SWFA and Super Sniper
A mail-order optics dealer with a failing storefront became one of the largest ecommerce operations in its category, with a house brand built along the way.
Online sales grew from six figures a year to eight figures
SWFA: Growth, Advertising & Brand
Seven Years of Compound Growth for One of the World's Largest Sports Optics Dealers
When I met SWFA, they were running all-text ads in the backs of magazines, taking orders by phone and mail, and selling at gun shows. Their online store was doing six figures a year in an era when e-commerce was just coming of age.
- Role
- Brand strategy, advertising, growth architecture.
- Agency of Record
- Enter360 Media (7-year engagement)
- Online sales grew 40x within 18 months of the new platform, from six figures a year to eight figures - and still growing
- SWFA expanded into brick and mortar during the engagement
- Positioned SWFA as "The World's Largest Dealer for Sports Optics"
- Print, mail, catalog, web, and forum built into one self-feeding system
- Managed $200K+ media campaigns and manufacturer co-op programs
- Wrote editorial and product copy for the gear issues of leading outdoor magazines, alongside the paid placements
SWFA E-Commerce & Retail Technology
The Store, the Community, and the Automations That Outsold Everyone
So I proposed we stop renting the bottleneck and build the engine. My team reverse-engineered the back-office database and built an enterprise front end in ASP.NET and MS SQL that synced with it seamlessly - an 18-month build.
- Role
- Systems architect, product lead, growth engineering.
- URL rewriting for SEO before it existed as a packaged tool
- Built an enterprise ASP.NET / MS SQL platform (18-month build) to replace a legacy front end that failed at about 30 concurrent shoppers
- OpticsTalk: the owned community that became the most visited optics forum online - a content and SEO flywheel before either term was common
- Samplelist: a second storefront for used, demo, and trade-in optics, with a built-in appraisal system and two-way new/used cross-promotion
- Photo contest UGC engine: $10K in prizes the first year, $20K at peak, all manufacturer-funded
SWFA Catalogs & Direct Marketing
Print That Paid for Itself
I convinced SWFA they needed something they had never had: a real catalog. Not a price list - a brand piece that could sit in a customer's shop for a year and keep selling the whole time.
- Role
- Publisher, creative director, print production manager.
- Scope
- Catalog strategy, design and layout, manufacturer ad sales, print production, distribution logistics, direct mail
- Up to 4 catalogs per year, ~300 pages each, 100K-110K copies per run
- Manufacturer ad placements funded production - the catalog paid for itself before it hit a mailbox
- Cut print costs 30% via Quebecor Vancouver and passed the full savings to the client
- Zone-skipped cross-border distribution; a catalog in every order box
- Overnight on-press approvals, signature by signature
- Every photo contest entry came with a written testimonial, so the catalog pages carry real customer photos and their testimonials, without photo shoots
Super Sniper Riflescopes & DTC Products
The Castoff That Became the Company
Super Sniper started as a Tasco product - a tactical scope with a real U.S. government contract pedigree (the Navy contract number ran right in the ads) that Tasco was walking away from. The brand was mine to build. I was part of prototyping SWFA's own optics, and I led the launches of Super Sniper and a second line, XOTIC. The product photography was shot with police SWAT and sniper teams, including the Red Oak Police Department outside Dallas.
- Role
- Brand creator, strategist, advertising and DTC lead.
- Scope
- Brand identity, slogan, logo, packaging, factory engravings, advertising, PR, collabs, DTC strategy
- Turned a discontinued Tasco line into SWFA's own flagship brand
- Created the brand: name treatment, "Nothing Comes Close" slogan, logo, packaging, engravings
- Price-disruptor DTC positioning: mil-spec capability at $299, exclusively at SWFA
- Credibility engine: military and police sniper testimonials, government contract heritage in every ad
- Built a cult following over 7+ years - SWFA later narrowed to DTC optics under the SS brand, still selling today
- Built XOTIC and the U.S.S., The Ultimate Sniper Scope, SWFA's premium line: the logos, the copy, the "Mission Accomplished" campaign and the mystique around it (the name was the client's)
- Tested factory prototypes, then sold the U.S.S. direct to consumers on pre-order, years before pre-sales were common; much of the first container sold before it landed
- When the first production units arrived out of calibration, I ran the crisis response: refunds, customer communication, and protecting SWFA's reputation
The catalogs, page by page
Three of them, as printed"[They] managed to get a quote for printing 100k catalogs that was 3x less than my closest quote here in Dallas. [They] could have kept it as profit but deducted it from our invoice. This set the tone for a partnership that lasted nearly a decade."
Chris Farris, SWFA, Riflescopes.com, Super Sniper Optics
This is a past engagement, shown with permission as part of my record. Results describe that period. No current representation or endorsement is implied.