Business Spotlight: Call of the Wild

Clucks, putts, purrs, yelps, cutts, cackles and kee-kees. These are the sounds of turkey calls, and Springfield-based Commando Hunting Products is making noise in the industry.

The seven-year-old company serves a small segment of the population, making a specialized range of turkey calls in a market crowded by several big companies and thousands of hobbyist businesses. Given their customers can only legally use their products for six to 10 weeks out of the year just adds to the wild and wacky world of game calls.

Commando Hunting Products owners Matt Burtin and Alex Carr are not as dynamic as the Robertson family, whose duck call company is popularized through A&E cable series “Duck Dynasty.” But as the third generation of a family friendship, Burtin and Carr say the roots of their partnership run just as deep, steeped in a lifetime love of hunting.

The partners grew up in Lebanon, hunting the usual game on their family properties but with a special interest in turkey.

Carr’s background in engineering, with an industrial technology degree from Missouri State University, lends itself to making the turkey calls, and the majority of production occurs at his Bolivar shop, AC Metal Products.

Outside of Burtin’s full-time gig as director of sales and marketing for SRC Electrical LLC, he handles the administrative, marketing, shipping and some light assembly from his home. He says everyone in their respective families gets involved sooner or later.

“It really is a family affair,” he says. “Someone from the Missouri Conservation Department came to my kids’ elementary school last week, talking about hunting season and safety. Afterward my daughter talked to some of her friends’ parents about Commando. She ended up coming home with orders for several mouth calls, mainly for novelty, but she was still out there selling.”

Basic beginnings
Commando Hunting Products started like many so-called hobby jobs, with a product – originally made for personal use – that was so good people noticed and wanted to purchase one for themselves. The company’s first call was based on the design of another longtime friend, the late Steve Lawson. It was a double-sided friction call, aka pot call, with a reversible slate and glass disk that is rubbed with a wooden peg, or “striker,” to create various sounds, depending on the pattern described and the surface of the disk. That original design has since become the company’s signature item, the Commando Call.

The Commando product was launched in 2007, with a booth at the National Wild Turkey Federation’s annual show in Nashville, Tenn. The trade show is a vital part of Commando’s business strategy. Burtin attributes nearly 5 percent of annual revenues from sales during the four-day show each February – part of the three-month run-up to turkey season, which typically lasts four to seven weeks each spring depending on the state conservation department’s estimated turkey population. There is also a fall turkey season, but the majority of Commando’s business centers on spring hunts.

Missouri is one of only a half-dozen states in the country with a turkey population greater than 300,000, according to the state Department of Conservation.

Calling on hunters
The partners have built a nationwide network of active hunters from some 3 million turkey hunters in the U.S., according to NWTF estimates. These promotional staffers endorse Commando products in exchange for discounted or complementary merchandise. They then tout the product within their own networks of hunters, discussing the product merits on blogs, message boards or in videos shot live in the field while demonstrating Commando or other products. Videos are posted on hunters’ YouTube or personal websites, generating even further reach to potential new customers. Through the strategy, production of the signature friction calls has increased from the first run of 100 calls in 2007 to more than 1,500 last year. Additionally, demand for Commando’s diaphragm, or mouth, calls has tripled since their 2008 introduction.

“This is a network of hunters, first and foremost,” Burtin says. “They try to connect with other people in other areas, primarily to find new places to hunt. Along the way, they obviously have the opportunity to talk shop, and we try to make sure that our products are something that are worth talking about. Diversity of merchandise is our strength, and it’s a matter of finding out what our customers like and then developing new products that fulfill those wishes.”

One of those customers-turned-endorser is Brenda Valentine, a NWTF spokeswoman and renowned proponent of women’s hunting. Valentine first reviewed the partners’ products on her Bass Pro Shops-sponsored show in 2008. She then approached Burtin and Carr to create a custom striker call for her. After numerous iterations and revisions, the result met with Valentine’s approval – so much so that she lent her name to it. The Brenda Valentine Sweet Talk pot call is now a co-branded Commando signature item and one of the top-sellers among product lines that include some 20 standard varieties of friction, diaphragm and box calls, as well as branded hunting scents, accessories and apparel.

Commando also has benefited from product profiles on hunting programs on The Outdoor Channel. Though the partners declined to disclose revenues, Burtin says retail sales still account for 90 percent of volume. Products, ranging in price from $2 to $45, are carried at a variety of regional stores, including select Sutherlands locations, SOMO Farm & Ranch, Branson Archery and Midway USA in Columbia. Expansion plans include focusing on untapped geographic areas, enlisting more pro staff from the Southeast and Southwest, and adding predator calls and deer calls.

“We all are equal when we go to the woods. We all start with a clean slate each season,” Burtin says of his clientele and the thrill of the hunt. “So I have just as much of a chance as anybody else to go out there and bring home the trophy that I want.”