The semi-virtual Big Wild Life has landed in Anchorage. The media got a sneak peek this week. The Anchorage Daily News sent its arts and entertainment editor, which only seemed appropriate.
We are talking here, of course, about the new, 100,000-square-foot Cabela's on C Street. Do not make the mistake of calling this a store. This is a destination.
Come on in, marketing director Carri Ann Pratt will tell you, and spend a few hours or a day. Actually, she didn't say that. That's a paraprhase.
"When you come in, you've got a lot of exploring to do," she said.
"You can come to learn," she said.
"I love sharing Alaska," she said.
She was well prepped and well schooled. Professional and capable. She confessed she'd found her dream job. She'd grown up on Cabela's catalogs in the north, and now the Sydney, Neb.-based outdoor marketing giant was here with its little slice of Alaska all under one roof.
No virtual Alaska fishing trip
It is an impressive store. About all that's missing is a Star Trekkian holodeck so you can go on an Alaska fishing trip where the big salmon always bite, the bugs never do, and the bears stay at a safe distance while coming close enough for pictures.
Cabela's is still working on that feature. Until then, the X-game generation will have to settle for the electronic hunting and fishing games the store stocks. Yeah, it's got everything.
No matter how much you might want to avoid being impressed, not wanting to come off as some Alaska hick in from the sticks, it will impress.
Forget the quaint, faux-northwoods-lodge entry; the aquarium full of trout and Dolly Varden char; the wall-size, big-screen videos; the gun room with some interesting historic weapons; the 300 lifelike stuffed animals; the Bush plane spinning its prop overhead in the main room; and the cute wildlife dioramas scattered around the place. There's something more important here: $13 million in inventory.
That's a lot of lures, bullets, coolers, meat grinders, ATV trailers, guns, fishing rods, and waders -- not to mention pile. Everyone who's been in Alaska long already has too much pile, Pratt admitted, but everyone wants more.
America is a consumer society. It is also a capitalist one.
Not to be too Darwinist, but capitalism shares a lot in common with evolution: The strong, the smart and the lucky survive; the weak, the dumb and the unlucky die.
Smaller retailers seek their niche
That's why Cabela's is rocking the Anchorage outdoor retail scene like an earthquake. Pratt was ready when she got the inevitable question about how the Walmart of outdoor retail is likely to impact other local businesses.
"It's healthy to be able to have competition," she said.
Hard to argue against that from the standpoint of a consumer. From the standpoint of the owner of a competing business, however, things have got to be looking grim.
"It's a scary market now," said Paul Denkewalter, owner of a little outdoor shop in Spenard. He is not a direct competitor of Cabela's -- his shop, Alaska Mountaineering and Hiking, specializes in Nordic skis, climbing gear, packrafts, ultralight backpacking, and some other niches. He employs outdoor experts in various fields, which bigger stories can't handle as well.
Denkewlater can, however, speak from experience as a survivor. He was doing business in Spenard when REI -- then the Recreational Equipment Inc. co-operative -- hit town decades ago, and he's still doing business just down the street from a newer, bigger, fancier REI store.
How'd he survive?
"A lot of it is luck," he said.
But there is more to it than that. AMH has cultivated a specific clientele and some specific gear niches. Mountain View Sports, an old Alaska fishing and hunting hangout now housed in a Midtown building, has been trying to do the same since the first news that Cabela's was coming north. It reached out to old customers in a new way, via email, offering to "match all the box store prices," including sales and coupons. It pushed selections of high profile, name-brand gear the bigger stores don't carry. And it promised the kind of intimate customer service that has helped AMH survive.
Alaskanized for Alaska market
Whether the approach works remains to be seen. Cabela's is playing some of the same angles. Its public relations handouts for media day stressed the many Alaskans the store has hired:
• Gun library outfitter Paul Harris: "I have lived in Alaska for almost 45 years ... I love to work with my customers to meet and satisfy their needs."
• Hunting outfitter Kate Casqueira in the archery department: "I'm 25 years old. I was born and raised in our great state of Alaska ... I want to teach people who have never hunted or fished before ... Cabela's is my family now."
• Fishing outfitter Taggart Horton: "Moved to Alaska in 1977, father transferred here from Texas with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ... went to college in Eastern Oregon, but couldn't stay away from Alaska for too long."
Yeah, it all got a bit syrupy, but it's pretty clear that Cabela's grasps the idea it has to Alaskanize itself for the Alaska market. And it's moving quickly to do that at a time when other competitors appear to be struggling.
Bass Pro Shops announced in October 2012 that it, too, was coming to Anchorage. Another of the "big box" outdoor retailers, it planned a 100,000-square-foot store in the Glenn Square Shopping Center in Mountain View.
It was expected to open in 2013, but it remains under construction and the Bass Pro website gives no indication of when it might open.
Sportsman's Warehouse is going strong near the Dimond Center mall in South Anchorage, but it's not long out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy and now facing a Goliath-size competitor with a better location.
The Cabela's store is just off Minnesota Drive, the main street out of town for anyone who rents a car or motorhome at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and heads immediately for the Kenai Peninsula. Costco, meanwhile, is just down C Street.
Pratt suggested someone should think about building a hotel between Costco and Cabela's just to cater to rural Alaskans who fly into Anchorage to shop. It's not a bad idea. Competitive thinking like that underlines why Cabela's is about to turn the local outdoor retail market into a dog fight.
No doubt most Alaskans will visit Cabela's at some point, no matter how much they might wish to resist as fans of older, smaller, local establishments. If and when you go, just make sure to grab a peek at the cinnamon-colored brown bear that presents a wonderful example for those who don't know why not all brown bears in Alaska are "brown bears," i.e. grizzlies.
It might be your chance to learn something. The store, as Pratt explained, doesn't exist just to sell you stuff. "It's expanding your knowledge," too.
Which is, at the end of the day, a great way to sell you stuff.