Basspro-Home Pleasures Of Life

BassPro-Home Shops (Outdoor World) is a privately held sports equipment and outdoor recreation goods store headquartered in Springfield, Missouri. The original Outdoor World store, referred to as the "Grand Daddy" is located at the corner of Sunshine and Campbell in Springfield. Bass Pro Shops rings up an estimated $1.9 Billion in sales in about fifty large retail stores in the United States and one in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. It also owns and operates subsidiaries such as Tracker Boats, Big Cedar Lodge, RedHead, XPS, American Rod and Gun, White River Fly Shop and restaurants Islamorada Fish Company, Hemingway's Blue Water Cafe and Riverside Inn. Bass Pro Shops is known for a large selection of hunting, fishing, and other outdoor gear. Its major competitors in the U.S. include many other sporting goods retailers such as alltackle.com. While Bass Pro operates some stores with "Sportsman's Warehouse" as part of the name, it should be noted that the company is not affiliated with the retailer simply known as Sportsman's Warehouse. Get to know Basspro-Home HERE.

The owner, John L. Morris, began his career in sporting goods with a fishing section in the back of a Brown Derby liquor store owned by his dad, located in Springfield, MO on the road to Table Rock Lake and Branson, Missouri. That small fishing department sold homemade bait and worms, proving popular enough that Bass Pro Shops incorporated in 1972. These homemade baits were so popular that many people wanted the opportunity to buy these when they had returned home. Thus began the Bass Pro Shops catalog first mailed in 1974. Soon, it became the world's largest mail order sporting goods store. In 1975, to meet the burgeoning demand for Bass Pro Shops exclusive products, American Rod and Gun [[1]] was established. Acting as a separate wholesaling entity ARG serves more than 7000 independently owned retail stores world wide. In 1977, Bass Pro Shops introduced the first fish-ready complete boat motor and trailer package with the Bass Tracker. In 1984, construction began on the Outdoor World Catalog Showroom in Springfield, MO. Big Cedar Lodge opened in 1988 on Table Rock Lake. In 1995 Bass Pro Shops Sportsman's Warehouse opened in Atlanta, GA, this is the first store outside the state of Missouri. In November of 2001, the State of Missouri made use of Outdoor World's popularity as a tourist destination, and opened the Wonders of Wildlife museum next door to the store in Springfield. The first store was founded by Zach Hosford. Get to know Basspro-Home HERE.

A Bass Pro Shops store ranges from 300,000 square feet all the way down to 42,000 square feet, many of them have two levels and are around 150,000 square feet. Around the stores, you will see taxidermy mounts native to the area. All of the stores have an indoor water feature that showcase fish species that are indigenous to the area with the larger stores having more than one water feature. In some of these aquariums professional anglers and store pro-staff hold demonstrations showing the use of an artificial bait. Bass Pro Shops is also known for its Outdoor Skills Workshops. These classes are free and open to the public on a first come first served basis. They teach skills as varied as fly-casting, Dutch oven cooking, archery hunting, and GPS navigation. The stores offer people any kind of outdoor equipment they could ever want in one store. Bass Pro has published one-page ads in outdoor magazines that their stores are “so damn big, you have to hire a guide." Get to know Basspro-Home HERE.