From Virtual to Reality: Part 2
This is Part 2 of a story about Beach Bum Outdoors that appeared in the Sep/Oct issue of Fishing Tackle Retailer Magazine.
The three social media influencers from the Alabama Gulf Coast and Northwest Florida who started Beach Bum Outdoors in Gulf Shores saw 4000 people show up for their grand opening in April and opened a second location in Foley, AL after customers started showing up at their warehouse there and asking to come in. We talked to Brant Peacher (Angler Up with Brant), Matthew Isbel, (Bama Beach Bum) and Brad Warren (Bearded Brad) about what they thought the secret sauce was for their success as influencers and as retailers.
“Something that separates the three of us from some other influencers is we do things that the average guy can do,” said Warren. “Take Brant for instance – when he first started his YouTube channel, he was doing a lot of fishing trips on his boat. He was running charters and documenting that but then he started doing more land-based stuff. All of us figured out that our target audience is the tourist that’s coming to this area on vacation and just wants to go fish with their kids or whatever it may be. So the fact that most of what we do is from land easy to do and a family can do it fairly inexpensively, that definitely helps us build that audience. That’s the same target audience with the retail store. Being in Gulf Shores there is such great tourist traffic- like 12 or 14 million people a year come to Gulf stores, Alabama. They all do the research before they come if they’re interested in fishing and we’re there for them to learn from – what works and what doesn’t.”
Isbell agrees and also emphasizes that the customer experience in the store is important to them.
“We have a podcast booth set up to do live podcasts in the store,” he said. “So customers can come abnd hang out with us. We have a podcast channel – Fishing Not Catching. It’s on Spotify, iTunes and all the channels. We’re going to keep working on that customer experience. We want to create more experiences for people inside the store that make it more of a destination opposed to just a bait and tackle store.”