Richard N. Cabela, founder of the hunting and outdoors retail chain Cabela’s, one of the largest sellers of guns and ammunition in the country, died on Monday at his home in Sidney, Neb., where the company is based. He was 77.
The company announced the death.
Mr. Cabela founded Cabela’s with his wife, Mary, and brother James in 1961, after he bought $45 worth of hand-tied fishing flies while on a business trip to Chicago for the family’s furniture store in Chappell, Neb., near the Colorado border.
When the fishing flies didn’t sell on the shelves, he put an advertisement in a newspaper in Casper, Wyo., offering 12 fishing flies for $1. He made one sale. So he tried Sports Afield magazine.
“FREE introductory offer!!!” the magazine advertisement read. “5 popular Grade A hand-tied flies. Send 25c for postage and handling.”
The flies sold, so Mr. Cabela bought more fishing gear, which he continued to sell through the mail.
Today, customers can buy bait, boots, canoes, night vision goggles, motion sensor cameras and firearms, among other things. The company had $3.6 billion in revenue in 2013, with more than a fifth of its sales coming from guns and ammunition.
Mr. Cabela was a vocal supporter of the National Rifle Association. In a video posted on the group’s website this week, Mr. Cabela was asked what he would say to someone who identifies as a hunter but who does not belong to the N.R.A.
“How are you going to hunt without a gun?” he responded. “These guys protect your right to own a gun. That’s what it’s all about.”
Richard Neil Cabela was born in Chappell on Oct. 8, 1936, one of six children of A. C. and Marian Cabela, who owned a furniture store in town. He attended Regis University in Denver, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2010.
There are 50 Cabela’s locations in the United States and Canada, with 23 new locations planned for the next two years, a company spokesman said. But much of the business is still in mail order, whether from the company’s website or its catalog.
The first catalogs were three-page mimeographed sheets that went out with each order of fishing gear; the company now produces almost 100 different catalogs every year.
Mr. Cabela was the company chairman of Cabela’s until June 2013, when he was named chairman emeritus. His brother succeeded him.
Besides his brother, he is survived by his wife; their daughters, Nancy Cabela, Geri King, Teri Wolff and Carolyn Harvey; their sons, David, Rich, Chaz, Dan and Joe; 22 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren.
In the N.R.A. interview, Mr. Cabela appeared with his wife and his son David in a room in his house packed with taxidermic wildlife, including a giraffe and a rhinoceros. Cabela’s retail stores are decorated with similar touches, with taxidermic animals and birds in recreations of their natural habitat.
In the interview, David Cabela said, “The retail experience at Cabela’s actually gives people a small taste of what they can get when they go out and see the real thing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/22/business/richard-cabela-who-sold-the-great-outdoors-is-dead-at-77.html?_r=0
