BusinessTN

Brothers Wes, Brad and Wade Newman aren’t exactly trying to sell ice to Eskimos. Their business plan makes sense—selling guns, bows and fishing and paintball equipment to outdoorsmen in East Tennessee.

To help get visitors to their nine-month-old Legends Outdoor Advantage equipment store in the mood, the former manufacturing plant is bedecked with a couple hundred mounted animals—elephants, bears, deer, sheep, an eight-foot mounted polar bear that makes Han Solo’s buddy Chewbacca look like a dwarf, and birds hanging from the ceiling. Their plans seem to be working. The Athens, Tenn., store is shooting the lights out.

“We were very aggressive in our sales projections in our business plan for the first year, and we are exceeding that,” Wes says.

Neither the 26,000-square-foot store’s small town location nor competition from big-box retailers has proven an impediment. In fact, the Newmans would argue they have the advantage.

"We are strategically located between Knoxville and Chattanooga,” Brad says. “We have people driving from North Georgia and north of Knoxville every day.”

And as to competition from Wal-Mart, which has an outpost a few miles north, Legends is able to offer competitive prices thanks to its membership in Nation’s Best Sports, one the country’s oldest buying groups. The store further distinguishes itself by carrying inventory not just for the casual hunter or fisherman. “The Wal-Marts and Kmarts and those stores cater to the masses, and we really cater to the serious outdoorsman,” Brad says. “They just don’t carry the high-dollar premium shotguns and rifles and other hard-to-get items we can get and carry. As big as Wal-Mart is, it is hard for them to dedicate 25,000 square feet to outdoor products.” Legends, on the other hand, caters to you “if you just piddle with fishing, or you just piddle with archery or shooting or paintball. If you are very, very serious—a tournament shooter—we can accommodate that, too.

To address the needs of expert outdoorsmen, the Newmans carefully studied other stores and concluded Legends had to have people working in the store who were experts in their various fields. “We hunt, and we fish,” Brad explains. “We can certainly make our way around in the outdoors, but we are not experts, so we hired experts and they are working here.” Archery and bow-hunting specialist Ed Barnes, for instance, a former world champion archer who lives 20 minutes from the store, had been in business for himself, then worked at other stores. “He was the first person we hired,” Brad says.

Legend’s effort to solidify its reputation with serious sportsmen soon will be boosted further as Italian firearms maker Beretta introduces one of its 12 U.S. “shop in a shop” locations to the Newmans’ store. According to Beretta spokesman Matteo Recanatini, this section of Legends will be designed and constructed by Beretta’s architects to be a slice of one of Beretta’s Gallery stores in New York and Dallas.

With so much activity underway, the Newman brothers—sons of Bowater chief operating officer Donald Newman—haven’t had time for second thoughts about giving up their six-figure jobs to start Legends. “I am making less money right now than I have ever made,” Brad concedes. “I am working more hours than I have ever worked, but I am happier than I have ever been.”