Sequel Outdoor's Sequel: MOVING FROM RETAIL TO E-TAIL.

• Author: PETERSON, ERIC

Tired of retail reality, Durango's Jeremiah St. Ours is moving his outdoors stores to virtual reality.

St. Ours Sequel Outdoor Clothing manufacturing plants in Durango and Blanding, Utah will remain open. But the company founder closed his Durango shop at the end of January. Past year, he shuttered his Sequel stores on the Boulder Mall and at the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park, Now Sequel will sell everything through www.sequel.tm.

"People are fishing, using the right key words and finding us on the Net somehow. We've had orders from Sloyenia and Australia, as well as Boulder and Durango," St. Ours said. "Our website is 140 pages long our printed catalog is 20 pages long. It seemed there's a larger bang for the buck to be had on the web Overhead is way, way less, and the convenience for the customer is way, way higher."

There's is a downside too "You have to try on clothing." St. Ours noted. "It's something that has a touch and feel to it. We've tried to give as much informations as possible(to online customers) as well as a warranty -- if you don't like it send it back. Often, people buy tow sizes with the intention of sending one back. But the upside is so enormous."

St. Ours entrepreneurial career began with his stints as a ranger in Mount Rainier and Canyonlands national parks. "I was working on glaciers and getting fried." which was why he invented the Desert Rhat hat. He since has gone on to patent about a half-dozen products. Sequel also devotes a small percentage of its business to designing clean-room suits for Intel flight suits for NASA, and the like.

St. Ours opened his flagship Durango store in 1991. It went so well right out of the box, making money, show-casing our line creating lots of converts," without a business plan, business advisors or debt. "Gang vertical gave us more control and more profit."

St. Ours simply soured on the burden of being small-but-vertical. "It's really just a matter of a shift in my interests" a lifestyle decision I'm ready to slow down a little bit.

The other side of the coin is that I can read the writing on the wall. I can see large global economic forces at play here putting pressure on us. Even a small manufacturer in a small town can see it. I got to sell products using American labor, and I can't pay my employees a bowl of rice a day.

So why not dump the manufacturing plants and stay in retail?

"We have a degree of manufacturing control none of the other (outdoor wear) manufacturers can...