The difference between a mixed drink with 7 sugar doused ingredients and a timeless bourbon on the ice; well that’s Harrell & Sons.
Today our society is built on the balance of time and convenience, with a splash of “cool” on top. Generations always have different taste, but over time things age. Those fancy $400 jackets you buy at Cabela’s don’t make you seasoned and savvy. Imagine you’re at a boat ramp in a black hole swamp in Southern Arkansas, you had 1 photo to capture the essence of a duck hunter forever; is it going to be 3 millennials decked in a computer generated camo tech jacket or the 60 year old man boating out of the timber with his four and an old tin cloth coat? Oh the stories he could tell you.
Chris Harrell founded Harrell & Sons with the same motives as the old timers in the 1900’s founded the west; with a need and a desire to get something made how you want it. Those same bridges and cabins we drive over on our way to duck camps across the country were built by those hands. His products are built the same way, by hand, with a lifetime of use in mind.
Harrell & Sons Blind Bag
“The products we make are have pay a little romance to the heritage. They’ve got character and soul that you’ll never find on a retail shelf.” That’s the truth; you won’t find them on retail shelves. His handful of products are made to last a lifetime and he’s proud of that, bad business strategy and all. “It’s a little bittersweet because I know when we sell them a product hopefully it may be the last that ever purchase from us.” While that’s not conducive to a spike in sales every year, it means H&S makes goods that will make hunters say “hey that’s a quality piece of gear.”
Anyone with the charisma of tin cloth and leather isn’t toting around a shallow mind. Today hunters are in an everyday battle with society changing, and not for the better of our heritage. If you asked 100 hunters at a bar what the most important thing for the future is, you’d most likely get 100 different answers; and rightfully so it’s a heavy and loaded question. “As hunters we have to get everyone under the umbrella. I was fortunate enough to be a 3rd or 4th generation duck hunter in Arkansas. Not everyone has that Grandfather to teach them the ethics and ways of the woods,” said Harrell. If you are even somewhat actively involved in the conversations in a duck blind, you’ll hear the banter between hunters of how we should be doing it, how we should be representing the outdoors. You’ll hear riff raff from what types of calls they use to fast boats and new shotguns. Harrell has the mindset we should all embrace the scope of.
“The new guys are a little tribal about it, it’s not always about the brand new boats, gear, and shotguns. Sometimes I think as hunters we need to step back and appreciate everyone that is involved, and maybe take a deep breath and do what we can to pass on our heritage to those that are new, so that they can come back to the middle and embrace things in the bigger picture.”
Balancing the storms of social media and advertising for a business is no work for the weary. The values and moral compass can quickly lead anyone off course who sells a product. In the hunting community the back and forth of ethics and “should do it this way” ideals are about as common as empty hulls in a pit blind.
Harrell clues us in on the walls that have built his waterfowling legacy. “We have a duck camp in east Arkansas. We have a rule that on the wall of fame, you can’t put a picture on the wall unless it has people in it, because those people are what make the great days at duck camp.”
He’s built a brand with Harrell & Sons that replicates that same principle.
“Balancing today’s social media with the heritage and values of our company is always a challenge. While we want to generate as much buzz as possible, we also have a stance and company values of how we want to build a brand. Staying away from the shallow engagements and click bait is a hard knock, but building a customer who is a fan of our brand itself is our most important task that social media can accomplish. It doesn’t do us any good to throw click bait out there on Instagram to a demographic that isn’t buying our products, but a photo that has some substance and forward thinking behind it will hopefully appeal to a potential customer down the road.”
If we could add some more flannel, tin cloth, and hand sewn leather in our lives as dedication duck killers, our heritage is bound to pass on just as steady as an H&S gear bag.
The grammar and sentence structure in this advertisement is so bad that I quit reading it. Doesn’t anybody proof read any more? You want to appeal to the generation that grew up with Fison, Duxbak, Old Hodgman and Ranger canvas waders and an eye to nostalgia and timeless beauty? Don’t forget that we also learned proper English, grammar and sentence structure while we were in school.