EP 449. Old School Functionality That Fits Our Lifestyle and Lasts a Lifetime

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s duck season somewhere podcast, where I am on the last morning Dallas Safari Club meeting with my buddy Radcliffe of Tom Beckbe. Hey, I got a funny story for you. Obviously, my wife doesn’t listen to my podcast much, Radcliffe, because she asked me the other day. She goes, now, who is Tom Beckbe? I’ve met Radcliffe, but who is Tom? I go, that’s the company. She goes, I don’t get it. I said, well, obviously, you don’t listen to podcasts because Tom Beckbe’s not a person. That’s the pronunciation of the Tom Beckbe River back in the day. Is that right?

Radcliffe Menge: That’s correct. I do answer to Tom these days, it’s a common question. Who’s Tom? Can I meet Tom? Is Tom in the booth? And quirk of how you register for these shows. For a long time, my badge here said Tom Beckbe on it, and so it doubled down on the confusion.

Ramsey Russell: When you come up in my phone, you come up as Tom Beckbe, because for the longest time, I’ll be honest with you, when we first met, started chatting a couple years ago, I was kind of confused myself.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah, I’ll take the anonymity. That’s fine with me.

Ramsey Russell: You all have come a long way since I met you, man. You all have scaled. You all have jumped. When I met you, it was pretty much the Tensaw jacket.

Radcliffe Menge: Pretty much. I was trying to remember this on the way in this morning, trying to replay. Tom Beckbe has been coming to Safari Club as an official exhibitor. Our first year was January 2018. Oh, I came here the year before, which is an interesting story, back when I was still a practicing lawyer, and I was trying to remember when you and I first got connected. It was somewhere in all that, in one of these shows, almost like.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, almost like 19 or almost like 20. It was 20.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. So the evolution for us has been 2018. We were probably the last booth in the whole show with just a handful of products, and that was the first year that I’d been running the company full time, had given up the practice, the law. The year before was unofficially our first trip to DSC. So, I told everybody at work that I was going Duck Hunting in Texas with some friends, which was true. I did go duck hunting while I was here, but I also came to the convention, and we had the Tensaw jacket in two colors in 5 sizes, so 10 SKUs. I just started selling them while practicing law the fall before, and people seem interested in them. I’d heard that Dallas Safari Club convention was the granddaddy of all the conventions and the one place to go where you could really meet a lot of people in the industry. So, I came out here, went duck hunting just north of Dallas, and had an incredible duck hunt. It was a morning kind of like this, really cold. We hunted some big water, and I remember it distinctly. Cause at the ramp, it was 13 degrees that morning, and I had on one of our first run of Tensaw jackets and some layers underneath it. When we got to where we were going to set out decoys, I’d been riding in the boat backwards, and ice had formed across my shoulders.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Radcliffe Menge: So very cold. But just like one of those special mornings, hunting with a good old friend, and we got decoys out, got heaters going in the boat, and it started to snow. We shot classic, like, central flyway hunt. We shot mallards and pintails and wigeons in the snow in Texas, packed up our gear after the hunt, and then I came to the convention with 2 jackets and a briefcase, a medium in one color and a large in the other. I just walked around the show just trying to introduce myself to people, and I ended up selling both of those jackets out of my briefcase.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Radcliffe Menge: I did. Yep. The first to a guy who worked for brackish bow ties at the time, a guy named Paul King, still a friend to this day, and Paul has gone on to be a wildly successful photographer. Got out of the bow tie business and got into doing what he loved to do, which was being outside and fishing and hunting and photographing people. I talked to them regularly, and that was 7 years ago, now?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Radcliffe Menge: Then the second guy I met, if you walk around these conventions, for me personally, it’s hard to go around and constantly reintroduce myself. You’ve got the gift of it.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t know about that.

Radcliffe Menge: But for some of us, it takes a little bit of energy to work yourself up, to constantly go up to booth after booth and introduce yourself, explain what you’re thinking about doing, because we had, like I said, 1 jacket in essentially 10 SKUs. So really, the business was just an idea, and I was trying to figure out, does it seem viable? Does it seem like it’s something that’s missing at this convention, something people are interested in? So, I texted my wife. I was right over here. I remember where I was standing, and I said, I’m going to do one more lap, and then I’m going to go to the airport and come home. As I’m standing there, looking around, trying to figure out where I’m going to go, a guy was talking to somebody. He saw me sort of wide eyed, looking around and tapped me on the shoulder and said, you look lost, buddy. What are you looking for? So I struck up a conversation with this guy, Tim Cowan from Memphis, and he and I just happen to know all the same people. It’s classic southern situation.

Ramsey Russell: Exactly.

Radcliffe Menge: So, visit with Tim. Tim ended up buying that other jacket out of my briefcase. So I’m batting a 1000 at this point. Tim’s got 3 sons, Will, who I know you know, and Hunter and Drew, and I’ve hunted with all of them over the last few years. Actually, went down to Argentina, hunted with Will, Quail and Stag and just an amazing 20, 24 hours. 8 hours at a convention, and when I got back, I had a sense that we were on to something and that we could connect with people, and people were interested in the product. So, I actually quit practicing law, not much longer after that, about a month later, and then the following year-

Ramsey Russell: Have you been thinking about getting out of law and chasing this apparel dream?

Radcliffe Menge: No. We’ve talked about this before, just an idea for a jacket, but the jacket ultimately became the Tensaw jacket. It started off as a custom jacket for me, but it just seemed to strike a chord, and if you peel back the onion a little bit and say, what is it about this jacket that interests people? What is it about the branding that we’ve kind of put together around it? And the idea there clearly was more interest in it than I could manage as a full-time practicing lawyer, plus dad, plus small business guy. Of course, we have more planning, direction, and organization around it now, but at the time, in 2018, it was very loose and conceptual. Outerwear first, just because it seemed like there wasn’t a good premium american made option at the time. I’m not sure there is, still, other than us.

Ramsey Russell: Not if you want a natural material like that.

Radcliffe Menge: Right.

Ramsey Russell: What I’m saying, though, and I was just going to ask you, talking about striking a chord, it did strike a chord, and it filled a void. You’ve got this natural product, this wack cotton that everybody has ever seen me in social media knows, I love, but it’s evolved into other brands. Even these synthetic brands, it may be a plasticized, whatever you call that material all these other guys are using in the industry, but it’s going back to a solid look. It’s like everybody all of a sudden, is going old school, going granddad. I wonder why that is.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah, I mean-

Ramsey Russell: Besides the fact you don’t need corporate camo to blend in.

Radcliffe Menge: I think it’s a great question. I’m not sure I have a perfect answer for it, or really even-

Ramsey Russell: There is no answer, but we could speculate.

Radcliffe Menge: We could speculate, I think, that being an outdoorsman or being a hunter has a bit of a traditional bent to it. Most people in the sport learned it from dads or granddads or whomever in the DNA of the sport is a connection with the past, and not in a way that we’re not stuck in the past, but I think that people feel a real connection, like a bridge to prior generations. I think the other thing too, is we’re all busy, and we don’t get to hunt every day of the year, and so if you can continue to wear the stuff that makes you feel like you’ve got a connection to the outdoors in the regular day, then I think that.

Ramsey Russell: Traditions.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah, those traditions. Just something that you like to think about when you’re slugging away on a computer on a Tuesday.

Ramsey Russell: Back in 2020, which just yesterday, it seems like, say, 4 or 5 years ago, 2018, 2019, you’re walking around with a couple of concept jackets, checking it out. You sold them 100% inventory out of your briefcase, quit your law job, you had 10 SKUs, whatever that meant. What is SKU? What does that mean?

Radcliffe Menge: So that’s just the product variant.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen them in catalog.

Radcliffe Menge: Right. The SKU, it’s a stock keeping unit, so we-

Ramsey Russell: Stock keeping.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. It’s how you track the product. So let’s just take a Tensaw jacket. A Tensaw jacket in color Tobacco, size large, would be 1 SKU. So, when we started the Tensaw jacket, we had hardwood, which at the time was a lot greener than it is now. We’ve darkened it up cause we think it works a little better, and then tobacco, we went small through double X.

Ramsey Russell: What’s this color here?

Radcliffe Menge: That’s tobacco.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Radcliffe Menge: It’s just very dirty.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll show you dirty.

Radcliffe Menge: I was going to say not nearly as dirty as yours.

Ramsey Russell: It’s just now getting comfortable. I got several of these coats, and that’s my go to, man, it’s like your favorite pair of blue jeans.

Radcliffe Menge: Thanks.

Ramsey Russell: That’s the one I go to the most.

Radcliffe Menge: Well, people ask me, they say, what’s the secret to getting them to look cool? And I told them, you got to wear them. No shortcut.

Ramsey Russell: I told somebody, you see a patina, you can’t buy it. You got to earn it, and you just put it on and wear it, and that’s how you earn it. So, you had 10 SKUs. Now, how many you got?

Radcliffe Menge: I don’t actually know.

Ramsey Russell: More than 10.

Radcliffe Menge: More than 10. So, what’s happened to our business-

Ramsey Russell: More than 100?

Radcliffe Menge: Definitely more than 100. So, the business has grown a lot.

Ramsey Russell: Of course it has.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. So we sell 3 different ways you can buy Tom Beckbe. So, you can go to tombeckbe.com. We’ve got anywhere from 150 to 175 retail partners around the US. So those are everything from in specialty stores to your local outfitter to, some nicer hunting clubs and destinations around the US. We also own 3 stores, so we’ve got our flagship in Birmingham, which is where the business is based.

Ramsey Russell: Seen that one.

Radcliffe Menge: We’ve got a small store in Wilson, Arkansas, which is actually our first store that we opened just to test the waters to see what would a Tom Beckbe store look like that’s been open since 2019, Birmingham since 2021, and then this past September, we opened a store in Oxford, Mississippi.

Ramsey Russell: That’s got to be gang time. It’s just got to be gangbusters.

Radcliffe Menge: It’s a great-

Ramsey Russell: Down on the square, too.

Radcliffe Menge: It’s a great location for people who haven’t had the good fortune of going to Oxford. It’s a classic southern town with a courthouse in the middle.

Ramsey Russell: Are you an Ole Miss fan? That’s a connection.

Radcliffe Menge: I’m not.

Ramsey Russell: You didn’t go to law school there, did you?

Radcliffe Menge: No. I did not get Ole Miss undergrad or law school, but I’m a big Ole Miss fan now.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Radcliffe Menge: Huge supporter.

Ramsey Russell: I went to Mississippi State, but I can’t hate Ole Miss. I love Oxford. I love the people. I love being down the grove. I got a lot of Ole Miss family there, so I’m not that guy, that state or Ole Miss. I like them both.

Radcliffe Menge: Right. People say, why’d you open a store in Oxford? well, we didn’t open a store in Oxford. We opened a store in Mississippi. It’s really the way I think about it, Mississippi and Alabama have a lot in common. You can argue which one is the reverse of the other on the map.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Radcliffe Menge: But culturally, very similar. Just a great outdoors and sporting culture. I personally spent a lot of time going that direction to go Duck Hunt in the Mississippi river valley. The store was not on the plan for 2023, but we saw the space, and if you’ve seen it online or if you had that, if you’ve been nice enough to drop by, it’s a historic building that used to be a frame shop and it was the way that they built the building is they connected 2 older buildings. So, it used to be an alley, and the store to the right of us, which is now off square books, had a big tobacco ad on it for studs tobacco.

Ramsey Russell: Studs tobacco.

Radcliffe Menge: Never heard of it. It’s an old RJR label that’s long since gone, but there’s a mural inside the store. It’s not a mural, it’s a tobacco ad. So, when we went and looked at the space, the ad had been covered up by plaster for who knows how long, probably since the 1920s. The family who bought the building stripped everything down to the studs to try to decide if they were going to remodel it or what they were going to put in there, and behind that plaster was the word stud painted on the wall and it’s 76ft long and 15ft tall. Then there’s a really cool mural of the stud, the logo for Stud’s tobacco is a stallion back on its seat. It’s almost like a Ferrari prancing stallion for stud tobacco. When we saw that and saw the exposed brick and realized where it was located, we took a swing at it.

Ramsey Russell: It spoke to you.

Radcliffe Menge: It did. It just looked like a Tom Beckbe store if you were going to draw it up, and we didn’t need to do anything to it. It needed electricity and it needed a couple bathrooms. Then we were open. So we signed the lease on, call it August 13, and we were open on September 12. So it just needed some inventory.

Ramsey Russell: What drives you all’s evolution or your expansion into product? What are you? Are you the mind behind it? Are you the creative mind that goes from the Tensaw to the Chatom to all this different product lines that’s coming out of you? Is it coming from people referring to you? Are you walking down and go, I like that and come up with. How do you come up with this stuff? What’s driving it?

Capturing Inspirations: Colors, Moments, and Situations.

We have a design team now which is a lot more helpful than it used to be. Me drawing things on a cocktail napkin, really talented people who have real relevant experience, industrial design degrees, a lot of technical experience on how to put apparel together, how to get it all fit correctly.

Radcliffe Menge: It’s a little bit of all of it. I guess in a bigger, more organized company, I would be the creative director. So, all of the product ideas, I don’t want to say 100% of them generate with me, but they at least get filtered through me. We have a design team now which is a lot more helpful than it used to be. Me drawing things on a cocktail napkin, really talented people who have real relevant experience, industrial design degrees, a lot of technical experience on how to put apparel together, how to get it all fit correctly. But ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s not a linear process. Ideas go into the hopper. They come out of the hopper. We capture a lot of moments, colors, situations that we find interesting, we’re always trying to think about who our customer is. We have the benefit of many years of customer data now, and having talked to people at conventions, in our own stores, seeing what they’re interested in online, what they’re not interested in. I would say that if you wanted to really get to the heart of it, what’s driving new product decisions are our customers. They inform us either directly or indirectly with what they’re interested in.

Ramsey Russell: It seems like you all’s brand I would define as old school meets new world. It’s like papa’s clothes, only better, made for today. That’s how I define, like this jacket here. The thing about this Chatom jacket, I know it wasn’t really intended to go hunting in. I know it’s more of your casual line, but I like it because of the short fit, the snap up buttons. It reminds me of the denim jacket I wore since junior high school. When I put it on, it goes over anything I’m wearing. But it just fits good under my waders and off I go. Now, if it’s raining, I’m bringing with the zip. But I love these products. They’re in my box everywhere I go. Everywhere I go, I bring this jacket.

Radcliffe Menge: Well, it’s a shame you don’t travel very much.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I know. I actually bring a backup just in case, you know what I’m saying? Because I need it.

Radcliffe Menge: If you think about the product that we are making and the clothes that we’re making, I think traditional is probably a good word. But what I would tell people is that the manufacturing and the design, the fit and the materials, they all have come a long way from your granddad’s closet. Even wax wear has come a long way. Wax, like anything else, is a chemical compound that is used for weatherproofing, water repellency, and wind resistance. The wax itself has improved, I think, over the years. We use what I think is a superior grade of wax canvas. They are not all created equal. If you’re really into the category, then there are a handful of places that you can get waxed canvas from around the world. We import ours from Haley Stevenson’s in Scotland, and I think that they make a superior product, and so that’s why we’ve been using it.

Ramsey Russell: What did that entail? As you’re young, getting in this business, Radcliffe, going from transferring from legal into this industry. Did you go to Scotland? I mean, were they sending just boatloads of samples? And you’re putting your hands on it. How does a guy go about figuring out what’s best?

Radcliffe Menge: Well, a lot of elbow grease. I have no formal background on this. No education, but-

Ramsey Russell: I think that’s an asset, not a liability.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. I’m not burdened by-

Ramsey Russell: Convention.

Radcliffe Menge: Exactly. When I wanted to transform a hobby into a business that we needed to find the best possible product for our customer or potential customer. There’s a combination of things. Apparel, you’re always like everything in life. You’re trading one thing for another. So, do you want it heavier weight, which may be a little stiffer, but a little more rugged? Do you want it to be super duper, 100% waterproof, which means you’re probably looking for something that’s synthetic or has chlorofluorocarbons in it. Are you looking for something that will patina well? Do you want it to look wet, so oily, or do you want it to look dry? There’s all kinds of different ways that you can skin the cat. We use a dryer wax compound. One, it has a superior performance attribute to it. Two, I think it looks traditionally American, and that’s not to say that one aesthetic is better than the other, but for me personally, we wanted to make a coat that passed the eyeball test as something that felt like an american traditional hunting piece.

Ramsey Russell: It does, and I got a question, is it form or function?

Radcliffe Menge: We do a bit of both. So, you wear a Chatom jacket, and it looks like a traditional ranch coat, but if you look at the back of it, it’s got the same buy swing and action back that we put on all of our apparel so that you can shoot in it. So, we’re always mindful when we’re producing products. Are we serving our core customer to our core outdoorsman? Who is the heart of the business and where are we serving him? If the product that we’re designing for our core guys, for him to wear it in the field, then function as you get farther away from the field. So, as you transition from field to lodge and then from lodge to travel and from travel to every day, the form becomes more important because the form is the function. Do I look good in it? So, I think that’s the spectrum that we work on and how we think about it.

Ramsey Russell: Natural materials, huge fan. I’ll tell you why. If you open up my closet, my garage and my chest and my life, 20 years of it and, or more, 30, 40 years in this, this duck hunting thing, I’ve got every make, model, serial number of parka and jacket and raincoat and corpa camo pattern, but there’s 0 chance that any of those synthetic materials blend into nature like a natural fabric, 0 chance. It can’t possibly be because I talked to somebody just the other day that makes a garment and wool and natural material absorbs light. It doesn’t reflect, it absorbs, and nature absorbs light, doesn’t reflect it. It absorbs it, and I think that a lot of these synthetic materials and that’s why I’ve transitioned completely. I’ve been wearing wax cotton 25 years now. It’s what my granddaddy wore. I can remember the first deer hunt I went on and it was bone chilling cold as I remember it. I was 11 or 12 years old and all I had was my grandmother’s wax cotton coat she wore bird hunting. I still wish I had that coat. I don’t know where it ended up, probably wouldn’t fit me now, but I’d love to have it for posterity. But we had to sew buttons on and everything else to make it fit. I’ve been that way ever since, you know what I’m saying? Besides the form, it looks good, it feels good. It resonates with my roots. It fits better, more universally into nature, and we had Bradley Cohen on here recently talking about how waterfowl see, and it’s nothing like we think. They don’t, they don’t perceive nature like we humans do. They’re looking for patterns. They see a blurry landscape, but they see those bright spots, they see that reflecting, they see that movement. And there’s 0 chance that our synthetic garments blend in like this right here, 0 chance.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. Synthetic material is particularly challenging on the low end of the UV spectrum, and if you think about when are you shooting ducks? That’s right. in the morning, and that’s-

Ramsey Russell: When their eyesight really stands out, is right there at daylight and dusk.

Radcliffe Menge: Right. There is something about natural material. I think that maybe there’s something in the subconscious. It looks and feels better, and we do make some things out of synthetic, but almost universally our product line is either cotton or wool. They have the right performance attributes for our customer. I personally like them for all the same reasons you do. They look and feel better. They last longer. I share the sentimentality for natural materials.

The Impact of Synthetic Materials on Hunting Quietness.

There’s no light pollution, there’s no noise pollution. There’s nothing but nature, and it is the dead of winter. It’s dead quiet. So, we’re up there in April, and there’s a foot of snow, and sitting by a campfire one night with some hunters had eased out to go make a pass.

Ramsey Russell: Countless are the times around the world. I’m thinking Argentina, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, that I can think of specific examples that somebody within arm’s reach from a foreign country reached out and touched my coat and talked about how nice it was because of the material, because of the look, because of the feel versus the crunchy, and that’s something else I was thinking about is, I never will forget it. The quietest, most surreal and serene and magical habitat I’ve ever hunted was 20 km from the Boreal forest. There’s no light pollution, there’s no noise pollution. There’s nothing but nature, and it is the dead of winter. It’s dead quiet. So, we’re up there in April, and there’s a foot of snow, and sitting by a campfire one night with some hunters had eased out to go make a pass. Not only could I hear them walking into snow, from 100 yards away, I could hear their jackets crinkling. They were wearing just that synthetic whatever. I could hear their jackets crinkling from 200 yards away, just as they’re walking. I could hear the crank, as their arms were bending just a little fold. I could hear it, and I know if I could hear it, those Capercaillie could hear it and Lord knows if they opened a piece of Velcro pocket, I could hear that 5 miles away. I’m like, my gosh, I had no idea, but you can’t hear that wax cotton and that wool walking through the woods. You cannot hear it, and I think there’s a huge advantage to that. Like I say, part of the hunting experience and that nature experience is blending in with nature. That’s the whole fundamental of it all, and I just think these coats, besides looking badass in it, I’m a good looking son bitch when I’m wearing my Tom Beckbe-

Radcliffe Menge: You’re the perfect model.

Ramsey Russell: My wife would say, especially if you put it over your head, but I feel better using it and I’m wondering where the inspiration came from. That’s always good because to me, it stands out in the crowd.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. It flips a switch somewhere in the subconscious for a lot of guys. It just looks and feels right. I think that people touch and feel it and have an immediate connection to it. If it’s the kind of thing that connects with you, if it resonates with you.

Ramsey Russell: I think, given a chance, been my observation that natural material, something like wax cotton, I think it speaks to everybody. Even these young kids that may not have the benefit of having a granddad that wore that kind of material like mine did, I think it speaks to them. I’m seeing it beyond the natural material market now. I’m seeing these solids and this old school vibe and this old school camo vibe. No matter what the material or what the name brand is, the whole market is starting to gravitate to it. I think there’s a reason.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I’m glad to see in the world of duck hunting, a little bit more of an old guard renaissance coming about. I like that.

Radcliffe Menge: It’s interesting when you talk about the generation of hunters who are coming or who are a little bit younger than me. I’m in my mid-40s so talking about guys 10 or 15 years younger than me, and I was talking to a guy from gordian sons. He’s one of our retail partners in Houston, and we were talking about guns, and we were talking about side-by-sides. Anyone who’s followed our Instagram account or been hunting with me knows that I have an almost equally big soft spot for side-by-sides as I do for wax canvas jackets, and we were just talking about different guns and who’s interested in particular types of shotguns? American side-by-sides are Italian and English and so on, and he was talking about the customer demographics are they’ve either got guys who are essentially retiring, aging out of the sport, and that their double gun business has really skipped a generation, and it’s guys who are coming up in their 30s now who really are their big shoppers for them. I think that what you’re seeing on the apparel side and the gun business have or somewhat related to just what people. I don’t want to say what’s in vogue right now, but just what the mentality of the generation of hunters who are right behind me, kind of where they’re, what they’re interested in. I think that bodes well for the sport, that people are interested in the tradition. I think that shows that people have an understanding of things, even if they weren’t there in prior years, and that they’re interested in maintaining and carrying on and carrying the sport forward. So, that’s not just clothing or guns. That’s the whole kit and caboodle conservation, hunting, ethically, hunting the right way. I think it bodes really well for the sport, personally. I think it shows a lot of obstacles.

Ramsey Russell: I think it does, too. I think it talks about who we duck hunters are as a people. Just that those elements are timeless. Absolutely, positively timeless.

Radcliffe Menge: Right.

Ramsey Russell: We may step off this mainstream into something else, but it always circles back to granddad or great granddad’s time, because it’s such a fundamental sport.

Radcliffe Menge: Sure, the sun rises, the sun sets, the earth spins around, and the Ducks go north, and eventually they come back south.

Ramsey Russell: Amen. Have you had any chance to do any duck hunting this year?

Overcoming Challenging Weather for Waterfowl Hunting.

Some of that is because the business gotten bigger, and we’ve just got really wonderful employees who we trust to run the business, and I don’t feel like I need to be around as much.

Radcliffe Menge: I have been duck hunting. I’m here with 2 of our great employees, Jacob Stockman, who helped us run the store in Oxford and Pierce Smith, who runs our store in Birmingham. I think they would roll their eyes a little bit when I say that I haven’t been really hunting that much because I’ve been hunting more this fall than I have in years past. Some of that is because the business gotten bigger, and we’ve just got really wonderful employees who we trust to run the business, and I don’t feel like I need to be around as much. So, I started my duck season in Saskatchewan in early October, which was a really a great trip. The weather was not great. It was hot and dry, but we still managed to scratch out a good trip on waterfowl. We were supposed to be doing some upland hunting too, and the upland hunting was very difficult, but we had a good trip shooting ducks. I skipped some time away from duck hunting until the beginning of December, and I went and hunted in Arkansas right when the second split, sorry, right after the first split, and I had a great trip. There was very little water in Arkansas at the time, and the weather had not been cooperating to push a lot of ducks out, but it was just one of those great trips. Caught up with a lot of old friends, and we shot a lot of mallards, it was a spectacular trip. Then over the holidays, I’ve got an 8-year old, and so we did a little bit of deer hunting just to try to get him interested in the sport and just get outside.

Ramsey Russell: Did he kill one?

Radcliffe Menge: No, he didn’t kill one. The objective right now is just to get him interested in the outdoors. He has the-

Ramsey Russell: That’ll get him interested.

Radcliffe Menge: That’ll get him interested. He likes to go to camp and likes to hang out. He likes to go sit in a blind and watch deer. This is the first year that he’s shown an interest in being behind the trigger, so we’ll start to develop those marksmanship skills.

Ramsey Russell: Alabama has some good deer hunt.

Radcliffe Menge: We have a lot of deer and some good deer hunting, and it’s relatively an easy way in Alabama to introduce young folks to the sport because there’s a convenience factor to it. We’ve got great deer hunting and a lot of them and very liberal limits and a long season.

Ramsey Russell: Some of the best deer hunting I’ve ever done in my life was over in Alabama when I was in college. I knew some boys over around Uniontown, and it was just every weekend. If I was going to see a deer, how many shots was I going to get?

Radcliffe Menge: Right.

Ramsey Russell: They had a rule though, that you couldn’t shoot a buck unless you going to mount it. A broke ass college kid, so I had to be careful.

Radcliffe Menge: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: But we’d always see a lot of deer. I’ve always been envious of you because I’m staying about a mile and a half from here in a Vrbo or whatever it is, Airbnb, and get up in the morning, eat breakfast. I’m there when they open the doors, eat breakfast, come down here and work, and you get to go duck hunting. You’ve been duck hunting since you’ve been here in Dallas, haven’t you?

Radcliffe Menge: We’ve been duck hunting since we’ve been here in Dallas.

Ramsey Russell: Every day?

Radcliffe Menge: We’ve been rotating. I hunted Thursday morning and came to the show late, and then Pearson Jacob hunted. I’m trying to get the days right here. I opened the show on Friday, so they hunted Friday, and then I hunted yesterday, and then they’re hunting right now.

Ramsey Russell: Been killing ducks.

Radcliffe Menge: We’ve been killing ducks. We had an amazing hunt. This place is right on the Trinity River. I think it’s 15 miles from here. You can see the skyline from Dallas.

Ramsey Russell: It blows my mind because Char dog stays at Wild Rose, Texas, when I’m here.

Radcliffe Menge: Right.

Ramsey Russell: She’ll be in a booth today, but she stays here. They work her, they take great care of her, and it’s 15 minutes from here. Just on the right in the shadow of Dallas and amazing river bottom, their facilities are locating on one of the oldest clubs in Texas, and it’s amazing. They kill a bunch of birds, it’s amazing. That whole creek bottomed down through there. It’s crazy.

Radcliffe Menge: It’s crazy. So, the place we stay is cottonwoods, Blake Hamilton’s place, and it’s right next to Dallas Hunting Fish Club, which is where Wildrose, Texas is, and it’s just south of there. Trinity river that flows right through Dallas is an interesting watershed. What’s interesting about that particular part of Dallas County is it’s essentially depleted gravel mining land, and it sat empty for who knows how long. The gravel pits had all been dug and the gravel business moved on. What does a gravel pit hold?

Ramsey Russell: Water.

Radcliffe Menge: Exactly, and shock of all shocks, guess what likes water? So Blake has been rehabilitating the habitat there for a number of years, and it’s been interesting to see the evolution of it. I went out there a few years ago when he first bought the place, and we had a good duck hunt, but it was still depleted gravel ponds and old like grazing pastures. Over those 3 years, we went from shooting divers to gadwalls to mallards, pintails, and wigeons. So, you can see, as you improve the habitat, the big ducks will naturally find you.

Ramsey Russell: That’s Crazy.

Radcliffe Menge: It is wild.

Ramsey Russell: I wonder how big. I guess I need to ask Blake. I wonder how big that bottom is because it’s almost like this little green oasis in the middle of sprawling humanity. It’s just unbelievable to me that it takes longer to get to my apartment 2 miles from here than it does to get there.

Radcliffe Menge: We’re very fortunate. I’m a little bit bummed moving the convention to Atlanta because we feel like we.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, we’re screwed.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah, we finally dialed up the secret sauce for how to do a convention the right way. Ducks in the morning and convention later in the day. Atlanta is going to be really convenient for me, and you may be a little bit more convenient for us in Birmingham. It’s only a couple hours, but I think it’ll be great.

Ramsey Russell: I’m glad to hear you say it. I’m going to go into it optimistically. I came to Dallas Safari club for Texas, not for Dallas, for Texas.

Radcliffe Menge: Same

Ramsey Russell: I’m wondering how many of the Texans are going to go to Atlanta? I got a lot of great clients and friends over in Atlanta. Let’s face it, overall, it’s not exactly the same demographic. I’m saying I’m worried. I can’t help but now SEI moved to Nashville, and that was explosive. It was unbelievable.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah, I never thought I would be sentimental for a convention, but the story that I told at the top of the show about walking around the floor, coming here with a briefcase with 2 jackets in it gave me the validation and confidence that we had a good business idea, maybe not a fully flushed out one, but at a very high 10,000ft, an idea that resonated with people in the industry, and I’ve made a lot of really great friends in this building, in this convention hall, present company included. So, I hope that that carries over into Atlanta, and I do think that resetting a new group of people coming in I don’t think is something to be necessarily scared of. I think a lot of people here should share the same cautious optimism that you and I’ve got. That SEI moved east and it went well. We’ll give DSE a shot in Atlanta and hope that it does the same.

Ramsey Russell: I hope it does same. God, I’ve been coming here a long time, and it’s almost like spending 4 days with distant family. You know what I’m saying? I know all the volunteers. I know all the guys at the door. I just know people. I know all my neighbors. I love it, and I hope, pray Dallas is just good. Speaking of SEI, last year was you all’s first year at SEI. How’d that go?

Radcliffe Menge: It was great.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. It was really good.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it was good. I think a day or two into it, you had to make an emergency resupply.

Radcliffe Menge: We did.

Ramsey Russell: That’s good. What else? Here’s what I’m going to ask you, I saw you back in July at the Delta Waterfowl Expo and you all had launched and had on display a lot of your new product. Give me a rundown of some of that new product. I know the vest, it was gangbusters because I saw it all over social media. I don’t mean advertised, I mean, somebody I know, somebody I follow. People wearing that product. It must have been gangbusters.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. 4 things that I would highlight that renew this this year for water fowlers. What Ramsey’s talking about is the waterfowl. We call the waterfowl strap vest thing.

Ramsey Russell: Must have flown off the shelf.

Radcliffe Menge: It flew. I wish we’d made a lot more, but that’s all right. We’ll figure that out this next year. So, if you think about it, it’s a fly-fishing vest for duck hunters. It sits up higher in your chest, as high as you want. You can wear it low if you want. 2 panels in the front-

Ramsey Russell: strapped where I can adjust it.

Radcliffe Menge: It’s strapped like an adjuster, so it’s got side adjusters and top adjusters. It’s got kind of a yoke that goes across the top. So, it will essentially fit anyone. I’m 5’6” and 155 pounds, and they fit me. It’ll fit a guy who’s, 6’6” and 350. The idea behind it? We wanted to achieve a couple things. One, it should be a platform where you can grab it, put it on, and you have everything you need to get weighed or go lay down in a blind and go hunting. Calls, ammo, headlamp, whatever you need. The other thing, the other utility that it serves, in addition to carrying all your gear, is we line 2 big interior pockets with the same synthetic shearling that we put in our gun cases. So, it’s synthetic, if you get it wet, it’ll dry quickly, it’s super warm. If you’re like every duck hunter on Earth.

Ramsey Russell: Your hands are going to get cold.

Radcliffe Menge: Your hands are going to get cold, and so you need a place to tuck them in. That’ll warm them up, and that was a key component of it. Then you asked, where do we get ideas from? I can’t take 100% credit for that. Lee Kjos his idea.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, Kjos.

Key Features of the Fowler Jacket and Vest.

We introduced a quilted waxed vest and a quilted waxed jacket. The fowler jacket, fowler vest and they’re quilted with wool. Why wool? What better material to go with wax cotton than a natural wool? It has all the great thermal regulating properties that we know helps release heat if you get overheated.

Radcliffe Menge: So that’s product 1. That was a great one for duck hunters this fall. We’re talking about natural materials. We introduced a quilted waxed vest and a quilted waxed jacket. The fowler jacket, fowler vest and they’re quilted with wool. Why wool? What better material to go with wax cotton than a natural wool? It has all the great thermal regulating properties that we know helps release heat if you get overheated. Keeps you warm when it’s soaking wet, and for us, we didn’t want to put synthetic, like a primaloft inside of a wax garment. Just didn’t seem like the correct material. Goose down tends is great but doesn’t keep you warm when it’s wet and it migrates or pokes through the garment. So, wool just seemed like the right material. And those are super warm. It’s the warmest stuff we’ve ever made. They both got removable hoods, moleskin pockets, a really cool jacket, and then the last thing that was a fun new product for duck hunters. We made what we call a blind bag. It’s almost like a cross between a traditional speed bag and what folks would call a ditty bag. So, a little bit smaller than our other hunting bags that we’ve made in years past. Great for holding just like a box or two of shells and a small thermos, kind of a grab and go bag. What’s interesting about that is we put a front panel on it that folds down almost like a toiletry bag. So, when you get to where you’re going, you can flop that out and you got access to all your phone or whatever you tuck into the pocket, and then quick, grab some shells. You’re asking about form versus function. When we’re focusing on function, we try to not over complicate anything. The urge that you fight when you’re designing new gear for the field, you want to bolt on every trick you can, and so we try to boil everything down to the fundamental. How is our guy going to use this product? What does he need, and what can we take off to make the product a little simpler, but still highly versatile and functional?

Ramsey Russell: I think as you get older, to keep it simpler approach applies. Like you just described. I want less, not more. I want just what I need. Take my hand in a bag, put my phone here, do this. Everybody’s got a place, but I can’t be overwhelmed by it all. I just want the basics. I want to get to my tree, hang my bag up, unload my gun, go shoot ducks.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. Better, not more.

Ramsey Russell: Better, not more. That’s exactly right. You see these guys that look like they’re going on a military expedition, it’s too much. It’s too freaking much, man. It’s too much to do in the morning. I got to get there before daylight, and if I’m not there 10, 15-minutes before it’s time to load the gun, I’m late, and I don’t like to be late. What I like to do is be set up and sitting in my spot, gun on my shoulder, chit chatting, 15 minutes before it’s legal shooting time, or I’m late. Being late just ruins my whole day. It throws my timing off. I don’t like it.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. The irony of this is people will know that I was late for this podcast this morning. So, I’m laughing, but I’m the same way, in the morning, and part of where the waterfalls trap fest came from is, I hated having to get in a boot room, get suited up, grab a bag, grab a gun. What I like about the strap fest is I loaded the night before. It’s got everything I need, and I know which pockets got my headlamp in it, which pockets got a granola bar in it, where the shells are, where everything is, and then I put that one thing on, zip it up, and it’s all right there, and I don’t have to grab 10 things, and I’ve just got it on me. It carries just what you need, not anymore. So, it eliminated a lot of stuff that I was bringing with me to go hunting in the morning that I never touched, so it simplified things for me.

Ramsey Russell: I had a conversation recently, too. I’ve got several of these jackets. This is my favorite. This is the one, the dirtiest, the nasty, more worn in. That’s my baby. That’s my linus blanket. I’ve got several garments like that, but it’s almost like this emotional attachment to things like this. The point I’m getting at Radcliffe, I despise disposable. I don’t want to dispose off nothing. I want my watch, my gun, my gun bag, my leash. I want to have my stuff forever, my pocketknife. I get attached to stuff like that, and you all really don’t have a disposable product line at all.

Radcliffe Menge: No. It’s become axiomatic for marketing departments that wears in, not out, which is true. We talk a lot about the product improves over time as you wear it and as you break it in. They’re great out of the box, but they’re even better a year or two in and then many years in, like your Chatom jacket is.

Ramsey Russell: That ain’t many years, babe. That’s just a lot of wears in a short amount of time.

Radcliffe Menge: That would be many years in a normal person.

Ramsey Russell: When would I have gotten this coat? When you all come out with it

Radcliffe Menge: Last year we came out with it in-

Ramsey Russell: In 22?

Radcliffe Menge: In 2022. It was a collaboration with the costume designer from 1883, the Yellowstone prequel. Actually one of the Jack Young, Jack Dutton in that show, that’s his jacket.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Radcliffe Menge: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: He copied me, didn’t he? That’s 2 years old, it’s probably 250 wears, less than except a few times. I’ve worn some of the other colors, but I just keep coming back to this one. This is my favorite color, especially when it starts getting that worn look. That’s my favorite color out in the woods.

Radcliffe Menge: For everyone at home, that’s a Chatom jacket and tobacco.

Ramsey Russell: Tobacco, yep. That’s my favorite, but I also got the next favorite that I personally wear. I’ve got a couple of the Tensaw jackets, but I really like that green camo. I love that coat. I’m going to say I wear it especially when I’m in the cattails or forest or something like that. I love that coat. It just fits in good. It’s dark, but it’s not too dark.

Radcliffe Menge: Yeah. So we did that, the classic camo pattern predates the Chatom, and the idea there was, there’s a million great classic camo patterns, all based off the old M-43 camo patterns, just like ours is similar, a little bit different, but our riff on it was to take, essentially the color palette from Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, northern Louisiana, and use those colors versus the traditional light tan background, like the hat you’re wearing, and then just this past fall, we introduced the more traditional colorway, which has got a brown that borders on yellow as the ground color and a little bit of reddish brown in it, and then that tobacco and some darker green. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What next? Where do you go from here? How do you continue to scale in terms of your product line? Do you sit back? It’s like you started with this jacket, then you add the vest, and you add this, and you add the bag, and you add the gun case. Are you just continuing to put together a total Tom Beckbe system, a lifestyle system? I know you’ve got flasks and other things. You got a tailgate type stuff too, that I could also take to the blind or take to camp.

Radcliffe Menge: That’s right. Our 2 biggest categories are wax outerwear. We make a whole collection of field bags and travel bags. So, leather and canvas bags, we make, and then from there, we make some great layering, some wool-poly blend stuff that’s really cool, and shirts, pants, belts, the whole kit kaboodle, everything down to wallets. If you think about, a traditional outfitter, if you feel like you should find it in that shop, it’s generally in our store, everything from a leather wrapped flask to a Dopp kit to a heavy shooting jacket or a strap vest. So, we’ve got the full range, and our stores have informed that people come in and say, do you have pants? Pants is a great example. We introduced pants last fall, and it was the most common request people came in. Our joke used to be, is that Tom Beckbe stops at the waist because we weren’t making pants and we weren’t making shoes. If enough people ask you to make pants, then we got to work on. So, we make 100% made in US pair of canvas pants, a double front utility pant and then a classic 5-pocket, and really, we were talking about the design team earlier. I didn’t have the technical chops to know how to do it. I mean, pants are very difficult to do, and do correctly, so our design department, our product team, when we got a better team, we were able to do it. It’s an interesting part of growing a business, particularly apparel. One, as you get better or as you get bigger, you are able to do things better, and pants for us is a great example of that.

Ramsey Russell: Radcliffe, I appreciate you, as always. Good to see you. I guess I’ll see you in Nashville here in a few weeks. You going to duck hunt between now and then or work?

Radcliffe Menge: I’m going to work between now and then, and I think yesterday I shot a pintail with 2 sprigs. I think that’s the last trigger I’ll pull this duck season. Seems like-

Ramsey Russell: Too bad.

Radcliffe Menge: I’m going out on a high note.

Ramsey Russell: Everybody asked me and this is fail proof. So far this duck season, here we are, January 14^th recording. Until this week, it has been the duck season that winter totally forgot, and it’s been the craziest thing. Snow geese in Alberta in late December. In Montana as recently as last week in January. Snow geese should not be in Montana this time of year, but for the last decade, people at camp have been asking me, when’s that Dallas show? And they’re not asking me because they want to come see me over here to ask because historically, winter shows up. No matter what kind of winter we’ve had, there’s a big front when Dallas hits. I had said, I’m going to take next week completely off, be in the office. I got some work to do. I got some real work to do, and this front just hit. Might have to go find some open water somewhere.

Radcliffe Menge: I think it’s about to get really good for a lot of people. I know people have been really patient and waiting for winter to show up and push some ducks down.

Ramsey Russell: I’m already here. I’ve got a buddy in North Mississippi that for the last 2 days it’s been real ducksy. They’ve been working hard and chipping away, but he said the last couple days, the downside of that is for the next few days, he’s going to be iced out. But I’m hearing about ducks showing up. I heard a report yesterday. Guys asked me why the ducks weren’t working him, and he said, all of a sudden we’re seeing gazillions of ducks, but they’re high. I said, those are new ducks. They’re just showing up. They haven’t got plugged into your marsh yet. Give them a day or two, they’ll find you decoys, so I’m excited that we’re finally going to get the end on the banks. I may have to take a day off, we’re meeting on a Sunday right now. Next weekend I’m heading to Oklahoma, Kansas, which is going to be froze out. I was supposed to go this week. My buddy’s like, dude, we’re going to be iced out. Give us a week to thaw, and I’ll go try to wrap up with killing some real greenheads, and then I’m done in America, at least, but the road goes on-

Radcliffe Menge: Your season’s not ending anytime soon.

Ramsey Russell: It ain’t ending no time soon. Radcliffe, I appreciate you, as always. I love your product. Folks, you all check out Tom Beckbe. Not the person, the gear. Tell them where they can find you.

Radcliffe Menge: You can find us at tombeckbe.com. So, that’s t-o-m-b-e-c-k-b-e.com, come visit us in Birmingham or Oxford, Mississippi, or Wilson-Arkansas, if you’re around. If you want to touch and feel the product, we’ve got a list of all our retailers on our website, so check it out there and go visit some of those great folks, too.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Radcliffe. Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ll see you next time.

[End of Audio]

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