Carson City’s Sportsmen’s Warehouse is having active year

Two-thirds of the way into its first year in Carson City, Sportsmen’s Warehouse is doing fine and putting together a great holiday season.

Katy Crabtree, a Carson High School product who is store manager here, made that assessment this weekend as she reported the holiday period is the time shoppers buy outdoor apparel for gifts but also are interested in good deals for firearms or other gear the outfitter handles.

“We had a really, really, really good Black Friday,” said Crabtree, a 2006 Carson High graduate when her name was Katy Gay. She opened the Carson City store officially in April and was married soon after. The Carson store’s soft opening was on March 28 and the official opening day was on April 5.

Crabtree said her store has done well each month and not only exceeded the goal for Black Friday, but has offered up pleasant surprises along the way. She said it’s difficult to gauge precisely how well because there’s no benchmark from previous years of Carson City store sales data, but the impact both for the store and the region has been a plus for the publicly-traded company.

That was the goal in opening as the anchor tenant at the Carson Mall despite having a Reno store, where the Carson store manager worked before coming back to her high school stomping grounds. She said the Utah-based chain wanted to boost its gear sales to outdoor-oriented customers throughout this eastern Sierra Nevada region. “That was the point,” she said.

She said holiday season deals are boosting consumer interest, and advertising sheets that come out help. But she said this time of year attracts shoppers seeking other deals as well.

“This is definitely the clothing and footwear time of year,” she said. She said Sportsmen’s Warehouse does well in December, as is normal for retailers, but also in July each year — the period for the post-hunting tag and pre-hunting season trade. It’s also the shank of some anglers’ seasonal interest.

Crabtree, who said Carson’s outlet was the second store the chain opened in 2014, noted six more have opened since hers did last April. She said another eight or more are expected to open in 2015.

“We are currently sitting at 55 stores,” she said. She said the community has welcomed the store and her staff, adding her excitement at being here and how well the year has gone.

The Sportsmen’s Warehouse chain’s stock, which trades on the NASDAQ exchange via the symbol SPWH, closed Friday at $7.40.