Topps Western Wear
The Morning Tide
Thursday November 13, 1969
A small shop which grew and grew and today is a million-dollar business. Located on East Texas St. in Bossier City.
Doyline Resident Combines Farm-City Life With Business
When Bubba Reeves decided to begin carrying Western merchandise at Topps Milling Co. in 1972, he faced two stiff obstacles: bankers who wouldn’t lend him money and suppliers who wouldn’t give him credit. Their objections were understandable. Topps Milling Co. was a modest little farm store, and M. A. Reeves Jr., having taken over the Bossier City, La., location just a year before, was still the new kid on the block.
Now, looking back over seven years in the tack and tog business, Bubba Reeves believes those reluctant bankers and suppliers actually did him a favor. “It held me back at first,” he says, “but it made me a better businessman.”
So much of a better businessman, in fact, that he has been able to take his original $1,000 investment and turn it into annual sales of over $1 million for Topps Western World, as he now calls his retail enterprise. He did it by taking everything those early bankers and suppliers would give him, turning it into saleable inventory, and avoiding the temptation of extracting “profits” he would later need to pay bills and re-invest in more inventory.
The money he was able to get from creditors came on his own credit record. “Banks don’t like to lend money on inventory,” Reeves points out. So he had to sell himself, rather than his business, to get the money he needed to keep his fledgling operation going. Such credit came in the form of short-term notes.
Reeves also spent a lot of time turning what resources he had into opportunity.
Doyline Boy Makes Good
Bubba Reeves, just a country boy from Doyline, La., proves that hard work and grit pay off. He is pictured here with the winners of his Little Miss Topps and Miss Topps Contest.
At the time he took over the farm and ranch in Doyline, he named his company for his son, now 14 years old, whom Reeves’ father had nicknamed “Topp.”
One year later, he entered the Western business when he bought one saddle from Lookout Saddle Co. in Chattanooga, Tenn. He sold that saddle and replaced it with two more. He sold those and bought four more — and so on — until he had built up a saddle inventory.
Getting into the boot and clothing business was another matter. He put part of his seed money into 27 pairs of Olsen-Stelzer boots which he bought at the Tri-State Western Market in Monroe, La. Tony Lama Co., marketer of the Mexican-made boots, agreed to ship the Rios brand but would not ship Tony Lama-label boots to Reeves. The other major boot and clothing lines were equally cautious, so Reeves kept building his store with lesser-known brands.
Shortly after the Monroe market, Reeves got two breaks that put Topps on its feet. First, Cowtown Boot Co. agreed to extend his store a $2,000 credit line, giving Topps its first recognizable name-brand boot. Then in early ’73 Reeves heard of a hardware store in Beaumont, Texas that was trying to sell out its $20,000 Western inventory. He bought from the man in Beaumont. He figured that if he could get his sales up to $250 a day, he would be “riding high.”
Then came an accident that changed the store’s direction. “It was a real Duke’s mixture,” Reeves says of the haul. “We had Lee jeans, Panhandle Slim shirts, and a confusing array of short-collar shirts.”
In 1973 his feed mill in Doyline burned to the ground. Suddenly the main supplier for the farm store was gone, and Reeves had to decide whether or not to continue the farm store or go more heavily into the tack and tog business. With the Western market looking promising, Reeves decided to go full speed on the Western store.
His original store occupied the front part of his feed warehouse. After the mill burned, Reeves resisted the temptation of inflating the payroll, the same way he withstood the temptation of exact profits prematurely. “The name of the game in this business,” Reeves says, “is to be honest with suppliers and customers.”
By 1975 all major suppliers were convinced that Topps Western World was a legitimate Western store, and Reeves could then take his pick of the lines he wanted to stock. Since then Topps has enjoyed a relatively smooth pattern of growth, and Reeves has been spending his time looking for new places to put the money the store is bringing in.
Bubba Reeves’ idea of “complete” includes maintaining a respectable inventory of horse stock and equipment trailers, which he has done for the last five years. Currently 20 percent of his inventory and sales consist of horse trailers, in which he maintains about a $60,000 investment.
Reeves has words of advice for anyone contemplating taking up a trailer dealership: “I think trailers are an important part of an established store,” he says, “But you shouldn’t stock fewer than five trailers of assorted kinds. In other words, don’t stock one trailer and think you’re going to sell it.”
Reeves says people like to see a selection of trailers when they go shopping, so having one trailer is worse than having none at all. He’s seen some changes in the kind of trailers people want also. “Years ago you could sell plain-jane trailers,” he says, “but not anymore. Now it’s all deluxe models with escape doors, windows, fancy trim. The trimmings have a way of increasing the cost and make starting a trailer dealership something you have to be serious about. The investment is simply too high.”
Expansion and Promotion
He began an incremental encroachment into the warehouse by moving his back wall out 20 feet every six months until it was filled. In 1974 he changed the name of his store to Topps Western World to reflect its new emphasis. He continued to stock bagged feed in a rented warehouse as a draw for the Western store but chose not to go back into the milling business. He also quit delivering feed.
In 1974 he hired his third employee — an experienced Western salesperson who had spent 11 years with another store before joining Topps. He resisted inflating the payroll just as he had resisted taking profits too soon. “The name of the game in those days was ‘keep costs down,’” he says. When he hired, he hired experience. Those experienced people did his store a tremendous amount of good while it was earning credibility with suppliers and customers.
His current manager, Juanita Coleman, had been with another store for 17 years before moving to Topps two years ago.
Reeves keeps a chart on the back of his office door showing the company’s growth record since he took over the feed store in 1971. He’s gone from $173,000 that first year — most of which came from feed — to $1.2 million in fiscal 1978-79 from all Western operations.
One big factor in the ever-growing sales columns, Reeves believes, is his willingness to put money into promotion. Reeves says he built his business on GCS: Good Country Service. “The most important element in maintaining GCS,” he says, “is to have a trained, competent sales force. I don’t want order-takers on the floor.”
Reeves’ advertising budget is $2,500 per month. He puts $800 a month into one local radio station that reaches a 100-mile radius around Bossier City, running 30- and 60-second spots six days a week year-round. He puts another $200 a month into a second station to bolster special promotions and has also started using television advertising to promote his two annual sales and Christmas events.
All this advertising takes a back seat to the idea he hit upon in 1974 when he started the Miss Topps Pageant, a miniature Miss Rodeo pageant that has spread the name of Topps Western World all over Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. Each year he uses the pageant to pick a girl to represent the store in advertising and horse events for the next twelve months.
Reeves’ involvement with rodeos and shows and his production of the Miss Topps Pageant have put him in the center of Louisiana’s rodeo activity. Four years ago he was elected to the board of the International Rodeo Management (IRM). He also works closely with the Miss Rodeo America Pageant, helping to promote that event and rodeo in general.
To add a special touch to his quality image, Reeves designs his own private-label boots. He started the practice in 1974, and it remains a solid part of his boot business. Although most of his boot sales are in major brands, he finds his private-label boots fill a specific need in his market that stock boots can’t satisfy.
When Reeves took over the feed and farm store that became Topps Western World, he had an 800-sq.-ft. store with a 3,200-sq.-ft. warehouse. Now his total square footage is nearly 10,000. His beginning inventory was around $5,000 at cost; his fiscal 1978-79 average inventory was $350,000, and sales topped $1 million. “
The bulk of our business increase has come from non-Western people,” Reeves observes. “Right now, 60 percent of our business is from horse people, and 40 percent from non-horse people. The non-horse growth is in the attraction of Western clothing.”
“I’ve seen people go from buying boots to hats to jeans to owning a horse,” he says.
The trailer business seemed to be working well, so in September of 1977 Reeves started Topps Trailer Manufacturing Corporation in a leased shop next door to his store. He makes equipment and cattle trailers in the 12,000-sq.-ft. shop. He makes the big ones for construction companies that have bulldozers to lug around. So far he hasn’t gotten into the horse tr...So far, he hasn’t gotten into the horse trailer manufacturing business.
Reeves tries to make trailers for stock, but finds he has trouble staying ahead of orders. He keeps another $90,000 invested in the trailers he makes in his plant. He distributes these trailers, along with the horse trailers he carries, through the store.
Reeves keeps a chart on the back of his office door showing the company’s growth record since he took over the feed store in 1971. He’s gone from $173,000 that first year—most of which came from feed—to $1.2 million in fiscal 1978–79 from all Western operations.
One big factor in the ever-growing sales columns, Reeves believes, is his willingness to put money into promotion. Reeves says he built his business on GCS: Good Country Service. “The most important element in maintaining GCS,” he says, “is to have a trained, competent sales force. I don’t want order-takers on the floor.”
Reeves’ advertising budget is $2,500 per month. He puts $800 a month into one local radio station that reaches a 100-mile radius around Bossier City. He runs 30- and 60-second spots on that station six days a week, year-round. He puts another $200 a month into a second radio station which he uses to bolster special promotions.
He’s also started using some television advertising to promote his two annual sales, as well as his Christmas promotions. All this advertising takes a backseat to the idea he hit upon back in 1974. That’s when he started the Miss Topps Pageant, a miniature Miss Rodeo pageant that has spread the name of Topps Western World all over Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas.
Each year, Reeves uses the pageant to pick a girl to represent the store in advertising and horse events for the next twelve months. Reeves’ involvement with rodeos and shows, and his production of the Miss Topps Pageant, have put him in the center of Louisiana’s rodeo activity.
Four years ago, he was elected to the board of the International Rodeo Management (IRM). He also has been working closely with the Miss Rodeo America Pageant, helping to promote that event and rodeo in general.
To add a special touch to his quality image, Reeves designs his own private-label boots. He started the practice in 1974, and it remains a solid part of his boot business. Although most of his boot sales are in major brands, he finds his private-label boots fill a specific need in his market that stock boots can’t satisfy.
When Reeves took over the feed and farm store that has become Topps Western World, he had an 800-square-foot store with a 3,200-square-foot warehouse. Now his total square footage is nearly 10,000. His beginning inventory was around $5,000 at cost. His fiscal 1978–79 average inventory was $350,000, topping $1 million in sales.
“The bulk of our business increase has come from non-Western people,” Reeves observes. “Right now, 60 percent of our business is from horse people, and 40 percent from non-horse people. The non-horse growth is in the attraction of Western clothing.”
“I’ve seen people go from buying boots, to hats, to jeans, to owning a horse,” Reeves says. “I’ve seen a number of my non-horse customers end up buying horses after their daughters or granddaughters got interested in Western wear.”
Reeves says he built his business on GCS — Good Country Service. “The most important element in maintaining GCS is to have a trained, competent sales force. I don’t want order-takers on the floor,” Reeves says. “I want people who understand what they sell.”
Reeves seldom buys closeouts either. He doesn’t want to offer last year’s merchandise to this year’s customers. “There’s a market for the discount-type store that wants to handle closeouts and seconds,” Reeves says, “but you shouldn’t mix the two.”
To add a special touch to his quality image, Reeves designs his own private-label boots. He started the practice in 1974, and it remains a solid part of his boot business.
Reeves has noted an interesting phenomenon among his clientele. “I’ve seen people go from buying boots to hats to jeans to owning a horse,” Reeves says.
The trailer business seemed to be working well, so in September of 1977, Reeves started Topps Trailer Manufacturing Corporation in a leased shop next door to his store. He makes equipment and cattle trailers in the 12,000-square-foot shop. He makes the big ones for construction companies that have bulldozers to lug around.
So far, he hasn’t gotten into the horse trailer manufacturing business. Reeves tries to make trailers for stock but finds he has trouble staying ahead of orders. He keeps another $90,000 invested in the trailers he makes in his plant. He distributes these trailers, along with the horse trailers he carries, through the store.