just our family.”

Brad’s son Trevor, 25, is the shop’s fishing manager/buyer, and Brad’s daughter Morgan, 32, is the general manager. Brad, 60, is the president, while brother Stan, 64, is the secretary treasurer. “He’s the brains, I’m the beauty,” Brad said.

A Surprising Start

All are part of a team that has made some surprising retail strides in a very short period of time. “How would I rate our first year in business? On a scale of one to 10 it would be a 20,” Brad said in late-summer 2023. “We doubled what we predicted, so we’ve been very blessed. In a nutshell, we brought a lot of things to an area that didn’t have it. Everything from guns to outdoor clothing, to kayaks.

“This is an area people go to vacation in, and they forget things. Maybe 90 percent of our summer sales are to people who are hiking and biking, and come in to get what they forgot.”

Many archery pro shops know Western Recreation Inc. as a longtime archery gear distributor, and for its other businesses that include longtime archery industry stalwarts Vista Archery accessories, Fleetwood traditional archery, Duramesh archery targets, Bow Medic and more. All those businesses remain, and all have been impacted — in a good way — by the new retail space. That’s because the new 8,000-square-foot retail store is just one part of the expansive new WRI headquarters, which also includes a spacious 40,000-square-foot warehouse area, and additional, rental retail space at each end — currently occupied by a coffee shop, and a steakhouse. Another possible tenant is in the works.

As Brad Love explained it, the previous WRI Poncha Springs location, in an industrial park about a quarter mile away, just did not have the necessary space to house all the growing company’s brands efficiently. It was time to expand.  

“So we built a significantly larger warehouse, because we really needed the space,” Brad explained. “We had more than 20 containers full of product spread out at our old location, and it just wasn’t easy to keep track of what was where.

“And why the tenants? The more people we can attract to our location, the more people we can see, and show them what we’re about. We’re trying to give people a reason to stop.”

Covid Hurts, Helps the Cause

People have certainly been stopping, but the new WRI location almost fizzled before it could get started. 

“After all the planning everything was finally ready to go, but when the covid pandemic started, it all came to a screeching halt,” Brad recalled, explaining that the project got underway again in late 2021, and finally opened for business July 1st of 2022.

Since that time, and especially during the summer season, things have been mostly flying off the shelves.

“We sell a lot of higher-end clothing, lots of tourist-oriented stuff,” Brad continued. “Three things that have been especially surprising have been our volume of T-shirts — focused on touristy, regional stuff; maybe the names of mountains that people climb, or, ‘I survived (whatever) river.’  We also sell a lot of backpacking stove fuel. We get lots of ‘point-to-point’ backpackers coming through the area.

“And our archery business has gone up significantly, as well as hunting-related gear. That’s because of our increased presence from our old location. We used to be in an industrial park, and so you had to really search for us. Not anymore.”

Brad Love explained the shop offers several premium bow lines, including Mathews, Elite, Hoyt and Bowtech — top-flite names many new shops struggle to offer in some hyper-competitive areas. But local competition is not an issue for isolated Western Recreation. How isolated?

“Well, we’re fairly remote here; it’s 60 miles to the nearest town, any direction you go,” Brad said. “We used to joke that it’s a 3-hour drive to ride a department store escalator, and it still is.”

The unique flavor, and needs of the area, helped Love’s team establish the new store’s interior design.

“Half of it is hunting and fishing, the other half is general outdoor and tourist-related,” Brad said. “As you enter, when you walk to the left is all the hunting and fishing, to the right is camping and everything else outdoors.”

A Must-See Shop

“We’ve also got more than 100 big game mounts in here,” Brad said. “Lots of them are mine, including stuff I’ve inherited over the years, but it’s all local stuff, and there are some pretty unique mounts. We’ve got a mountain lion jumping on a 220-inch mule deer, and four elk scoring over 360. We’ve actually got several 200-inch-plus mulies, and at least 10 elk that score over 300.”

The impressive display, Brad explained, further helps the store act as a kind of a destination stop for tourists looking to experience the flavor of the area.

And as far as the makeup of the store in general, Brad said being a longtime archery gear distributor allowed it to do business with, and be exposed to, many of the country’s most-successful outdoor retailers. Rest assured, Brad and his team have been paying close attention.

“Well, a lot of our early success has been about good timing; the covid pandemic helped a lot, it forced people outside, and they came here to play. It’s the same reason why the Jay’s Sporting Goods stores are located on major highways leading to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We learned a lot from our customers; we can see what’s working for certain businesses, which seem to do well no matter what. You look at them and ask, why are they so successful? You try to cherry pick ideas from the best of the best, and we incorporated some of those into our plan, and have tried to make it work. 

“When you’re making sales calls, you walk into a Jay’s Sporting Goods, and you see they’re not giving stuff away — it’s priced appropriately — and they are busy all the time. Why does it work? What’s the key element? It’s their product mix and employees. They’ve learned their market, know what people do in their markets, and they dovetail that with their expert staff and make it all work.”

Never Be Afraid to Experiment

Brad Love said he’s learned quickly that not all product decisions will be home runs, but you can’t stop evolving, or swinging for the fences. 

“Initially, we thought we were a destination for mountain biking, that we’d sell a lot of bike tubes and general mountain bike gear, but that hasn’t worked so well,” he said. “Stocking stand-up paddle boards was another miss. Maybe it was too little too late. Apparently those are not an ‘impulsy thing,’ but you can’t be afraid to try new things. Luckily we didn't put our feet too deep in anything to start, we threw a lot of stuff at the fan to see how it would work. But that’s business in general though; the only constant in the world is change. Keep trying and keep pivoting. And moving ahead.”

Having recently celebrated the shop’s 1-year anniversary, Love knows much lies ahead for the young shop. But things look promising indeed. 

“Because this is so new, every day is a learning day,” Brad said. “We’re not even close to having it all figured out. Our biggest challenge is keeping our head in the game, and listening to what our customers are asking for. I don’t care how long you’ve been in business. If you don’t listen to your customers and what their wants and needs are, you won’t be in business for very long. Our goals right now are to offer the best service known to mankind, and never be afraid to try something new.”

Closing In on 100 Years

Through it all, Brad Love said it’s important to know that despite his retail shop’s early success, his team has not forgotten its roots and its core wholesaling business.

“Stan and I are still running the back end, our wholesaling business, and my kids are focusing on the retail side. But even with the retail expansion, we haven’t dropped the ball on the wholesale at all. We’re just trying to see what it takes to survive the next hundred years. The wholesale side is a changing world. Being a distributor is not as important as it used to be for most shops, but we’re still trying to make sure we’re relevant. Our Western Rec. distributing business is still running strong, and it remains a big cog in our business plan.” 

Maybe as a testament to that, Western Recreation was one of the exhibitors at the recent 2024 ATA Show, where the team continued to meet new potential customers and grow the brand that has shown unusual longevity in the archery world. In just a few years, the Western Recreation team will celebrate an amazing 100 years in business. It’s a milestone that seems less surprising as you listen to Brad Love talk about the keys to success for any wise archery business. 

“Your customers will tell you what they need to know, if you’ll slow down and listen,” he said. “You can offer them advice and steer them in a direction, but in many cases, with some products and lines, they quite possibly will know more than you. Even if they bring something to you purchased off the Internet, treat them like they’re gold. Set them up right, so next time they don’t think of the internet, they’ll think of your shop. Treat each and every customer like they’re gold.”