Bass Pro Shops

For a city that's named after springs and fields, it's no wonder that an outdoor sport like fishing would spawn one of Springfield, Missouri's most enduring icons in the business world. Some professional businesspeople speculate in real estate, buying Burlington homes for sale and turning around and selling them, but Bass Pro Shops founder John L. Morris found something to invest in that was both lucrative and fun: fishing. To give you (a future Springfield, Missouri resident) some background on the city's iconic brand name, we've created this article on Bass Pro Shops. It's useful to know about, even if you're not much for fishing yourself.

John L. Morris, who would later grow rich enough to buy all of Moore Park, Toronto, began his career modestly as a shop boy in the fishing section at the back of his father's liquor store. The homemade bait Morris sold in the store grew so popular that Bass Pro Shops became a trade name in 1972 and began operating a mail-order catalog service in 1974. This catalog became the world's largest mail-order sporting goods store, prompting Morris to open American Rod and Gun wholesalers, which supplied fishing and hunting equipment to retailers nationwide.

In 1984 Bass Pro Shop's flagship store, known as Outdoor World, opened in Springfield and soon became more popular than High Park lofts, prompting the city to open a wildlife museum next door to capitalize on the tourist traffic. Though this store is the center of the brand, there are over fifty other locations throughout the United States from California to Massachusetts, Texas to Michigan, and two in Canada. Together these stores rake in more than 1.9 billion dollars per year. Some of the stores exceed 300,000 square feet in size and feature not just sporting equipment but also examples of taxidermy and live fish in indoor ponds.

Should you decide to stir out of your home in Brampton condos to take a look at the Bass Pro Shop in Vaughan Mills, you can expect to find gear from house brand names such as: Redhead, Johnny Morris, Offshore Angler, Worldwide Sportsman, Natural Reflections, Bob Timberlake and Uncle Bucks. Bass Pro Shops also owns the Tracker Marine Group, through which you can buy a complete motor trailer and boat ensemble with everything you need for a fishing expedition. These boats have been in production since 1978 and have been bought by over 400,000 people.

Fishing and camping gear isn't all you'll find in the shops, however. They also offer instructional courses in a variety of disciplines that cater to different skill levels from "I own Whitby, Ontario real estate and have never been outside of it" to "I once caught a crocodile using only a shoelace." These courses include demonstrations on using the bait and tackle sold in the store, fly fishing, Dutch oven cooking, GPS navigation, and hunting with a bow and arrow. Real fans can also take a fishing vacation at the Bass Pro Shops-owned Big Cedar Lodge on Table Rock Lake outside of the city.