Daniel Gross, Slate Magazine, December 20, 2007
This fall should have been an excellent time for companies that cater to well-heeled hunters and fishers. The farm-based economies of the Great Plains and Midwest are roaring. And the onset of the presidential campaign season, during which you often find city slickers posing as big-game hunters, usually provides a boost—for retailers and comedians alike. President Bush, in what now looks like foreshadowing, went out to shoot for doves during his 1994 gubernatorial campaign, and instead brought down a killdeer, which was protected by state law. John Kerry’s duck hunting in the fall of 2004 failed to sway rural voters. More recently, tough guy Vice President Dick Cheney bagged a septuagenarian, and ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney bragged about his long history of hunting varmints.
But this fall has been a terrible one for those in the business of making and selling rifles and shotguns. And for the dwindling core of optimists who believe the American consumer is doing just fine, the stock charts of companies like Cabela’s, Gander Mountain, and Smith & Wesson should cause them to check their scopes.
Cabela’s, which started as a catalog retailer in Nebraska in the 1960s, has enjoyed explosive growth: It now boasts 26 stores, with seven more to open soon. (As Cabela’s grew into a huge phenomenon—Cabela’s is to the rural well-off what REI is to blue-staters, or L.L. Bean to preppies—clueless New York-based editors occasionally dispatched writers like Manny Howard to decode the alien, rural culture of the company for their urban audiences.) But Cabela’s has done poorly in recent months. Its third-quarter earnings, reported on Nov. 1, were decent, although the company reported disappointing margins. But as the geese began to migrate south, investors soured on the company’s prospects. As this three-month chart shows, Cabela’s has lost 40 percent of its value since September.
Like Cabela’s, Gander Mountain is a Midwest-based (St. Paul, Minn.) purveyor of hunting and fishing gear that evolved from a catalog retailer into a large (115-store) chain. After a solid first half of the year, Gander Mountain has tumbled. In its third quarter, which ended Nov. 3, same-store sales plummeted 8.4 percent from 2006, and the company reported a loss. The culprits, according to CEO Mark Baker: “warm weather across northern states, which affects our critical fall hunting seasons, and soft consumer demand across our store base.” Baker also said the fourth quarter wasn’t looking much better “in light of continued softness in consumer discretionary purchases.” But what’s good for geese has been bad for Gander Mountain. As this three-month chart shows, the company’s stock has lost about 60 percent of its value this fall.
When My gasoline bills topped $4000 a year I stopped going to archery tournaments and gave up the bi-monthly fishing trip with my son.
Now My gasoline bill is $4400 a year and that is just work to home and home to work,
My new hobby to replace the ones that were healthy and uplifting is drinking at home.
I made a flatfoot prediction in 1999 to all the republican asswipe co-workers that gasoline would top $5 a gallon if Bush was elected and I was hooted down like some modern day cassandra.
I simply cannot afford another 21st century Laisez-Faire administration and it looks as though I’m not alone.
Comment by Rainlander — December 21, 2007 @ 2:48 am
I can’t understand how anyone could vote for a ‘Big Oil Man from Texas’ and then think he’s going to keep gas prices low but, you’re right, Rainlander, I’ve met several Bush boobs who believed the same nonsense back when Junior was getting his head pat from the SC.
Nice of Slate to notice there’s an economic crisis out here in Fly-Over Country — they’re just so cutting edge. Next they’ll tell us a lot of Americans don’t much care for Bush anymore.
Comment by RS Janes — December 21, 2007 @ 8:40 am