Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Interesting Article on Sportsmans Warehouse's bankruptcy

Found this on the Sportsmans Warehouse home page. An interesting article detailing how they fell into bankruptcy.

ftp://sportsmanswarehouse.com/documents/sw_reorganize_04-2009.pdf

I would say that the implementation of Oracle's Advanced Supply Chain contributed significantly to SW's demise. I work in the ERP business and this is not a unique situation with this overpriced garbage.

Hmm.. guessing you're an SAP employee? Either that or Microsoft.


Edit: It does sound as though they were bit by a combination of very poor project mgmt as well as poor supply chain management (would love to know the consultants they had who did the implementation), and a cascade of financial troubles all at the same time. I've seen very bad implementations of new software, and rushing something into service has killed more than one company. Sounds as though they'll survive it in a reduced state.. they're lucky.

Sounds weak, they never heard in running a new system in parallel with the old to debug? Sounds more like they grew the business faster than they could afford to and the sales slump bit them on the debt service.

It sounds to me as though they were wayyy too far in hock. I probably won't ever own a large business, because I'd rather keep it small and be financially secure than grow in the red.

That was a load of [bleep] from a tuxedo wearing bullpuckey artist. Notice the two years of no discussion, 2004-2006? Two years of what?. Then all of a sudden whoops! the wheels started coming off the cart, one loan after another, and another loan, and...

But it's not bad management, it's this bad software and Lehman Bros, and ....

It was bad management.

Agreed, somewhat. The bad management was, however, to count on a "new system" to fix the bad management.

The stories about the new supply system were real, and legion. The local guys could not get what they ordered. fwiw, Dutch

Didn't read the article, but looking at it from the outside, SW expanded right into the jump in gas prices. Nobody has money for toys when it's all going for gas to get to and from work.

A very credible hypothesis.

There are other items in this article which are not indicative of good management either, the biggest one is the huge final reduction in the number of stores. Although the CEO claims that they were profitable, I doubt it very much. I am convinced that they developed too fast, opening too many stores with marginal profitability or none at all.

It seems that they were going after volume instead of value.

I've lived through an Oracle implementation. That episode cost the manager who directed the implementation his job.

Because of a disconnect in the system, we had one reserve account balloon to $35 million. Fortunately, the company was making money hand over fist at the time, and could absorb that for a year or so while we got the kinks out.

The amount of profit a company makes sets its maximum expansion rate. It does sound like SW overreached and got zapped when they couldn't re-stock stores because of Oracle and the markets hit some turbulence and credit terms tightened.

I have worked with Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. All are bloated and overly complex. Right now I work with Oracle, SAP and Microsoft's worst nightmare. Open Source ERP that uses an open source database with the power of Oracle DBMS. Powerful, stable, easy to use and inexpensive.

What a bunch of bunk! Two words....POOR MANAGEMENT!!!

Ever heard of a company failing from the bottom up?

I don't care.

I hate Sportman's Whorehouse.... SW sucks.

I'd rather take my chances on-line..... and that's saying something.....

When the guy behind the counter wouldn't even hand me the Kimber Montana, because "they don't shoot"... I knew they were in trouble.

He never did hand it to me!!

Smart man

Sounds to me like the salesperson was just trying to keep a gun out of the hands of an unstable individual in the interest of public safety.

Eloquently put. Yeah, it kind of read like, well if this hadn't happened and that hadn't happening piled onto more of the same, etc. etc. ... a string of catastrophic and unlikely coincidences all strung together blew them out of the water . Never mind all that overextending themselves by racking up the debt to grow grow grow ...

Sounds just like all the other folks that ran the great train wreck we're in.

Why should the CEO tell it in a way that makes it look like he screwed up. What I do know is the close SW started trying to sell me what they had instead of ordering or looking for what I wanted. Then they opened 2 more stores to compete with themselves, until then the employees said the local store was a gold mine. Given that at the same time metal prices and fuel went up, raising the price of goods and decreasing the amount of money customers had. The final straw seemed to be the "run" on firearm related stuff.

Some of the stores seemed (from stories) to be poorly staffed. The local one had people who knew a bullet from a cartridge, etc.