A Sportsman's Life: How I Built Orvis by Mixing Business and Sport

by Leigh Perkins, Geoffrey Norman (With), Johnny Morris noted conservationist and Bass Pro Shops founder (Foreword by)

Overview

When Leigh Perkins bought the Orvis Company in 1965, the fly-fishing and bird-hunting outfitter was a sleepy business with annual sales that had leveled off at $500,000. Over the next thirty years Perkins built Orvis's annual sales to $100 million by revolutionizing the catalog retail industry and reshaping the company's tradition-bound culture. He achieved this by blending his love of nature with his business acumen and bringing the commonsense approach he learned in the streams and on his hunts to his boardroom decision making.

The basic principles he used to run his business include:

The Customer Is Always Right. . . Even When You Know Damned Well He's Wrong: Perkins put such a high priority on customer service that he would personally man the phones at the height of the holiday season each year to keep in touch with his customers.

Product Excellence: Perkins made sure that everything Orvis sold was of the highest quality--even if that meant he had to fight the US government to get access to embargoed Chinese bamboo for fly rods.

Empower Your Employees: By promoting from within, and by empowering his employees to solve problems without manager involvement, Perkins built a loyal and talented team.

Living the outdoor life his catalog popularized, Perkins traveled all over the world to fish and hunt, from Argentina to New Zealand, while devoting his resources to conservation causes worldwide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493069972
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	212
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Leigh Perkins was CEO of the Orvis Company from 1965 to 1992. After 1992, he devoted his efforts to a variety of conservation causes and divided his time among homes in Vermont, Florida, and Wyoming. Mr. Perkins passed away in 2021.

Geoffrey Norman is the author of nine books. He is currently a contributing editor at Forbes FYI and writes frequently about the sporting life for a variety of magazines.

Editorial Reviews

In this combination of personal and company memoir, Perkins, former CEO of the sporting goods company Orvis, discusses how he merged his love of the outdoors with his professional life. Perkins, who once was kicked out of school for going fishing, presents himself as a born salesman who worked for various companies before buying Orvis in 1965. For nearly 30 years, he ran the company, expanding its fishing franchise into clothing and hunting outposts before retiring in 1992 so he could spend his time fishing, hunting and traveling. Perkins has traveled extensively, and the descriptions of his trips to fish in China or hunt in India are quite vivid. Less successful is his consideration of his business experiences. Perkins's voice is more matter of fact and less enthusiastic talking about the work that paid for his outdoor adventures than about the adventures themselves. But to his credit, he presents his story not as the key to life or retailing or business growth, but merely as the story of one man's very fulfilling marriage of business and pleasure. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Perkins gives the reader an enjoyable as well as insightful account of his years as CEO of C.F. Orvis Co., the pioneering Manchester, VT-based mail-order fishing- and hunting-gear company that has existed since 1856. From 1965 to 1992, he used good business acumen, learned while working in sales management, to turn an ailing company that he had bought for only $400,000 into a successful one that grossed over $200 million in sales at the time of his retirement. With seasoned writer Norman, a contributing editor at Forbes FYI, Perkins tells how he did it, beginning with the lifelong love for fishing and bird hunting his mother instilled in him as a child. Delightful prose detailing many outdoor scenarios, along with accounts of successful business decisions, give hunters, fishermen (and women), managers, and even CEOs an adventure and business history difficult to put down. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/99.]--Steven J. Mayover, Free Lib. of Philadelphia Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Perkins, former CEO of Orvis, has never had a bad day fly fishing or bird hunting, nor many selling the sports and their accouterments to the public, as reported in this memoir written with sporting journalist and Forbes FYI contributor Norman. Perkins was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but his father encouraged him to go into business: "He knew only a few men who did not work and were happy and that they were inevitably men of very high intelligence—He added that he didn't think I qualified." Perkins keeps this self-effacing tone brewing throughout the book, giving credit to his co-workers and his customers and his own native wits to turn Orvis into the grand sporting emporium it became under his near 30-year stewardship. Equal emphasis is placed on Perkins's business philosophy and his days afield. In a twangy voice, he'll drop his nuggets of business wisdom, most of which possess a Dale Carnegie common sense: love your work, be serious, innovate and stay ahead of the curve, listen to the customer, don't be governed by a cash push but rather by the pull of an idea. These points, and the various tactical moves he made situating Orvis to capitalize on the fly-fishing boom of the 1980s, are invariably nestled in well-paced stories of hunting red-legged partridge in Spain, rough shooting in northern Scotland, going after salmon in Norway's Alma River, trout in the chalk streams of England, and tarpon off Belize. And always he's out there putting the Orvis equipment through its paces: "I tested that rod on the Malleo River in Argentina in late March when the red stags were bugling in the hills and the geese were gathering to migrate." Hunters and fishers will weepwith envy at Perkins's life, and those who don't may well be tempted to try them as he writes of these pursuits with humility and genuine relish. (photos, not seen) (First printing of 75,000; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour)

Kirkus Reviews

"Leigh Perkins has combined a life of hunting and fishing with a notable career as CEO of Orvis. How he did this is a remarkable tale."—former President Jimmy Carter

"Few have done so well in business—and even fewer can say they enjoyed it as much."—William E. Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury

From the Publisher