Cabela's - Retail Stores

Retail Stores

Cabela's has a distinctive look to their retail operations, a look which turns them into tourist attractions as well as retail stores. The stores are more like cavernous showrooms, bringing the outdoors inside. They feature museum-quality displays of taxidermied wildlife, large aquariums, indoor mountains, and archery ranges. The success of the format is illustrated by the company's Kansas City, Kansas store at over 180,000 square feet (17,000 m2), which attracted more than four million customer visits in one year. Currently, the largest Cabela's retail facility is in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, with more than 250,000 square feet (23,000 m2) of floor space.

Plans for international expansion began to develop, and in 2007, Cabela's purchased family owned S.I.R. Warehouse Sports Store in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 2010, the Canadian Head Office and Distribution Centre moved across the city, leaving the original location as only a retail store. The company had intended to be a part of the 1,400,000-square-foot (130,000 m2) Lac-Mirabel project near Montreal, which was to include 220,000 square feet (20,000 m2) of retail space, and was planned to open in 2008. But instead, rival chain Bass Pro Shops became one of the mall anchors. In 2011 Cabela's opened a 70,000-square-foot (6,500 m2) store in Edmonton, Alberta and in 2012 opened a 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2) store in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The 85,000-square-foot (7,900 m2) store just off Interstate 80 on the southern edge of Sidney, Nebraska illustrates some of the elements. The grounds include a 3½ acre pond and two bronze double-life-size bull elk on one side of the building. Inside, moss rock pillars hold trophy elks of huge proportions. A 27-foot (8 m)-tall replica of a mountain is framed in a 48-foot (15 m) mural of blue sky. The mountain is covered with 40 lifelike game trophies and features a waterfall that splits at the base into two ponds. Suspended in the air between the entryway and the mountain is a flock of taxidermic Canada geese.

Other attractions in their retail showrooms include a restaurant, a gun library, where one can see examples of the gunmaker's art, and a travel service, where customers can plan trips to anywhere in the world. The Boise, Idaho location is home to a museum dedicated to Elmer Keith. The Cabela's in Maine has an amusement park style shooting gallery, featuring both handguns and rifles.