May 14, 2009

Outdoor-gear store in Beaverdale has kept its footing as terrain changedBy David ElbertDesMoinesRegister.com

Lexi Wornson’s pink Gore-Tex vest is too small to fit her anymore, but she keeps it to remind her of the family history and how their Beaverdale store, Back Country Outfitters, has been on the cutting edge of outdoor gear since she was a child.

Wornson, 28, received the vest when she was 3 or 4. It was a one-of-a-kind creation by an early pioneer of outdoor clothing for a fashion show in New York. At the time, Gore-Tex was new, and no one was making outdoor gear for women, let alone children. When the show was over, the manufacturer, who was a friend of her parents, presented the pink vest as a gift to little Lexi.

It would be years before anyone made a vest like that for sale to children, but when it happened, it occurred partly because of Lexi’s parents.

The Wornsons’ small specialty store has been defying conventional wisdom for 35 years, competing with big-box and chain stores by focusing on families and female customers, although that was not its original niche.

The first customers were trend-setting college students in Ames, where Lexi’s father, Jamie Wornson, opened the first Back Country in 1974. But he abandoned that market after opening a Des Moines store in 1984 and discovering that middle- and upper-income families are trendsetters, too. Plus, they have more disposable income and are more likely to become loyal customers, because they aren’t as transient as college students.

Back Country reset its business plan in the mid-1980s when Lexi’s mother, Diana Kiel-Wornson, took over management of the store and began to focus attention on women’s outdoor needs.

Today, 80 percent of sales are to women, although “we have a ton of loyal male customers” and probably would not survive without them, said Jamie Wornson.

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