Cabela's mail-order catalogs are shipped to all 50 states and 120 countries. More than 120 million catalogs were mailed in its first year as a public company.
Retail stores
Cabela's has a distinctive look to their retail operations, a look which turns them into tourist attractions as well as retail stores. The stores are more like cavernous showrooms, bringing the outdoors inside. They feature museum-quality displays of taxidermied wildlife, large aquariums, indoor mountains, and archery ranges. The success of the format is illustrated by the company's Kansas City, Kansas store, over 180,000 square feet, which attracted more than four million customer visits in a recent year. Currently, the largest Cabela's retail facility is in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, with more than 250,000 square feet of floor space. The company has announced that its largest store will be constructed in Canada. This location will be a part of the 14 million square foot Lac Mirabel project, which will include 2.2 million square feet of retail space, and could open as early as 2008.
The 75,000-square-foot store just off Interstate 80 on the southern edge of Sidney illustrates some of the elements. The grounds include a 3 1/2-acre pond and two bronze double-life-size bull elk on one side of the building. Inside, moss rock pillars hold trophy elks of huge proportions. A 27-foot-tall replica of a mountain is framed in a 48-foot mural of blue sky. The mountain is covered with 40 lifelike game trophies and features a waterfall that splits at the base into two ponds. Suspended in the air between the entryway and the mountain is a flock of taxidermic Canada geese.
Other attractions in their retail showrooms include a restaurant, a gun library, where one can see the epitome of the gunmaker's art, and a travel service, where customers can plan trips to anywhere in the world.
Company history and expansion
The company began in 1961 when Dick Cabela came up with a plan to resell fishing flies he purchased while at a furniture show in Chicago, Illinois. Upon returning to his home in Chappell, Nebraska, Dick ran a classified ad in the Casper Star-Tribune, newspaper reading: "12 hand-tied flies for $1." In 1961, he ran an ad in the back of Sports Afield magazine, offering, "FREE Introductory offer! 5 hand tied Flies...25 cents Postage..."
In typical direct-mail style, each order was mailed with a mimeographed catalog of outdoor items Dick and his wife, Mary, added to their product line. In the beginning, Dick and Mary worked at the kitchen table of their home in Chappell. Continued success made the company a full-time operation by the fall of 1962.
Shortly after incorporation in 1965, it became apparent a larger facility was needed. So, the business moved across the street to a former USDA building. Then, in 1967, the USDA building was traded for the American Legion Hall in Chappell. This building served as company headquarters and housed offices, warehousing and a small retail product display in a corner.
The company expanded in 1968, moving 30 miles west of Chappell to a 50,000-square-foot building near downtown Sidney. The next major phase of expansion was in the mid-1980s, when a former Rockwell International plant in Kearney was acquired and in 1986 became home to telemarketing operations as well as a second retail store.
During 1996, Cabela's built a distribution facility in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, with more than 600,000 square feet. It added to this in 1998 with a 40,000-square-foot retail store adjacent to Cabela's distribution center in Prairie du Chien, and added a third distribution center in 2003 alongside a new retail store in Wheeling, West Virginia.
In January 1998, employees moved out of the original Sidney headquarters building into a new 120,000-square-foot world headquarters building adjacent to the retail showroom. The two-story building, which is large enough to fit a football field on each floor, houses offices for nearly 500 employees.
Other Nebraska communities have also benefitted by Cabela's expansion. There is an additional telemarketing facility in Grand Island, a customer-service center in North Platte and a returns facility in Oshkosh. In 2001, the company created a bank, World's Foremost Bank, to facilitate its credit card operations; the bank is headquartered in Sidney and operates from Lincoln.
In the late 1990s, Cabellas began a period of rapid expansion of its retail stores. The company, which only had two retail stores in 1997, opened 12 stores between 1998 and 2005. By 2008, at least 11 additional stores are expected to open.
Recent Cabela's stores are generally the anchors of large retail developments. The Fort Worth store, for example, was built on a fifty-acre site at the interchange of Texas Highway 170 and Interstate 35W. The Buda store has as many as 500 employees and anchors a 126-acre development at the interchange of Interstate 35 and Texas Loop 4, approximately 15 miles south of Austin.
The development, due to open in early 2007 in Reno, Nevada, will be built in Boomtown Resort, a fully operational hotel and casino. This will be a new experiment, with a hotel and casino alongside a 185,000 sq. foot Cabela's.
Cabela's is a Presenting Sponsor of the 1,049+ mi (1,600+ km) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race across Alaska. According to their site, "the race participants and the people of Alaska are the epitome of what Cabela's customers are all about — rugged, independent people who thrive on the outdoors". Aside from general support, they also contribute part of the cash prize that goes to the winner, and both the Outfitter Award and the Rookie Outfitter Award. Winners of the two awards are chosen by lot, and win a USD $1,000 gift certificate. Cabela's hosts a website on the race, and for several years they have been providing extensive daily news coverage both during and prior to the race.
Some of Cabela's competitors based in the US include, R.E.I., Bass Pro Shops, Eastern Mountain Sports, Gander Mountain, L. L. Bean, Sierra Trading Post, Campmor, Sport Chalet, and Sportman's Warehouse, as well as national sporting goods retailers such as Sports Authority, Big 5 Sporting Goods, and Dick's Sporting Goods, web retailers such as Moosejaw.com, Altrec.com and Backcountry.com, and a host of local independent retailers.
Television
Cabela's has produced several television series, they are called Cabela's Outfitter Journal, and Cabela's Memories in the Field. They broadcast on WildTV and The Outdoor Channel and available for download at MoboVivo.
Games
Cabela's have produced several video games for many video game platforms, including Cabela's Big Game Hunts, Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 1 & 2, Cabela's African Safari, Cabela's Outdoor Adventures and more. All these games feature life-like hunting experiences and features.
Cabellas
