Backwoods, the outdoor retailer, announced plans to open three stores and also expects to introduce online shopping at Backwoods.com in time for Holiday 2008. The first of the new stores will open this weekend in Fort Worth, TX. It also has scheduled an October store opening in Overland Park, Kansas, and signed a new store commitment at The Meadows at Lake St. Louis in Missouri.
A wholly owned subsidiary of Nitches, Inc., Backwoods currently operates eight stores in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.
Backwoods will host a grand opening celebration this weekend, July 26-27th, in Fort Worth, Texas, to mark the opening of the newly relocated and expanded Backwoods store at 2727 West 7th St., in the heart of the city's vibrant cultural district. The two-story, free-standing store is one of the first to open in the widely-touted West 7th development that features retail, office, hotel and residential space. At 14,000 square feet the store's footprint almost triples the size of Backwoods' previous location and will be the largest in the eight store chain.
“Because of the incredible support of our customers in Fort Worth, we wanted to open a larger store that can offer even more products,” said Jennifer Mull, Backwoods CEO. “We work hard to find just the right merchandise to inspire active adventure in a variety of ways in our customer's lives. Being in Fort Worth where the environment is ideal for hiking, kayaking, fly fishing and many other outdoor pursuits is a perfect fit to deliver the complete Backwoods customer experience.”
The grand opening weekend will feature day-long activities including product giveaways, free food, live music, a climbing wall and vendor-hosted product demonstrations. A percentage of weekend sale proceeds will be donated to Streams and Valleys, Inc., which coordinates the beautification and recreational development of the nearby Trinity River Valley (www.streamsandvalleys.org). Backwoods has had a store in the Fort Worth region since 1978.
Backwoods also said construction remains on schedule for the October 2008 opening of a free-standing Backwoods store location at the flourishing Corbin Park in affluent Overland Park, Kansas. The 10,000-square-foot store sits prominently at the front of Corbin Park, a lifestyle mall featuring upscale national retailers, local boutiques and premier restaurants. Upon completion the mall will feature over 1.1 million square feet of retail space serving nearly 200,000 people in the surrounding community, where average household income exceeds $160,000 annually, and generally the 2.3 million residents of the greater Kansas City area. The planned grand opening celebration will include many of the same activities and offerings as the Fort Worth event.
Meanwhile, Backwoods.com is being upgraded and enhanced to offer online shopping for direct to consumer and ship to store fulfillment. The online store is planned to go live in time for the 2008 holiday season. The site will introduce innovative promotional, cross-selling and product review features to outdoor e-retailing. Mull observed, “Outdoor industry studies indicate that product reviews are a key driver of online sales and Backwoods,com will be certain to feature this functionality in an original and compelling manner.” Backwoods.com will leverage the distribution infrastructure of Nitches to handle anticipated robust fulfillment demands.
Looking to 2009, a store is already under development with a commitment for The Meadows at Lake St. Louis, a burgeoning retail center in a high growth, high income suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. The open air lifestyle mall will feature approximately 260,000-square-feet of specialty stores, smaller-scale anchor stores and restaurants. The store will open in the spring.
