The Base Camp has been going strong in Helena since Scott Brown opened it in 1975—and it will continue to do so well into the future.
your business ready to transfer.” The harsh reality is that many transitions get forced by what Mohr calls “the five D’s”—death, disability, divorce, disagreement, and distress events like COVID. When There’s No Plan Both The Base Camp and Trail Creek Outfitters in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, illustrate what hap- pens when there’s no formal suc- cession plan—sometimes it works out, but not without challenges. For The Base Camp, Cody says: “There really wasn’t a succession plan. But the stars aligned.” Their transition worked because timing and family circumstances came together. “We all wanted to see the stores succeed and grow, for our parents and the community.” At Trail Creek Outfitters brothers Brett and Kyle Haver- tine took over in July 2023 following their father Brian’s unexpected passing in 2019. The store, originally founded in 1983 as Country Classics, had been a partnership between Brian Havertine and Ed Camelli. Brian had intended to keep running it for some years to come, Brett explains, but when he passed un- expectedly their mother stepped in to handle the finances while Ed continued operations. The transition stretched out over a couple of years. “Post- COVID, we started talking to them in 2021/22, the purchase happened in 2023; it was a long process,” Brett notes. Like the Browns, they found themselves taking on a business they knew but had never actually run. “We’d been in and around the store our whole lives, had summer jobs in Trail Creek, but hadn’t really worked in retail. Taking over ownership was definitely like
I ’ve been thinking a lot about legacy lately, as someone who’s been hanging around in outdoor shops for 40 years, as a dad, and as a student of the outdoor industry landscape. There’s something happening in specialty outdoor retail that stands to reshape the landscape of how we connect with our fellow outdoorists, how we buy gear, and how we get outdoors. When you look across the country at a closely connected network of outdoor specialty shops, there’s certainly a lot of change taking place. But when it comes to passing on their legacy, occasionally, succession happens exactly as planned, but not often enough. The statistics paint a sobering picture. According to Pete Mohr, a Certified Exit Planner who owns two retail stores himself, only 30% of family businesses make it into the second generation, and just 12% survive into the third genera- tion. “Exit planning starts from day one,” he says. “One day you will exit your business, it’s guaranteed.” You wouldn’t leave your personal finances or your children’s future up to chance, so why leave your business succession to chance? And re- member: the less dependent your business is on you personally, the more valuable it becomes to potential buyers or successors. Fortunately for Lauren and Cody Brown, sisters who recently took over The Base Camp outdoor specialty stores in Helena and Billings, Montana, from their father, the original owner, they decided to proac- tively make moves to completely transform their lives and help shape things for the better. Scott Brown started The Base Camp in a back alley shop in downtown Helena in 1975, and ran it with wife Deb and a committed staff as the business grew steadily—opening a satellite shop in Billings in 1990, and expanding the Helena location to a former cinema building in 2007, an iconic downtown location opening up 12,000 square feet of retail space. “He had been looking for buyers for years in a non-direct way, trying to find the right person to fit the mold, which in a family-owned business is really challenging,” explained Cody. “People weren’t quite fitting the recipe to take over the stores. Right before and during COVID they were looking and found a group of people who were interested and serious but a little wobbly. Then the stars aligned for Lauren and I.” “Watching our parents as business owners, they had so much
passion and heart and had put so much into the business. And this thought of maybe the store wouldn’t succeed was a little scary,” continued Cody. That’s when Lauren, living in Bozeman working as a photographer, and Cody, working as an architect in Honolulu, had a conversation that would change everything. Neither had grown up working in the stores, their parents had encouraged them to follow their own career paths. But faced with the possibility that their family’s 50-year legacy might not survive, they made a decision: “If we wanted to have a conversation about taking over the business, now’s the time,” Cody, who hadn’t lived near home for 25 years, remembers thinking. “It was a bit of a homecoming moment.” This scenario plays out in countless variations across the outdoor specialty landscape. As many first-generation shop owners approach retirement age, succession planning has emerged as one of the most critical and overlooked challenges facing independent retailers. “Fifty percent of business own- ers transfer because they have to, not because they want to,” explains Mohr. “This is pivotal to having
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