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Ranger, The Rolls-Royce of Fishing Boats, Marks 40

13 min read

When Forrest Lee Wood and his wife, Nina, founded Ranger Boats in Flippin in 1968, they were just trying to keep themselves and their fellow fishing guides in north-central Arkansas employed during the off-season.

What they built has evolved into the largest and most respected manufacturer of bass boats in the nation. It had revenue over $200 million in 2007 and is a brand that one fishing guru called the "Nike of our world" and others describe as either the Rolls-Royce or Cadillac of fishing boats – take your pick.

And with a genius for fishing, friendship, promotion and boat building, the Woods helped pioneer the sport of professional bass fishing, a sport that now awards seven-figure prizes.

Although the Woods no longer own Ranger Boats, Forrest Wood’s influence on the company and on the sport of fishing remains profound, so profound that it’s hard to separate the company from the man called the father of the modern bass boat.

"Forrest Wood is one of the most amazing men in history," said Jerry McKinnis, host of "The Fishin’ Hole," which ran on television for 44 years, 27 of those on ESPN. "That’s a pretty powerful statement. But I’m telling you, this guy is incredible."

What may be more incredible is the story of Forrest Wood, Ranger Boats and tournament fishing. It’s a story that has grown to include one of the best-known corporate raiders of the 1980s, Irwin L. Jacobs, CEO of Genmar Holdings, No. 392 on Forbes magazine’s 2007 list of the 500 largest private companies.

The story also encompasses the development of the multibillion-dollar fishing industry; the creation of FLW Outdoors (named for Wood), the largest fishing tournament entity in the world; and the creation of FLW Outdoors Fantasy Fishing, the first fantasy sports league to award a $1 million prize. As Mark St. Amant in the online magazine Salon.com put it recently: "FLW is blowing away all previous fantasy leagues by giving away more than $7 million in cash and prizes. Yes, folks, we’ve officially reached the point in sports history where people can win millions of dollars for watching other people watch out for fish."

And to think that this true-life fish tale began with the construction of six boats in the back of a gas station.

Angler’s Paradise

The area surrounding Flippin in Marion County is an angler’s paradise. This part of the Ozarks is home to Bull Shoals Lake, the Buffalo River, Lake Norfork, the White River, the North Fork River and the Spring River. It long has attracted fishermen from around the country, eager to cast for bass or trout.

Forrest Wood’s family was one of the first families to settle in Marion County. His father raised cotton and corn in this beautiful but rocky region of Arkansas, and Wood, born in 1932, performed the expected chores, fishing when he could. "Every spare minute I was fishing," Wood said in a telephone interview with Arkansas Business.

After graduating from high school, he worked for two years helping build Bull Shoals Dam, which, when it was completed in 1951, created Bull Shoals Lake. Nina Kirkland was born on a farm now occupied by the dam, Wood said. The two married in 1951. Nina, too, loved to fish.

By 1968, the Woods had been operating their fishing guide and float trip service on Bull Shoals Lake, the White River and Crooked Creek for more than a decade. Forrest Wood also worked as a contractor, building houses and commercial buildings. "Anybody who wanted something built, I’d bid on it," Wood said. In addition, the couple raised cattle and would buy property whenever they had a few extra dollars.

"We were using johnboats on the rivers," Wood said. Wood, seeking to build a durable, quality boat, something more reliable than the traditional clunky, flat-bottomed johnboat, chose fiberglass as his material. "We’d had experience putting fiberglass on the outside of plywood river boats, johnboats, so they wouldn’t leak," Wood said. "It lends itself to boat building better than anything else."

Then, with the boom in dam building and the creation of big lakes, "We decided to build a lake boat and see if we could sell it."

With input from his many fishing friends, he designed the boats himself through a process of trial and error. In 1968, the small company built six boats, which Wood named after the Army Rangers and the Texas Rangers.

In 1969, manufacturing was moved "to an unoccupied dance hall on the edge of town that had been known as the ‘Silver Star’ when Marion County was temporarily a ‘wet’ county during the construction of Bull Shoals Dam," a company history says. Ranger built 600 boats that year and 1,200 in 1970.

But on May 4, 1971, a fire "burned everything," Wood said. He had no insurance and 60 employees he was determined to keep on the payroll. They rebuilt the building, retooled the molding and "were back in business in 40 days and 40 nights," he said.

Wood’s boat-building timing was good. In June 1967, fellow fishing enthusiast Ray Scott of Montgomery, Ala., held the All-American Invitational Bass Tournament at Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas, inaugurating competitive bass fishing. Scott incorporated the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, or BASS, in 1968.

The first Bassmaster Classic was held in 1971 on Lake Mead, Nev., with the winner taking home $10,000.

Wood met Scott at a BASS tournament, the two had an interest in promoting competitive fishing, and a long association began. In 1972, Ranger was named "the official Bassmaster Classic boat," holding that distinction through 2000.

‘Value of Promotion’

The decision by Wood to participate in and, eventually, sponsor fishing tournaments to help promote his boats was "absolutely intentional," he said.

"For many years I followed the tournament circuit as much as I could while we were building Ranger boats," Wood said. "I qualified for two Bassmaster Classics."

"Nina and I learned the value of promotion in the float trip business," he said. "When we were in the float trip business, every newspaper or magazine guy we knew, we took them fishing."

And when they started Ranger Boats, they targeted those same people. "Fishing tournaments were viewed by us as expanding the boat business."

"I fished tournaments No. 1 to promote the boats, but I still had a little competitive blood in me," Wood said.

Wherever he went, he’d showcase his boat and ask anglers for their input into what would make a good fishing boat. Soon, he was getting orders.

There also were "fringe benefits" to the couple’s desire to build their business, Wood said. More people becoming interested in fishing meant more people interested in protecting the environment, for example.

"Our efforts to promote competitive professional fishing have been very beneficial" for the sport, for fisheries, for the company and for the environment, he said.

"I’d like to say that certain people get the credit for starting BASS when in fact Forrest probably had as much to do with starting it as anybody else did," McKinnis said. "He and Nina don’t get that much credit, but they were very, very influential in getting professional bass fishing started.

"And obviously when they were doing it, it was supposedly going to be a big part of their business. As it turns out their instincts were 100 percent right on. They were the foundation of the beginning of professional bass fishing."

George Cochran of Hot Springs, a professional bass angler who in 2005 won $500,000 in the 2005 FLW Tour Championship, said of Forrest and Nina Wood:

"They have been my sponsors for 27 years. They gave me my first break in life to do what I love to do."

When Cochran first started fishing back in the 1970s, he said, one didn’t hear much about professional anglers. Cochran had done well in local tournaments, and by the early 1980s, the Woods had their eye on him.

"Forrest and Nina came up to me, and they said, ‘George if you’re thinking about fishing professionally next year again, we’d like to talk to you.’ … They gave me my first break. And the next year I was in a Ranger boat."

"Ranger was really the one who started me, to help me fulfill my dream of fishing for a living," Cochran said. "It’s a family up there."

The Boats

Ranger, which is the d/b/a for Wood Manufacturing Co. Inc., builds four classes of boats: bass, multi-species, saltwater and what the company calls "Fish-n-Play," family boats that can be used both to fish and for simple recreation.

The company built 5,400 boats in 2007, according to Ranger President Randy Hopper. Hopper declined to release Ranger’s revenue figures but, noting that the average wholesale sale price of a Ranger boat was $40,000, said, "You can do the math." Doing the math puts Ranger’s 2007 revenue at $216 million.

The retail price of a Ranger boat ranges from $15,000 to $60,000, and the company has about 200 dealers in the United States and Canada. It also has dealers in Australia, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Romania, South Africa, Spain, the Ukraine and Venezuela.

"The average top-of-the-line bass boat now is right at the $50,000 range," said Hopper, a Flippin native who has been working at Ranger for more than 38 years, since he was 15. He is married to one of Wood’s four daughters, Brenda.

"We serve a lot of markets, from 16-foot skiffs to the 22-foot mack daddy bass boat."

Hopper, who has been president since 1989, attributed Ranger’s success and cachet to "innovation, safety, performance, resale value – all of those things we work very hard to insure that a customer is getting more than their money’s worth. Over time it’s been proven that quality never goes out of style."

Ranger started making its own boat trailers in 1978, because, Hopper said, the company couldn’t find a trailer that matched the quality of its boats. Ranger is vertically integrated in the extreme, building most of the boats’ components, from upholstery to wiring harnesses. "We wanted control over the process," Hopper said.

"We build a very highly customized product," he said. "When a boat goes into production, that system is in place that each department will be building to that work order." For dealers to show the boats, however, Ranger does make a number of standard products based on the popularity of certain features.

Ranger currently employs 835 people, making it the largest employer in Marion County, and, Hopper said, Ranger is committed to staying in Flippin, population 1,357.

The advantages are clear, he said. "We call it Ozark craftsmanship. We have people that love what they do. And we have an advantage because these boats are a beautiful piece of work, so we’re not building widgets – nothing against widget builders – but there is a certain pride [associated with the product], especially a nationally recognized product. I think the pride is maximized in a small town. It’s part of the community."

It’s also only five miles from Ranger’s test facilities at Bull Shoals Lake.

Ranger is undergoing a three-phase $8 million expansion, partly to accommodate the longer boats it’s building. As part of that expansion, the company added 100 acres to its campus; it now occupies 150 acres.

The plant lies about a mile north of downtown Flippin along state Highway 178. On a morning earlier this month, several head of cattle and their calves dotted the bucolic pasture across the highway from the plant, land owned by one of Wood’s daughters.

Seeking to define what makes a Ranger boat special, Cochran said, "It would be like putting a Rolls-Royce or Cadillac and putting a Chevrolet Impala next to it. … Everything is superior on a Ranger boat compared to any other boat."

"There’s nothing that compares to them," McKinnis said. "In my world, Ranger is probably a bigger logo than Nike."

Changes

In 1987, the Woods sold Wood Manufacturing to the Thompson Co. of Dallas for an undisclosed sum but one described as being a multimillion-dollar amount. Of that sale, Forrest Wood said that while it was hard, "It seemed like it was the best thing to do for the most people at the time." In 1991, Genmar Holdings acquired Wood Manufacturing.

Irwin L. Jacobs heads Genmar, a privately held company based in Minneapolis and, with 13 brands, one of the biggest makers of recreational boats in the world. The company Web site reports 2007 model-year sales of about $1 billion.

Jacobs is as famous in his way as Forrest Wood is. A 2004 New York Times article described him as a 1980s "corporate raider whom many chief executives feared as much as they did T. Boone Pickens and Carl C. Icahn" and whose nickname was "Irv the Liquidator."

He long ago gave up his liquidating lifestyle, succumbing to the lure of the world of boat manufacturing and professional fishing. Jacobs is also chairman of FLW Outdoors and the creator of FLW Fantasy Fishing. (Jacobs did not respond to a request by Arkansas Business for an interview.)

McKinnis, who has known Wood since the 1950s and also knows Jacobs, said that of all Jacobs’ boat-making properties, "I don’t think there’s any one of them that has grabbed his heart like Ranger."

"And Irwin is so different than Forrest Wood. Lord a mercy! And so different from the people down there," said McKinnis, a member of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. "But he has done one hell of a job of becoming a part of that whole family and that whole success and has extended it and has taken what Forrest has done and what Randy does and has added to it and has supported them."

"He could have failed at that boat company," McKinnis said of Jacobs. "But he didn’t. He enhanced it. … He embraced Forrest and the image of Forrest and leans on Randy. He’s pushed the right buttons, and he had every opportunity to push the wrong buttons."

Wood remains actively involved in Wood Manufacturing, promoting the product at dealers’ meetings and tournaments. At the time of his telephone interview with Arkansas Business, Wood was attending a meeting of saltwater-boat dealers in the Florida Keys.

Tournament Twists, Turns

Jacobs, like Wood, is known as a competitor. Also like Wood, he has used fishing tournaments to promote his boats.

After the creation of BASS and the Bassmaster Classic, a number of tournament organizations were founded. One that had staying power was Operation Bass, founded in 1979 by Mike Whitaker of Gilbertsville, Ky. Whitaker sought to provide single-day, regional tournaments for the nonprofessional angler.

Jacobs bought Operation Bass in 1996, five years after buying Ranger Boats. He worked to position it as the leader in competitive fishing tournaments, introducing the Wal-Mart FLW Tour. On Dec. 19, 2001, Operation Bass was renamed FLW Outdoors.

"FLW Outdoors is more than a name. It embodies a wholesome way of life that we support," Jacobs said in a news release at the time. "We are 100 percent committed to competitive fishing, which has been the cornerstone of our organization, but as FLW Outdoors our audience expands beyond the 55 million Americans who fish to more than 77 million Americans who enjoy a variety of outdoor activities."

Eight months earlier, in April 2001, ESPN had bought BASS, with its trademark Bassmaster Classic.

The two high-dollar, high-profile professional fishing tours now co-exist, more or less peacefully. But Forrest and Nina Wood and Ranger Boats are so highly respected as to remain above the occasional dust-up between the two circuits.

Cochran compared the circuits to the NFL and the old AFL and said, "Ranger supports both sides."

However, he said: "I chose to go with FLW because I think it’s the best circuit and they pay more money. And one of my favorite sponsors is a big part of it: Ranger."

McKinnis said: "Forrest and Nina were so good to people. They had such good instincts, and they’d pick out an angler that they thought was going to turn into both a prominent professional angler and be a great spokesperson too."

"Forrest used to sponsor things, charity things … and the rule that Forrest had was, ‘Yeah, I’ll help you out with this, but you can’t tell anybody I helped.’ That’s the kind of guy he is."

"Because of the nature of things, I get involved with other boat companies just in what I do," said McKinnis, who is based in Little Rock and still produces the Bassmaster TV series and other fishing programs for ESPN. "And the [circuit] that I’m involved with has a different boat sponsor. So I’m involved with them and I like the owner and have a good relationship with them and so on …[but] I touch and feel and see the other boats, and then I go back and get in my Ranger."

The Reputation

Although Forrest and Nina Wood sold Ranger 21 years ago, the foundations they laid for the company remain sound.

"Of course, I had no idea that we’d get where we are today because our society is so much different," Wood said. "I had confidence that we could survive and build a quality product."

Wood has received many honors, including induction into the Professional Bass Fishing Hall of Fame, National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, International Boating Hall of Fame, National Marine Manufacturers Hall of Fame, Legends of the Outdoors Hall of Fame, Arkansas Game and Fish Hall of Fame, Arkansas Walk of Fame and the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame.

One of his greatest thrills, however, came last year, when New York City’s Times Square marquee lit up with the news that Scott Suggs of Bryant had won the Forrest Wood Cup on Lake Ouachita and the first $1 million prize in the history of professional bass fishing.

"Quality work pays off, I believe, in any business you’re in," Wood said. "I think that’s one of the secrets of our success: We build boats people are really proud of."

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