SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge The death of Sidney, Nebraska: How a hedge fund destroyed 'a good American town'
Main Page The Lounge The death of Sidney, Nebraska: How a hedge fund destroyed 'a good American town' Topic ClosedGo | New | Find | Notify | Tools |
| Mired in the Fog of Lucidity |
Saw this on Tucker earlier this evening. I'm familiar with Sidney having been there many times visiting Cabelas. I thought this piece was quite interesting. It provides a back-story to the merger between Cabelas and Bass Pro Shops that I never knew. I also was unaware how devastating the merger was to Sidney. Whenever I visited the Cabelas in Sidney, the employees were very friendly and topnotch. Good, solid small town people running a sizable company. Almost a family atmosphere. It's really a shame what has happened to Cabelas and Sidney. Here's a link to the story and video, which is well worth watching: https://www.foxnews.com/us/pau...ass-pro-shops-merger | ||
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| Member |
Thanks for posting this article. I first learned about Cabelas by reading about the Sidney store and seeing kids from South Louisiana who loved to hunt and fish. Their Dads were of means and they would make the annual pilgrimage to the store in Sidney. Big business does things such as this. | |||
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| Member |
Sad story, but that's free market for you. Now Singer could have re-invested in the area, but it sounds like he cut and ran. Again his money, his decision. | |||
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| Jack of All Trades, Master of Nothing  |
Unfortunately I've watched the slow motion sad demise of Cabela's. We used to take the annual pilgrimage, the guy's trip to Sydney every year driving 3-1/2 hours from Denver to Sidney. If there was any big ticket item we needed for hunting/outdoors we'd wait until that trip to buy it. It was always a great trip, spend most of the day in the store, have dinner in the little greasy spoon in town and buy Powerball tickets when gassing up since they were'n available in Colorado. The sales staff was fantastic, friendly and knowledgeable. The year I bought my insulated Danner Canadian boots for hunting, the salesman working the department was a huge help in deciding what to buy. We had a long conversation about where I hunted, what I hunted, time of year, hunting style etc. Based on that he brought out 3 pairs of boots, left them at the end of the bench with instructions to try on all three, walk around the store extensively while we re there and see what the most comfortable was. I met Jeff King, Iditarod champion musher there once and had a long conversation with him and heard stories from the Iditarod. My best friend and I one year in the Bargain Cave found the Colt continuation black powder pistols of the 36 Navy and took those home. Even the Cabela's branded merchandise they had was high quality. Then they started expanding and building stores all over. They opened one in Arizona after I moved down there and I was stoked. Then I went there and wasn't impressed. Lots of Cabela's made in China branded stuff of lower quality and a lot fewer of the big name hardcore gear. The sales staff was mostly high school kids who didn't have a clue. Then came the merger with Bass Pro and it went further downhill in the quality of merchandise offered. Then there were the policy changes, trigger locks on all of the firearms displayed, no more lay a way programs for firearms. Their archery department became an absolute joke, no longer carrying premium bows and equipment but low end, "Volume" items. Talking with Jeff King a few years ago here in Alaska he provided some additional insight. He used to be sponsored by Cabela's and designed some of their specialized outerwear. When the Cabela family gave up ownership and went public, his sponsorship ended as well as his work in designing gear for them. Sadly, it's the demise of a company that forgot about what made them great and abandoning their customer base in the chase for more market segment. My daughter can deflate your daughter's soccer ball. | |||
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| Grab SKS, go innawoods  |
The story isn't really about that though. It's about how the free market allows people with money to nuke towns & destroy the lives of residents. | |||
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safe & sound |
I preach this on the forum all the time. Slightly different scale, but the exact same premise. When you do all of your business online local businesses and all of the other businesses associated disappear. This is bad for your local economy. That said, I don't feel bad for the big box store or the town that depended upon them. They obviously didn't care about the small mom and pops they ran under, and now it's their turn. | |||
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| Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated  |
I saw the show tonight on Tucker as well. He did an outstanding job of explaining how it all went down. We had looked at land up near the Cabela's 10-15 years ago as an investment. I'm sure glad we passed on that one........ "Someday I hope to be half the man my bird-dog thinks I am." FBLM LGB! | |||
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Only the strong survive |
Thanks for posting the article. Elmer Keith's guns were in the Boise store and were sold off in 2015 for close to $2M. It is sad to see these icons pass away. 41 | |||
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Member |
This is called evolution. The abilty to adapt or go extinct. When small businesses are not supported they close and the Amazons and the Walmarts of the world get bigger and bigger. Remember this when you are contemplating a purchase. | |||
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| Member |
What a load of bullshit, the hedge fund didn't destroy anything. Sidney destroyed itself by becoming too dependent on Cabela's, they're paying the price for being a one horse town. If you're looking to indict someone look at what Cabela's did to make themselves vulnerable to Bass Pro. Did Bass Pro undercut Cabela's with cheap chinese shit? Probably. I loathe Bass Pro, their products are crap and their guns and accessories cost more than my local gun shops. Look around, are people stupid cheapskates? Yes, yes they are. Cheap and stupid, buying crap from big box stores that breaks in a year, instead of spending a little more with mom and pop and getting something good that will last a while and doing their community a favor. | |||
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| I can't tell if I'm tired, or just lazy  |
I'm all for 'Mom & Pop' stores, but let's face it, they sell the same chinese crap that the big box stores do, only at higher prices. Granted, some of that money goes back into the community, but most of it goes back to the distributers. Money that does go back to the community is in the form of employee salaries and most 'Mom & Pop' stores only have a handful of employees while the big box stores have dozens. It's the opportunity for employment and benefits that make these big box stores so attractive to a community. _____________________________ "The problems we face today exist because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living." "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Benjamin Franklin | |||
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| Mired in the Fog of Lucidity |
I completely agree with you on this. It is his right to spend his money, take advantage of opportunities, and make fortunes as he sees fit. He wrecked the company because it was wreckable (to quote Gordon Gecko). I'm just lamenting what happened to a company (and town) that I was fond of for many years. I recall going to Sidney when the retail store was in an old hardware store. The bargain cave had some real bargains, back then. Now, post merger, the company is pretty much like any other big-box store/conglomerate. I rarely buy from them anymore. There's a price to be paid for growing a business that becomes attractive enough to be gobbled up by mass merchandisers and corporate raiders. And, in this case, there's a sadness to that. | |||
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| safe & sound |
Employees, and all the associated taxes. Real estate, and all the associated taxes. Sales tax. Utilities. Insurance. Money spent with other local businesses (plumbers, window washers, advertising, etc). And all of that money, paid to other locals, is spent by those locals in the same fashion. Your dollar spent in your community runs laps around the community. Your dollar spent with Amazon is gone forever. I make a dollar. I spend that dollar at the local hardware store. The hardware store uses that dollar to pay his employee. That employee spends that dollar going out to lunch. The waitress that serves him gets that dollar and uses it to put gas in her car. The gas station owner uses that dollar to pay the guy who plows snow off the lot. The guy who plows the snow uses it to buy tires for his truck. The tire shop owner uses it run an ad in the local high school football program. And on, and on, and on. But once that dollar is spent outside the community. POOF! Gone. This story is an extreme example, but proof of everything I just said. When local business is gone, so is the money. When the money is gone, so is everything else. | |||
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Member |
While I don’t like what has been done to Sidney, I don’t know what could be done without intruding on personal property freedoms. How is this any different than what happens to a small town when the government closes a military facility? What would happen to Minot, ND if the USAF were to leave? Much the same as what Sidney is experiencing. Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well. -Epictetus | |||
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Legalize the Constitution |
Some posts suggest that the Tucker Carlson segment wasn’t watched. I’ve posted about the demise of Cabela’s a couple of times since Singer swooped in, made his money and left. I always thought “VC” meant “Venture Capitalist,” I find from watching Tucker that in the case of this asshole it means “Vulture.” If you had watched the segment you would know two things: one, that Cabela’s was not in financial trouble when Singer moved in. They were profitable. Two, that Singer leveraged a holding of just 11% of Cabela’s stock. I guess three, that the Cabela family just didn’t want to enter into a protracted court battle, in an attempt to keep the business from being sold off. The last couple of times I passed by Sidney, I haven’t even stopped; it’s just not the same—at all. Tucker, and others posting here, used the phrase “demise of a town.” In fact, as I believe I explained before, it’s actually the demise of a region of the country. Employees working in Sidney came from a pretty big circle of towns in rural Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming. Thankfully, MMP, a Canadian diet supplement company purchased one of the vacant Cabela’s buildings; either the shipping/receiving or corporate offices building. Brought a fairly significant number of jobs back to town. Ultimately, that’s life, I guess, but it really is a shame. Again, if you watched the segment, they opened by explaining the good things done for the employees and towns by the original American capitalists like JD Rockefeller, Henry Ford, etc. Singer is just an asshole, probably always will be. _______________________________________________________ despite them | |||
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| Something wild is loose  |
A substantial part of Nebraska's business woes are directly related to it's very business-unfriendly tax structure and policies. It's consistently rated as one of the least tax friendly states, to businesses and individuals, with some of the highest property taxes in the country. TD Ameritrade just jumped ship as well. No matter what tax breaks they give businesses to move in, that's pretty much overcome by long term financial hostility, with Nebraska's legislature apparently oblivious to the most basic tenets of even self-preservation. It's a table top example of what eventually happens when you think you can tax your way to prosperity - Democrat candidates should pay close attention. But they do have good weather, mountains and beaches. Oh, wait.... "And gentlemen in England now abed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's Day" | |||
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| Legalize the Constitution |
No truer words. We would be living in the Scottsbluff/Gering area IF taxes weren’t so effin’ high. I figured out that if we had built our home in Nebraska, we would be living on 90% of the money we have here in Wyoming. BTW, a few years back they lost Conagra. That corporation evolved from a grain mill company in Nebraska. _______________________________________________________ despite them | |||
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| Little ray of sunshine  |
This report is "fake news" in some ways. The investment fund did not destroy Sidney. The investment fund did what investors do and moved to maximize its return. That had the unintended and collateral effect of damaging the local economy by shuttering a large employer. "Destroyed" implies purposeful action. Also, other factors were at play in the "destruction" of Sidney. First, and most important was the fact that one company was such a large part of the local economy. Shuttering Cabelas would not "destroy" the economy of a moderately large city. As DocH noted, Nebraska's policies toward corporations made it hard to stay in Nebraska. Yet, no one says "Nebraska destroyed Sidney." Finally, what should we do about this? Such a report implies that someone should "do something." No, that is the way free markets work. If you interfere by strengthening anti-trust laws, for example, you will have some other consequence that you can't even anticipate now. Government intervention in markets rarely improves things in the long term. Fake news. The fish is mute, expressionless. The fish doesn't think because the fish knows everything. | |||
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| Savor the limelight |
Onaway, MI is no longer the Steering Wheel Capital of the World. Goldfield, NV's population is down from 200,000 to 260, but they are home to the International Car Forest. Starting next month, GM will no longer be making cars in Detroit in addition to the plants closed this year. Everyone affected wants to point fingers which is to be expected as their live have drastically changed, but it won't stop the changes. | |||
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quarter MOA visionary |
Well said. Unfortunately sometimes business is or at least seems cold and heartless. Much can be said of the "law of the jungle" where the bigger animals eat the smaller ones. IF any legislation is needed it should be carefully though through considering circumstances from a 360 degree angle as well as from how it will affect ALL in the future. Too much if almost all legislation is done on a knee jerk basis. Additionally on a side note: the same can be said about legislation regarding the massive injustice and discrimination of the media Cartel aka YouTube, Twatter, Google etc. IF we do anything it needs CAREFUL attention. My inclination is just to take their exemption away from them and make them be responsible for their actions. Lawyers ought to love that.  | |||
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Topic ClosedSIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge The death of Sidney, Nebraska: How a hedge fund destroyed 'a good American town'
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