A Sportsman's Life: How I Built Orvis by Mixing Business and Sport

When Leigh Perkins bought the Orvis Company in 1965, the fly-fishing and bird-hunting outfitter was a sleepy business with annual sales that had leveled off at $500,000. Over the next thirty years Perkins built Orvis's annual sales to $100 million by revolutionizing the catalog retail industry and reshaping the company's tradition-bound culture. He achieved this by blending his love of nature with his business acumen and bringing the commonsense approach he learned in the streams and on his...