OR Daily – Massey’s

Massey’s Professional Outfitters Evolves to Survive in the Big Easy
By: orshowdaily
Published: January 22nd, 2009

BY KRIS VERSTEEGEN

New Orleans is not your average city but rather a constantly evolving kaleidoscope of personalities and lifestyles. Likewise, Massey’s Professional Outfitters, based in New Orleans, is not your average outdoor specialty shop. In fact, Massey’s didn’t even get its start as an outdoor store. In 1972 Darrell Massey and his son Larry opened the original sporting goods store.

Mike Massey, the current third-generation owner, described the business as an “off the beaten path” team sports store when he first started working there at the age of six. And like the city of New Orleans, Massey’s is constantly evolving.

Massey’s first entered the outdoor category through snow sports. In 1982, after a decade of successful team sports sales, Massey’s was booming with five franchise locations and a warehouse and distribution center. However, big-box competition was increasing and Larry Massey was looking for new categories to spur some additional growth.

Mike Massey had been writing orders for Nike cleats and running shoes since he was a 13-year-old. In the late ‘80s he was also looking for a new challenge and decided the snow sports business would be an exciting addition. This was viewed as a radical move for a Louisiana-based team sports dealer.

Eventually Massey’s also added a small outdoor department. By the end of that decade, these two categories proved to be the salvation for Massey’s.

Mike Massey remembers the late ‘80s and early ‘90s well. “The oil bubble had crashed and the family needed help, so I came back and started working at night. All of the momentum from the ‘80s kind of dried up and a lot of the other locations we had were franchises and those agreements fell apart. Everyone ended up doing his or her own thing. In the early ‘90s we had fallen back to just one store, no warehouse.”

By 1993, the small outdoor department evolved into a full-fledged outdoor business that was growing faster than any other category in the shop. Just two years later, it became apparent that New Orleans couldn’t support a local sporting goods retailer. So, Mike Massey and his father Larry decided to turn their store into an outdoor and snow sports specialty retailer.

Today, Massey’s continues to evolve. The company no longer calls itself an outdoor store.

“We came into this business from the snow business, sharing lines like Marmot and Patagonia across snow to the outdoor business,” Massey explained. “From the outdoor business we branched out into the surf and island lifestyle business. We help adventurers. It doesn’t matter to us what that means to you. If you want to go to Disney World that’s great, as long as you call it an adventure, we’ll help you. It might be backpacking, but it also might be a cruise. Our gig is to try and not box people in.”

This business approach has seen the new Massey’s through several years of good growth. Although, Massey is quick to point out that this growth has always been a challenge.

“We never had a moment in our history where we grew 200 percent in one year. It’s just been scratching and clawing trying to grow a bit each year, trying to get a double-digit year here and there, hoping we don’t lose too much in the down years. We just wanted to grow the business steadily and that’s what we did,” he said.

More recently, Massey has been keeping his eyes on a new competitor. “Our biggest competition, both within our industry and outside of our industry, are the big-box retailers who come in and get under the local government’s skin and try to get tons of concessions and free buildings and bond financing,” Massey said. “We don’t really consider other specialty retailers to be our competition. And by other specialty retailers, I even include the big outdoor specialty guys like Backcountry and REI.”

Massey said that he considers the people who can “bend the market,” like Wal-Mart and Cabela’s, to be his biggest competition. To counteract these large-scale retailers’ advantages in price, Massey relies heavily on his status as a local retailer. Massey’s is well known in the New Orleans community because of its marketing concept: “Keep it local, keep it heirloom, keep it very unique.”

As New Orleans evolves, Mike Massey and his team continue to keep a close eye on the retail landscape. His store’s evolution is ongoing much like the city that surrounds it.