Expensive Duck Calls

Sam Rattner shares a story about discovering an unexpected niche market while visiting Bass Pro Shop in Memphis.

"I was in Memphis with my best man Jonah, and he wanted to take me to the Bass Pro Shop, which is like the holy grail there. We're walking around for hours, dying laughing at every single aisle - they have every product you could imagine for hunting, fishing, and home tools.

Right when we think we've seen every product anyone's ever made, we come around the corner to the back of the store. There's this big sign that says 'Duck Calls' with a glass door. We open it and there's what felt like 100,000 duck calls. They've got metal duck calls, polyester duck calls, stone duck calls, duck calls with two heads, different colors - this whole economy of duck calls we didn't even know existed.

What I realized is the value is in things that no one knows about, these niche ecosystems of communities. The people who love duck calls, trust me, they love duck calls. They'll pay $1,000 for a duck call. They don't go hunting without them. You go on some random brand site in the duck call business, and a merchant you've never heard of has 800,000 followers and does $5 million a year. That cements to me that all the value is in the duck calls - in the things that people don't know about or are too complicated to find or are regional or niche."