As we continue to celebrate 20 years of bringing you quality affordable gear, we’re going to share a story each day this week from a member of the Brune family. Today, Dennis Brune, the creator of ALPS will share with you his experiences starting the business: "As part of our 20th Anniversary celebration, I’ve been asked to make a few comments about “the first 20 years”. While I could probably write a book, I’ll try to focus on some of the key questions people quite often ask me. “Why start ALPS?” – I was fortunate in 1978 to get started in the outdoor industry. Growing up in rural Missouri, on a small farm, I can’t say that I had a particular love or passion early on for camping, hiking, or hunting, but I did always love just being outside. It didn’t take me very long working in the outdoor industry to realize I really did enjoy it and it could make a great career. My first 16 years in the outdoor industry gave me a chance to move from product design and development, into sales and marketing, and ultimately into running a great outdoor brand (Kelty). The biggest reason for starting ALPS was for the opportunity to have more control over the times when I needed to work. In 1993, our oldest son Brian was in the 7th grade and was just getting started in middle school sports. I decided I was going to do everything I could with arranging my work schedule to be as involved with his games and practices as I could be. Also having a pretty good idea that his younger brother and sister, Adam and Sarah, were also going to be very involved in school sports and activities, I knew my time commitment to all of them was only going to grow. Already having a strong work ethic and being used to working more than 40 hours per week, I just needed the total flexibility to work when I needed to. If my kids had an activity that started at 4:30, right after school, I wanted to know I could be there at 4:30, and if that meant I had to work later that evening after their event, to stay caught up, then that’s the flexibility I was after. Starting ALPS allowed me to accomplish that goal, and it’s one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made. “What was our largest challenge?” – This is probably the question I get asked the most. I have told people that we “redefined bootstrapping”, so yes, finances were tough in the beginning … but I never had any doubt we’d make it. Even though my number one criteria was flexibility to work when I wanted to, I did end up working even more hours than I ever did before … but that never was a burden to me either … I loved what I was doing and the time just flew by! So what was the biggest hurdle? I think having enough patience with some dealers that I thought would “automatically” follow and support our new brands. I think almost immediately we had acceptance with our new products with consumers. Our positioning makes it very easy to win consumers over to our side … products that are made “a little better” and cost “a little less” … what consumer wouldn’t want that!? Since we sell almost exclusively through dealers, we needed those dealers to buy our products, so consumers would even know we existed. Luckily our general business approach to growth is “slow and steady”, so waiting for some dealers to “come around” never really was a problem … but there were times it did try my patience! “What has been the most enjoyable part of starting ALPS?” – There are so many fringe benefits to having the type of business we have that I’m not sure I could choose just one. A huge bonus is being able to be in business with so many family members. I tell people all the time that our business model probably would not work for 99% of other businesses. Having so many family members and close friends working together on a daily basis … and getting along … and being successful … is like a dream come true. Another part of our business that I truly love is being able to coach so many team members … young and old … and watching them grow and develop into better business people. “What has changed the most in the last 20 years?” – It would be difficult to pick only one thing, but I think how we’ve shipped and warehoused our products is what has changed the most. Our first “warehouse” was a 3-car garage that was dedicated to storing our products … so it might have been a whopping 1200 square feet! I’ll never forget one particular nice spring day when we got a container of sleeping bags that we had to unload, by hand without a dock door, onto an outside concrete driveway. We then sorted them by style and moved them into our “warehouse” several boxes at a time, with a 2-wheeler! Not sure what we would have done if it had been a rainy day!! “How important is the New Haven/Washington Missouri area to our business?” – I’m sure there are plenty of places that say “we have the best people here”, but I’d put our area up against any of them when it comes to “being the best”! When it comes to work-ethic, honesty, dedication, and just generally “being a good person” the people in the New Haven/Washington area really are second to none. Then I get to collect a select few to be on the ALPS Team, and it makes my job as head coach pretty easy. “What do I see as being important to our future success?” – I tell my kids all the time that the pace of change in business seems to be moving faster than I ever can remember … and I have a feeling it’s not going to be slowing down any time in the near future! Keeping up with all of these changes will continue to be a challenge. The good news is that technology … smart phones, the internet, social media, etc. … all allow us to move more quickly, processing more information faster than ever before. Because we really do listen to our customers, it’s important for us to stay focused on making products that are what our customers really do want."
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:49:52 +0000
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