SPONSOR SPOTLIGHT ALPS OUTDOORZ

SPONSOR SPOTLIGHT

ABOVE: Dennis, Brian, Adam and brother-in-law Doug Eckelkamp celebrate a successful waterfowl hunt in Illinois. TOP RIGHT: Dennis and Adam Brune share a father-son moment after Dennis harvested this bull elk in Wyoming. BELOW: Dennis, Sarah and son Jake. Three generations living the lifestyle on the Brune family farm.

ALPS Brands officially started in 1993, when founder Dennis Brune decided it was time to leave corporate America and develop his own brands. With a strong background in product development, marketing, and sales from his days at ARP and Kelty, Brune’s first brand was ALPS Mountaineering.

For the first several years, ALPS only had backpacks and sleeping bags. Still, it quickly expanded into tents, camp furniture, sleeping pads, beds, and other accessories. In 2007, with a desire to have products more focused on the hunting and shooting sports industries, ALPS OutdoorZ was developed. Initially offered under OutdoorZ, the product lines focused primarily on hunting packs, stools, and chairs. Since then, it has expanded into turkey and waterfowl products, as well as a high-performance line of packs under the Extreme sub-brand. In 2010, Brune was approached by Browning to license Browning Camping gear. This has become a successful, growing brand with product lines of tents, sleeping bags, camp furniture, and hunting blinds. So even though ALPS has three unique brands serving somewhat different markets and consumers, the product positioning for all of them is very similar. Each brand offers performance-oriented products built with the best materials to last a lifetime of use and abuse. Along with delivering quality gear, a key element in the production process was keeping a close eye on prices that appeal to a wide variety of outdoor consumers. Another unique asset of ALPS Brands is incorporating their family into the business. Quite often, when a new consumer brand is launched, the early years can be rather lean in terms of personnel and resources. Brune is known for saying, “In those first 10 years, we redefined bootstrapping!” In 2003, he hired his oldest son, Brian, to assist him with sales as the business began to take off. He hired his wife, LaRayne, to help with office administration the following year. When his second son, Adam, was ready to graduate from college, he hired him to help with product development and international sourcing. In 2009, Dennis hired his daughter, Sarah, to focus on logistics and supply chain management. A trend began taking place. The closeknit team consisting primarily of family members continued to grow the business and along the way they hired more friends and family. Fast forward to 2022. With the company approaching 50 team members, Brune strongly believes these new additions to their family

business are one of their key assets. Another one of Brune’s sayings is that working at ALPS is like attending business school. “We do our best to hire talented, self-motivated, and hard-working people, and then show them how to apply their skills to growing our brands.” They have also successfully found team members who like doing things outdoors. They don’t have any requirements for team members to spend a certain number of nights per year in a tent or hunting a specific number of days in the field. Still, they encourage their team members to expand their interests whenever possible. About 10 years ago, Brune wanted to devote some of his energy to conservation projects. He had just purchased a small hunting farm near their offices in New Haven, Missouri. With the desire to improve the habitat for the local game birds and animals—primarily turkey, quail, and whitetail deer—he established partnerships with several national conservation groups. His land and habitat flourished with the knowledge and practices gained through the various entities. A person gets plenty of time to think as they plow fields or cut brush, and Dennis began envisioning a plan to “give back” to the outdoor and shooting sports industry. After growing these partnerships with various conservation organizations, Brune felt it was time to expand what ALPS could do in giving back. This was the start of an in-house initiative called “Save the Lifestyle.” Growing up on a small farm not too far from the ALPS offices, Brune never grew out of the country lifestyle so deeply embedded within. Contributing money to national conservation groups was undoubtedly doing some good, but he wanted to see more tangible results. “If we can only help to get one more person introduced to hunting and the outdoors this year, that’s one more than we added last year,” Brune said. Mentoring, teaching, and helping to provide opportunities seemed to be an excellent way to out-perform his simple goal of “adding one new person per year!” When ALPS pitched their idea to the folks at Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, they loved his vision. Two years into a national mentoring program, everyone sees significant growth and interest. At ALPS, Brune also challenged his sales, marketing, and product development team to participate in a team-building event at a pheasant hunting lodge in Nebraska. With a wide variety of hunting experience in this group of 15 team members, it was essential to mentor the less experienced hunters in gun safety and shooting basics. That first morning started off with time shooting clay targets at the range. Everyone headed to the fields in the afternoon, where almost all harvested at least one bird. The next step was to share knowledge of the field-dressing process. Then the staff at the lodge involved all 15 members in the food preparation. After repeating this schedule the next day, team members truly experienced first-hand the field-totable experience. “Sharing is also a vital component of the Save the Lifestyle initiative,” Brune said. “After preparing our favorite deer sausage dinner, we are always excited to share the meal with our friends. If it’s morel mushrooms, we can’t wait to share pictures of how many we just found! And lastly, and maybe most importantly, we share our stories. One team member told me after the Nebraska hunt, her best moment was getting closer to her 15-year-old son. As they practiced shooting clays before the trip, they found something extraordinary to share with each other.” With a focus on people, products, sharing, and conservation, ALPS Brands plans to continue to Save the Lifestyle. n

RIGHT: ALPS team members learning to clean and prepare pheasant on a Save the Lifestyle team-building trip to Nebraska. BELOW: Dennis and LaRayne Brune with their three kids (Brian, Adam, Sarah). A true family business!