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    [Closed Search] President at America's Preeminent Outdoor Sports Enthusiasts' Gear Discounter

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    The Company

    The Company is the premier online marketplace for outdoor sports equipment and supplies, specializing in shooting and survival gear. The Company offers an unparalleled section of approximately 95,000 products through its website and catalog, selling products from every manufacturer within the industry and directly purchasing from nearly 300 vendors. More than 95% of The Company’s SKUs are inventoried by third-party distribution partners. In addition to featuring one of the web’s widest arrays of shooting equipment and accessories, the Company’s website offers unique content and community features. The Company’s website and brand name are extremely well-known to its target market.

    Founded in 1993 by its CEO and two partners, The Company began as a mail order-based retailer of ammunition and firearms accessories. With the growth of the Internet and electronic commerce, The Company began selling its products online in 1999. Online sales now represent the majority of The Company’s revenue, followed by retail and catalog. The Company mails more than 10 million catalogs annually to customers and prospective customers in its target market.

    The Company also has a small but growing retail storefront presence in several major cities in Texas.

    The Market

    The market for hunting and shooting equipment is more than $5 billion according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, with firearms and ammunition representing the largest segments of the market.

    Firearms sales are regulated at the federal, state, and local level. In addition to legal restrictions on sales, major online and offline media outlets restrict advertising of firearms, ammunition, and other shooting related gear. While these restrictions serve to increase the complexity of the market, they also create barriers to entry and give established, experienced retailers a competitive advantage.

    The Company has expanded into outdoor sports enthusiasts’ gear and equipment, further expanding the size of The Company’s addressable market.

    The Company's Competitive Advantage

    The Company is profitable, rapidly growing, and financially solid with a long and successful operating history. The Company pursues an attractive, scalable merchandising and fulfillment model that supports rapid growth, yet keeps capital expenditures and working capital at modest levels. This strategy is highly valued as evidenced by financial markets’ valuation of similar ecommerce models used by Amazon, eBay and other drop-ship e-tailers.

    Company Highlights

    • Over the last five years, the Company’s revenue and EBITDA have grown at CAGRs of more than 25% and 35% respectively
    • Attractive and scalable business model provides high return on invested capital, more than 60% over the last several years
    • 20+ years serving their vertical market, building brand, reputation, and loyalty
    • Longstanding, deep and trusted relationships with manufacturers and distributors
    • Proprietary data sets of customers, products, related enthusiast content, and detailed state and local regulations and SOPs
    • High website traffic volume often topping more than 10 million visits each month

    x281 - competitor revenue growth and margin comparison, 2011

    The Company's Product Offerings & Channel Mix

    Products

    The Company offers a vast array of shooting sports products and accessories on its website and in its catalog. Currently, The Company sells approximately 165,000 SKUs and offers firearms, ammunition, and other products from approximately 300 different vendors.

    Ammunition is the largest product category sold through The Company’s website and catalog. However, as the table below illustrates, The Company’s website and catalog generate significant product sales from a wide range of categories geared towards the shooting sport enthusiast.

    x281 - state-specific revenue, 2011

    x281 - percent of product sales by category, 2011

    To offer the greatest breadth and depth of products, while minimizing inventory and therefore working capital investment, The Company has formed partnerships with third-party distributors that will fulfill and ship non-firearm products directly to The Company’s customers and ship firearms to Company’s warehouse for shipment to the customers. Products are featured on the The Company’s website alongside The Company’s inventoried products, and in some cases, identical products are shown with different price points from different vendors. This implicitly communicates to customers that there is no need to look elsewhere to compare prices or selection. Approximately 98% of the SKUs that The Company offers are inventoried by third -party distribution partners.

    Channel Mix

    The Company’s go-to market channels include website, catalog, and retail. Revenue is split across these 3 channels with the largest being website (75%+), catalog (10%+), and retail store presence (10%+). In most recent year’s data, website represented more than 85% of all revenue.

    Operations

    All of The Company’s website and catalog sales, marketing, and fulfillment operations are housed in its Ft. Worth, Texas, headquarters facility where The Company has approximately 125 employees including seasonal temporaries as needed. The Company’s corporate functions are also based at this location.

    When The Company receives an order via its website or call center, the order is processed and fulfilled (pulled, packed and shipped) from The Company’s warehouse or a distribution partner warehouse based on the specific item ordered. Orders for products warehoused by third-party partners are electronically transmitted to the partner’s inventory system. The partner completes fulfillment of the order using packaging and invoices carrying The Company’s brand.

    The Position

    The President, in conjunction with the CEO and COO, serves as the executive core of The Company’s team. This core team is charged with determining and realizing The Company’s strategic vision and with delivering world-class shareholder/investor, customer, employee, and strategic partner satisfaction.

    The President has full authority and day-to-day responsibility for planning, implementing, managing and controlling all activities of the company. The key mission of the President is to accelerate revenue and profitability growth and transform The Company’s business from its current focus revenue, profitability and scope of offerings to a larger and more profitable enterprise meeting virtually all the needs of its consumer base.

    The President also has executive leadership responsibility for all the company’s operations and staff.

    Highlights of the new President’s track record and experience will include the following:

    • Strong commercial leadership experience, with a focus on US revenues generated primarily from Internet channel
    • Previous experience in senior roles in entrepreneurial organizations
    • Team-building, with particular emphasis on e-marketing, customer acquisition, retention, loyalty and click-and-mortar channels
    • Proven track record of motivating teams
    • Experience taking companies from $200M to $400M+
    • Experience with expansion, customer identification and development
    • Building and nurturing upstream and downstream ecosystem relationships that help both increase enterprise value, as well as map the ecosystem of potential strategic acquisitions and acquirers

    Detail of Responsibilities
    The Company is seeking a seasoned and accomplished sales executive with an unusual combination of skills. However, there is no question that the most critical skill is a proven ability to build, top-grade, and expand the functional teams responsible for delivering The Company’s products to their customers. The President will have a passion for and experience working with marketing team members and ecommerce experts to increase market penetration.

    Key skills, experience, and segment background include the following:

    • FUNCTIONAL Prior Experience
      • B2C ecommerce marketing (acquisition, loyalty, retention, life time value)
      • P&L experience
      • Revenue forecasting & budgeting, pipeline management & tools -- managing revenue-to-plan at both board & team level
      • Acquisition including both SEO and SEM, social ecommerce, community & content
      • Mobile commerce
      • Affiliate marketing
      • Clicks & mortar retailing
      • Domestic US multi-state customer marketing
      • Strategic list buying, lead gen, lead optimization, lead conversion
      • Insourced call center sales and customer service management & optimization
      • Pick/pack warehouse & inventory management
      • Linear & nonlinear advertising/marketing/PR
      • Mapping target partner ecosystems
      • Education: BA Marketing, or BS Computer Science + MBA
    • STAGE of Company Experience
      • Experience working with founders in closely held companies
      • Building & scaling brand recognition off of passionate verticals of brand loyalists
      • Growth phase of company development and rapid revenue growth, $200-$500M+
      • Marshalling cash resources, “doing more with less” in scaling business
    • MANAGEMENT and Leadership Experience
      • Remote/multi-location retail team management of 200+
      • Building scalable management processes without suffocating innovation/speed
      • Success as player/coach
      • Track record hiring/upgrading to A players for A team
    • INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE [B2C Retailing]
      • B2C e-commerce/e-tailing
      • Catalog retailing
      • Specialty storefront retail
      • Outdoor/hobby/sporting enthusiasts

    General
    Finally, this individual should have as many as possible of the traits required to succeed in this leadership position:

    • High levels of intelligence, analytical strength and conceptual ability.
    • The ability, and willingness, to set and communicate demanding standards for professional staff and to hold people accountable for their performance; at the same time, sensitivity to, and insight into individuals’ capabilities and development needs.
    • Decisiveness when necessary, coupled with a willingness to seek input and build consensus as much as possible.
    • Unquestioned honesty and integrity; also, loyalty to colleagues and to the organization, and the ability to inspire loyalty. This person should have the ability to identify and focus on the Company’s best interests, rather than the agenda of any individual or group within the firm.
    • A very high level of energy and commitment, combined with enthusiasm and a positive attitude.
    • Excellent writing and speaking skills; this individual must be able to communicate complex ideas and information clearly and concisely.
    • Outstanding planning and organization skills.
    • Good strategic instincts and long-term vision; the ability to address both big-picture issues and detailed, day-to-day management concerns.
    • In general, the business and personal skills, and the absolute commitment, required to make a major contribution to The Company during the coming years.

    Ideal Candidate Profile
    The diagram below illustrates the intersection of competencies critical in the position:
    x281 - heatmap

    Compensation

    Compensation is competitive with the position’s requirements. In a performance-based environment, this will include base salary, bonus structure based on corporate qualitative and quantitative business development targets, and a stakeholder position in the company.

    For more information...

    Please contact:
    Clark Waterfall, BSG Team Ventures
    Diane Amador, BSG Team Ventures
    Please also submit your resume here.

    Request Information 

    -by Clark Waterfall on Dec 26, 2014 11:26:13 AM

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