Bass Pro Shops tries to project a fairly serious outdoorsy appearance, but some of the products here -- like the massive display of overpriced Yeti cups that seems to take up an entire aisle -- are clearly targeted towards people who are significantly less serious! Those giant ice chests aren't exactly something you're going to be taking with you on a hike, either. There's something slightly disconcerting about seeing these sort of products targeting city folk who want to seem a bit more adventurous a few aisles away from a prominent display of guns! (Though that being said, they're divided by an aisle of "kayak and canoe accessories", which feels even more incongruous.)
Several of those trendy cooler/outdoor mug companies are actually based in Texas. In fact, I kind of thought the 'cooler love' was just a Texas thing. After all, even HEB has their own brand of coolers and it has a four letter name like the other trendy cooler companies like YETI and RTIC. I forget exactly what it is though because I don't like HEB and I don't share the cooler love. Maybe coolers are trendy in Canada too, but that's weird. Texans have a lot more use for coolers than Canadians, lol.
ReplyDeleteYETI is from Austin, but RTIC is based in Houston. In fact, their warehouse and official outlet store is not far from where I live. They have a pretty neat store, it's much nicer than this cooler department at Bass Pro Shops: https://goo.gl/maps/mFx7TGGaz7rFknVn9
Igloo is probably not a trendy brand in coolers, but they are an older brand and they have a long history of being based here in Houston. They also have an official outlet store at their warehouse/headquarters on the outskirts of town. They used to be based near Town & Country Mall and Memorial City Mall before the I-10 expansion kind of forced them out. Now they are located on the edge of town in NW retail central since their warehouse is next to warehouses for Costco and Amazon, lol. Anyway, here is their factory store: https://goo.gl/maps/BWkWxyexvBA2CoJfA
Obviously, these are 'real' outlet stores and not some kind of large international chain of outlet stores like one would find at a Mills mall, lol.
I didn't realize that "trendy ice chests" were a thing beyond Yeti! (I mean, I don't know why trendy ice chests are a thing at all, but still.) That Rtic store does look quite nice, even if parts of it look more like an office building than a store.
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