Mack?s Prairie Wings Gets Ready for Flight

When duck hunters start clamoring for RealTree’s new line of Max4 camouflage apparel this fall, Mack’s Prairie Wings Inc. plans to be ready.

The waterfowl hunting retail mecca in Stuttgart is spending $250,000 to build a warehouse management system (WMS) that will handle 3,500 orders per day, all shipped within 24-48 hours. That includes costs of new equipment and a consulting deal with Global Concepts Inc.

The 117,000-SF store did $24 million in sales last year, but the company’s executives believe they left $3 million on the table because 195,000 calls couldn’t get through Mack’s overloaded phone system.

A series of national television ads on ESPN prompted the fuss. Mack’s did fill 1,600 orders per day, but took five days to ship orders. About 5,000 backorders couldn’t be filled.

Keith Jetton, Mack’s chief operations officer, said Mack’s experienced a classic case of growing pains. Its store size has doubled in the last three years, and its catalogue business is booming. During hunting season, 40 people might be standing in line for checkout.

So Marion McCollum, Mack’s owner, brought in Jetton to make the store more efficient.

“Even if we had gotten all those calls, we wouldn’t have been able to ship the orders out of our warehouse the way it was,” Jetton said. “Now we’ve outsourced our call center and they’re available 24/7. And we’re adding e-commerce capabilities to our Web site.”

Jetton got rid of the old management structure that had 150-170 employees answering to two people. A friend also hooked him up with Global CEO Don Stuart.

“Don came in and blew us away on the first meeting,” Jetton said. “He’s turning our warehouse into a distribution center. He brought in [logistics specialist] Wayne Boddicker to be our DC manager and he’ll be here on site with us through hunting season.”

Stuart said the consulting work will be done May 5. Mack’s is much smaller than Global’s typical customer, but Stuart said he wanted to tackle this project.

“The Mack’s model is one where we can bring some big business logistics technology down to the small business level,” Stuart said. “I live in Little Rock not because it’s the best place to locate my business, but because I’m from Arkansas, and we’re looking for ways to work within the Arkansas business community.”

Mack’s, founded in 1944, is Winchester Ammunition’s largest steel-shot ammunition dealer in the world.