Outlaw Decoys Inc., a 10-year-old Spokane-based maker of duck decoys and duck-hunting boats, has broadened its strategy from advertising its own products via a mail-order catalog to offering thousands of outdoorsy products on an e-commerce Web site.


The expanded niche could boost the companys sales by as much as $5 million this year and as much as $20 million next year, predicts Tim Cripe, Outlaws vice president.


Most Web companies expect tremendous growth during a sites first two years of operation, after which sales tend to level off, Cripe says.


Outlaws Web site, which was launched at www.outlaw.com last August, offers name-brand camping, hunting, and fishing gear, as well as gift items, such as lamps, birdhouses, and outdoor fountains. The site also contains educational and informational items, such as hunting- and fishing-related news articles, topographical maps, weather reports, and state hunting and fishing license information.


To open retail store


Annual sales also are expected to grow after the company opens its first retail outlet here in July. The planned store, which will be located just north of Outlaws office at 624 N. Fancher, will sell a selection of items from its Web site, says general manager Jeff Cripe, who is Tim Cripes brother.


The retail outlet, which will tout the Outlaw.com name, will be located in a 15,000-square-foot vacant building that Outlaw owns. The building should provide about 10,000 square feet of retail space and another 5,000 square feet of storage space, Cripe says. The showroom will be equipped with a computer that will allow customers to view Outlaws Web site and search for products that arent available at the retail outlet, he says.


Mike Dunn, Outlaw.coms senior programmer, says that many of the big manufacturers whose products are sold on the Outlaw.com Web site have asked that their products also be sold in a brick-and-mortar building.


Thats what really got us to thinking about it, Dunn says.


Also, when customers order an item online and then cancel that order, the company now will have an outlet where it can sell the merchandise.


Besides, were located on a good street, this is a big hunting and fishing community, and some people still need to be able to touch and feel the merchandise before they buy it, says Kathy Spence, Outlaw.coms art director.


Revised site


Outlaw launched its first Web site in 1995. At that time, the site advertised only Outlaws own products: decoys and duck-hunting boats. Customers were able to buy the products on the site, but it didnt receive many hits. The duck-hunting boats are made by Outlaw Decoys sister company, Outlaw Marine Inc.


In late 1999, Outlaw Decoys was able to land some venture-capital funding that enabled it to hire a webmaster and a senior programmer, both of whom set to work to redo completely the Web site, which now offers more than 10,000 products, including Outlaws own decoys and boats. Outlaw expects to complete a second round of funding soon, Tim Cripe says. He declines to disclose how much funding the company has received so far.


The company currently employs 17 people, six of whom work solely on the Web site, which requires ongoing effort to handle such things as editing articles, programming new functions, and monitoring the sites operation.


The Web sites features include a custom-built, secure shopping-cart application, which allows customers to buy products online; a chat room where customers can discuss their latest catch or kill; a classified section where customers can sell used merchandise to other customers; and hunting- and fishing-related news articles, similar to those found in Outlaws mail-order catalog.


About half of the products sold on the Web site are produced locally, by manufacturers such as GSI Outdoors, USHBA Mountain Works, and Michael Gordon Ltd., while the other half are produced by manufacturers located elsewhere. Those national companies ship products bought on Outlaw.com directly to the buyers, eliminating the need for Outlaw to maintain a bigger warehouse here. For products bought online that are made by Outlaw or other Spokane-area manufacturers, Outlaw picks up those items, and ships them to customers, says Doug Lauffer, Outlaws customer service supervisor.


Some of the Web sites best-selling items include Outlaws decoys, Coleman camping equipment, birdhouses, fishing rods and reels, and motorized spinning-wing decoys made by a Marysville, Calif.-based company, Lauffer says.


Outlaw launched its new Web site last August, and since then its online orders and Web-site hits have grown rapidly.


Cripe says that for the month of June last year, prior to the launch of Outlaws new site, the company logged just eight online orders. In March, it logged 1,500 orders, he says.


The number of visitors to the Web site also has grown. The first month the new site was live 19,358 unique visitors logged on to see it. Last December the number of unique visitors increased to 86,543 and in March 143,945 unique visitors visited the site. (A unique visitor is a person who visits the site during a particular month. If one person visits the site twice or three times during the month, the computer counts just the first time he or she visited that month, Cripe says.)


In February, Outlaw.com was ranked seventh on Top9.coms monthly ranking of the most popular Web sites by industry category. Outlaw.com is listed in the outdoor-recreation category, behind big retailers like Cabelas.com and Rei.com.


To encourage use of the Web site, Outlaw.com offers its customers whats called Outlaw dollars. In effect, customers who buy at least $100 worth of merchandise during a visit to the Web site receive a 5 percent credit toward their next purchase.


In coming months, the company also plans to add to the Web site a kids page with information and games, product reviews, and a wish-list feature that will allow customers to register for products to help friends and family shop for them.


We believe that the key to our success is that weve viewed the Web site as a marathon and not a sprint, webmaster Matt Helmick says. Weve kept our spending frugal and weve grown the site rapidly, but manageably.