Brett Wickard, founder of Bull Moose, says the retailer's edge is 'community'
Photo / Jim Neuger
At the Bull Moose store in South Portland, company founder and owner Brett Wickard chatted with Mainebiz about how the 30-year-old retail operation has evolved and what might be next on the horizon.
Brett Wickard is the founder and owner of Bull Moose, a Portland-based music and entertainment retailer with nine locations in Maine and three in New Hampshire, and retail software provider FieldStack. Together they employ more than 200 people. The Bowdoin College alumnus sat down with Mainebiz at Bull Moose’s South Portland store, in a former Blockbuster.
Mainebiz: What inspired the name Bull Moose?
Brett Wickard: Some friends suggested Wickard’s Wecords and Downeast Disks — not the greatest names. I always liked Bull Moose, the name of a track club at college, and originally named it Bull Moose Enterprises, because I thought the word Enterprises sounded really big.
MB: What was the product mix at your first store, opened in 1989?
BW: We were about 75% cassettes, 20% CDs and 5% everything else.
MB: And today?
BW: It varies dramatically by store. One thing we’ve believed from the beginning is that arts and entertainment is about community, and so each location is run separately. One thing that’s true is music is less than half of our sales. We’ve added other things, and those have all grown.
MB: That includes videos and what else?
BW: Video games, books, and other things. There’s a giant trading cards scene in some areas, and gaming cards, too, as well as board games. Our goal is to always sell inexpensive, fun, collectible stuff, and be a place where people can unwind and hang out. Almost nothing we sell you physically have to have, but hopefully you spiritually want to have.
MB: What’s the one music album you couldn’t live without?
BW: The Replacements’ “Let It Be,” because it’s got a little bit of everything.
MB: When you started the business, did you ever imagine it getting this big?
BW: I’d like to say that 20-year-old me thought, “Here’s my 10-year game plan,” but I had no idea. But that was its own beauty. When you don’t have any preconceived notion, you’re willing to question anything. One of the things we’ve been very fortunate in is that we have a lot of creative doers in New England. Almost every innovation we’ve had has come from our team in the stores, because they care, they’re passionate and they’re really talented.
MB: What are you doing right that Blockbuster and others got wrong?
BW: We quickly realized that our edge is community and knowing our folks, and that if we listen to one another, we can adapt. So really pay attention to what people are buying, and who’s buying it, and we adapt.
MB: Can you give an example?
BW: In 1991, we added video games, and they didn’t sell well, so we stopped carrying them. Then three or four years ago, video games started coming back. Most companies would say, “They don’t work for us, we’re not going to carry those,” but we said, “Maybe we didn’t do it right the first time.” So we added video games and went for it.
MB: What can you tell us about your other business, FieldStack?
BW: We realized that what we’re doing can work across industries, so we extended our software system and re-imagined everything as what we call lean retail — the idea that you can balance both resource and flow efficiency. Our clients are other entertainment retailers as well as pet specialty and thrift.
MB: Could you ever envision opening Bull Moose stores in states beyond Maine and New Hampshire?
BW: Definitely. For us, it’s all about opportunity and risk reward — How good of a deal is something, and does it make sense for our customers? When we’re doing something we always try to go back to the fans who shop in the stores, and what would they want us doing in this situation.
MB: Do you ever get takeover offers?
BW: In today’s environment, you get offers all the time, because a lot of private equity money is sitting on the side.
MB: What do you tell them?
BW: There are enough that I’m not able to respond to all of them.
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