your business - Gibson`s Duck Blind Covers, Inc.

HUNTING ENTREPRENEURS
MAKING DUCK HUNTING
YOUR
BUSINESS
Story and photos by HOLLY A. HEYSER, EDITOR
What duck hunter hasn’t thought about a way to make duck hunting
better – better gear, a better call, a better blind?
In this issue, we tell the stories of five California companies that turn
those ideas into reality. Their stories are diverse, but the attitudes of
the people who run them are identical: If you’ve got a good idea,
and the passion to back it up, go for it!
But make it good.
JJ LARES: A QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN STORY
Born in 1926, Joe Lares grew up in Redwood City, the son of Spanish
immigrants. It was a trip to a Sequoia High School open house that
hooked him on his future career.
“I went to that open house and walked into the machine shop by
mistake and I was fascinated by seeing people cut this material,” he
said. “The end result was at 11 o’clock that night, they kicked me out
because I was still there.”
He jogged home and declared to his mother that he was going
into manufacturing (“What does that mean?” she replied). He
would make his living in machine shops forever more.
He worked initially as a watchmaker, and
later went into the dental business making
high speed drill motors. But even though
>> JJ Lares owner Bret Crowe, who apprenticed for founder Joe Lares for 15 years before
taking over the business, tests a Hybrid he’ll be shipping to a retailer in Norfolk, Virginia.
he had been hunting ducks on San
Francisco Bay since he was a kid, he didn’t
make duck hunting his business until he
retired. Here’s how it went down:
A friend asked Lares if he knew anyone
who wanted to buy his shop.
“Yes, me,” Lares said.
CALIFORNIA WATERFOWL SUMMER 2015
“You just retired,” the friend said.
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“I just unretired,” Lares replied.
He started making calls just for fun,
but friends started taking notice. Soon
enough he was selling them as fast as he
could make them, and JJ Lares was born
in 1986, ultimately settling in Chico.
>> Bret Crowe, two-time world live calling champion,
polishes a call using a well cared-for turning machine.
“Making calls was never a problem; it
was the concept that took some time,” he
said. Once Lares got his designs where he
wanted them, his exacting standards in
the machine shop sealed the deal.
“The name of the game is the sound
board,” he said. “Our soundboard has
a prescribed type of curve. We made a
soundboard that has 250 steps in it in
less than half-thousandths of an inch. It’s
never been duplicated. It would be very
difficult to try to copy it.”
Lares, who just turned 89, finally sold the
business last year, but this is where the
story gets even better. But first we have to
back up.
Bret Crowe was born into a duck hunting
family in Chico in 1982, so he knew all
about JJ Lares calls. And like Lares, he
took an interest in manufacturing while
he was in high school. So, in November
Then in 2014, the apprentice – on board
since high school, with Joe Lares for more
than half of the company’s life – bought
the business. JJ Lares is now run by Bret
Crowe.
“I love the product. I love the company,”
he said.
Crowe maintains Lares’ exacting
manufacturing standards. Success is
rooted in ultra-high quality, maintaining
uniformity within that half-thousandth
of an inch. “Twenty in a row, they’re all
mathematically the same,” he said. “You
don’t have to worry about there being
differences between each one.”
Crowe’s focus is on turning out quality,
not quantity – it takes a week to 10 days
to put out 300 calls. But the business
continues to grow. “We’re selling products
worldwide now,” he said. “We have dealers
in New Zealand, France and Russia, and
all over the U.S.”
cover opened too fast, and birds flared far
more quickly than they did when hunters
just stood to shoot.
ONLINE: jjlares.com
Finally, he got the idea for a cover that
would allow him to peep out over the top
of it – a metal-frame cover with two flaps,
one of which could sit higher than the
other. This one was a winner.
GIBSON’S DUCK BLIND
COVERS: THE ANSWER TO AN
OLD PROBLEM
Duck hunters go to great lengths to camo
up and hide from the ducks, but if they’re
hunting out of a pit blind, they’ve got a
problem: That blind looks like a big black
hole in the ground, and when hunters look
up, they stand out instead of blending in.
And of course, if you cover the blind, you
can’t see overhead.
Carl Gibson got fed up with the situation.
Having spent his entire career working
with sheet metal, he decided to put
his skills to use trying to build a better
mousetrap, as they say – a blind covering
that would hide you when you needed it,
and open wide when you were ready to
shoot.
Early on, there was a series of failures. “I’d
try one, wouldn’t work, try one, wouldn’t
work.”
At one point he tried a spring-loaded
cover. Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t
have to push the cover open?
No, it wouldn’t. It was a disaster. The
He had been building the covers just for
himself, but once he started using this
one, buddies at his club in the Sacramento
Valley asked him to make blind covers for
them, too. Then someone said, “Hey, why
don’t you start selling them?”
So 14 years ago, his second career was
born. The first two years, he worked out
of his garage until his wife demanded he
give her half of it back. Then he rented a
1,000-square-foot building and outgrew
that. Then 3,000 square feet, then 4,000
square feet, and yes, he’s outgrown that
too.
Why? Gibson – now 78 – has just sealed
a deal to sell his covers through Bass Pro
Shops. He was already in Cabela’s and
Mack’s Prairie Wings, but this will require
him to ramp up production even more.
If you spend more than five minutes with
Gibson, it quickly becomes apparent that
he takes incredible pride in his product. It
must be made to last forever – anything less
isn’t good enough. He’ll regale you with
tales of hunters getting across impassable
muddy roads by throwing Gibson’s blind
covers on the road for traction, then
hosing them off and putting them back
While many California duck hunters
know JJ Lares as a local business, Crowe
says his strongest sales are all through
the Mississippi Flyway. “The greater
numbers of our dealers and customers
are in Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas and
Louisiana,” he said. “I sell a ton of duck
calls in Duck Dynasty’s town. There’s a
ton of people in Louisiana blowing them
now.”
His advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs?
“Manufacturing excellence, having a
>> Gibson’s Duck Blind Covers founder Carl Gibson at his Lodi headquarters with a demo model of the invention that turned into a business.
CALIFORNIA WATERFOWL SUMMER 2015
At the same time, he was entering and
winning more than 30 calling contests
using JJ Lares calls. Two years straight
he won the live duck calling world
championships in Easton, Maryland,
using the JJ Lares Hybrid in 2012 and the
T-1 in 2013.
method and way of doing everything
correctly, having there be one way, and
that’s the right way, for everything.”
HUNTING ENTREPRENEURS
1998, Crowe wrangled a sweet deal
through his Durham High School work
experience program that allowed him to
spend the last two periods of his school
day working for Joe Lares.
He did that as a junior and senior, then
stayed on as an apprentice while he was
attending Butte College and Chico State,
finally going to work for Lares full time
after graduation.
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HUNTING ENTREPRENEURS
to work as intended, maybe a bit bent, but
working just fine.
His advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?
“Trial and error,” he said. “First, they have
to get the product right. It has to work. It
has to be easy, quick and fast, and what I
call bullet-proof.”
ONLINE:
www.gibsonduckblindcoversinc.com
WINGSETTER: THE DEFINITION OF ‘UBIQUITOUS’
For Mickey Saso, calling ducks opened a
lot of doors.
He started hunting ducks when he was
9 years old using a Mossberg bolt-action
.410, and started calling so well that
people would take him hunting just so
he could call for them.
Then he started entering calling contests
all over Northern California and Nevada,
and won or placed in more than 25 of
them. Ultimately, in 1977, he went to the
World’s Championship Duck Calling
Contest in Stuttgart, Arkansas, where he
was in for a big surprise.
In California, calling contests were all
about sounding like ducks, so Saso didn’t
realize the Stuttgart competition was for
a more stylized form of calling. He placed
next to last.
>> Modesto entrepreneur Mickey Saso made his name first in calling contests and then with the Wingsetter call business.
He estimates he’s put a quarter million of the ubiquitous 8-in-1 calls onto hunters’ lanyards.
whistles, cutting them in half and gluing
them back together, and selling them
for $20 to $30. Saso sold Lou’s calls in
addition to his own – people loved them.
Lou passed away, and Saso looked into
making the calls himself. Though Lou
hadn’t patented the call, Saso’s patent
attorney told him he couldn’t patent
the idea because it was Lou’s. But he
could redesign it and apply for a design
CALIFORNIA WATERFOWL SUMMER 2015
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The call Saso is best known for – the
8-in-1 whistle – came about differently.
His friend Lou was taking children’s slide
He originally called it the 4-in-1 because
it was for pintail, teal, wigeon and wood
duck, but later changed the name to
8-in-1 because the call could be used for
four species of quail: mountain, valley,
Gambel’s and bobwhite. “After 3637 years, we’ve probably got a quarter
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But things were beginning to take off
for him that year anyway. Back home,
people who knew his reputation in the
calling circuit had been urging him to
start a duck call company, and so he did,
founding Wingsetter in 1977.
“My hunting partner was a wood shop
teacher in high school. I designed
prototypes and mailed them to him in
Lake Charles, Louisiana, and they would
finish it off and mail it back to me,” he
said. “If there were corrections, then I’d
make corrections, then order them by the
thousands. We sold a lot of honker calls,
snow goose calls and mallard calls.”
trademark, which is exactly what he did,
creating the familiar call with the slide
tuner and two port holes.
Jon Moss, Owner
G r i d l e y, C A l i c . # 8 0 7 1 0 0
(530) 682-2914 Cell
E x p e r i e n c e d Wi t h R e fe re n c e s
HUNTING ENTREPRENEURS
million of those calls out there,” he said.
design and catalog.
too, and rolled the decoy business into it.
Saso’s advice for aspiring inventors? “Go
for it!” he said.
But it’s taken brother-and-sister combo
Cory Foskett and Staci Castagnetto 11
years to get here, and their route is an
unusual one in this business.
“I soon realized if I was going to be
talking about ducks and geese, I needed
to familiarize myself as much as possible
with all types of hunting,” Foskett said.
So he started going out duck hunting.
“But don’t tie up a bunch of money –
most people who start that kind of stuff
are just like me, commoners who are
duck hunters who love the sport,” he said.
“They all start out small – nobody starts
out big. If it’s a good product, it will build
on its own.”
Wingsetter is for sale, but don’t count
Saso out of the business yet – he says he’s
still kicking around a few ideas for new
products.
TANGLEFREE: AIN’T JUST
LINES & ANCHORS ANYMORE
CALIFORNIA WATERFOWL SUMMER 2015
If you just started duck hunting this year,
you might think Tanglefree has always
been a major force in duck hunting: Its
product line is substantial. It is a sponsor of the Rich-N-Tone television show
(RNT-V). It’s got a clean, sophisticated
new marketing package – logo, box
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“I was not a big waterfowl hunter – I’d
probably been waterfowl hunting three
times in my life,” Foskett said. “What
happened is this: My parents have a
construction business here in the Bay
Area, and they said let’s look into a
business we can get into as a family.”
Their accountant had another client
– Bond – that primarily made patio
furniture and garden tools, but also
worked with a factory overseas that
produced inexpensive duck decoys. “Our
accountant convinced them to meet with
us, and once they found out it was going
to be family owned, we ended up buying
the portion of the company that made
decoys.”
Two months later, they learned Tanglefree
– a decoy line and anchor company
founded in 1972 by Jack and Dan Kiernan
– was also for sale, so they bought that
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“Just like any duck hunter, you get
hooked,” he said. “The biggest problem
now is I don’t get to go enough.”
When they started the company, Foskett
said, the decoy business was a race to the
bottom – at the trade shows, companies
were focused on offering the cheapest
price on a dozen mallard decoys. “People
weren’t as picky if the paint faded after
a year or the decoys broke,” he said.
“Luckily, those times have changed.
Consumers expect a better product and
are willing to pay for it.”
It took seven years of searching to find a
factory that could deliver on manpower
and quality control, but once they did,
it opened the floodgates. “In the last five
years,” he said, “we’ve opened up close to
100 different carvings” – the model for
a mass-produced plastic decoy. “We’ve
HUNTING ENTREPRENEURS
found carvers in the
U.S. to work with.
We’ve gotten rid of
our old lineup and
started going with
the higher end.”
In the meantime,
Tanglefree
had
also gotten into
“soft goods” – pit
bags, layout blinds
and decoy bags –
which brought the
company to where it
is now.
“We’ve
grown
every year, so that’s
>> Tanglefree has grown from decoy lines and anchors to
something
we’re
a company with a wide array of products, but it still has a
very proud of,”
compact staff at its Concord headquarters. From left to right:
Foskett said. “As
Staci Castagnetto, partner and chief financial officer; Doug
we’re growing, we’re
Butcher, vice president; Cory Foskett, president; and Ashley
taking money and
Billett, office manager.
putting it directly
back into the company. We’re starting to become a much more
recognizable brand, whereas before, it was ‘Oh, Tanglefree –
decoy lines and anchors.’ Consumers are recognizing us as a onestop shop for waterfowl needs.”
Fifteen versions later, they had their blind: a wide, lightweight
foam base that’s unsinkable, and a metal frame angled inward,
keeping hunters standing closer to the center for stability, and
providing room to keep gear at their feet without stepping on
it. The blind is light enough that one person can move it around
within a pond alone, or hunters can attach a motor to go longer
distances.
“The first people we had hunt off these things were terrified to
go on them,” he said. “They thought it was like a science project
gone wrong. Then we started shooting lots of ducks from real
close and people started thinking maybe we had the right idea.”
Just as it was with Gibson’s Duck Blind Covers, their friends
started asking them to make floating blinds for them. “Then so
many people started wanting them, we thought, ‘Maybe we’re
onto something. Maybe we can make a legitimate business doing
something we love.’ That’s everyone’s dream.”
XFowler started making sales, not just in California, but also
Oregon, Texas, Louisiana and Canada. California Waterfowl
uses XFowler blinds at its properties in the Suisun Marsh: the
original model at the Denverton Duck Club and a wheelchair
accessible model at Grizzly Ranch.
His advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? “If you really want to bring
something to market, make sure it’s 100 percent bulletproof.
Sometimes we get excited to bring something to market and it’s
not quite ready. You only get one chance, so you don’t want to
bring something that’s 90 percent.”
ONLINE: tanglefree.com
XFOWLER: REINVENTING THE FLOATING
BLIND
CALIFORNIA WATERFOWL SUMMER 2015
XFowler is the new kid on the block, having been founded just
two years ago, but its trajectory up to this point is a familiar one.
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“We were hunting these deep-water areas – it was all river rock
in the Goldfields, so there was no way to build a blind,” said
XFowler co-founder Harry Bunfill. “There’s tons of ducks, but
not really any way to hide from them, so we needed something
that floated.”
The concept came naturally to Bunfill and his brother Bill
Bunfill. Their day jobs were – and still are – with the family’s
polyurethane foam roofing business, which also makes floating
docks using marine-grade polyurethane.
“We thought, hey, if we can make docks float using this stuff,
why not make our own duck blind?” It just needed to be stable,
safe, and unsinkable.
>> Harry Bunfill, right, started the XFowler duck blind business with his brother two years ago. It’s
challenging shipping a product that’s so bulky, but his buyers aren’t just Californians – he’s sold his
easy-to-move floating blinds to folks in Texas, Louisiana and Canada. On the left in this photo is Justin
Dobrinski, a managing member of XFowler.
Bunfill says they’re at least a couple years away from making
this a standalone business that would allow them to quit their
day jobs. Distribution of the bulky blinds is a challenge, as is
educating people about a new type of product. “It’s just going to
take time,” he said.
“But to this day, we’ve never had anyone want their money
back. We promise people a lot of things about these blinds, and
nobody’s ever said, ‘This thing didn’t deliver what you said it was
going to.’”
Bunfill’s advice for hunters who think they’ve got a marketable
idea? “If you’re really passionate about something and you really
love something, at the end of the day, you have to try it,” he
said. “I mean this is my dream, to have a product like this that
changes the way people hunt.”
ONLINE: xfowler.com