The sportsman who turned the failing Orvis company around in 1965 chronicles three decades of transforming his passion for hunting and fishing into a financial gold mine. 75,000 first printing. Tour. In A Sportsman's Life , Leigh Perkins tells a vivid and passionate story about how he turned Orvis into one of the country's most noted fly-fishing and sporting companies. A pioneer in the mail-order business, Perkins boosted sales of the Manchester, Vermont, company from $500,000 annually to nearly $200 million. Perkins believes he succeeded by building a superior product and selling "a lifestyle" in his catalogs--an appreciation of fishing, bird hunting, and country living. "We found not just a niche but an identity," he writes. "It was an exciting place to work." Perkins said he was never afraid of trying something new. Long before the concept became standard, for example, he traded mailing lists with competitors. He also grew Orvis by launching fishing and hunting schools, expanding into women's clothing, involving customers through an Orvis newsletter, offering odd items like bean bags for dogs, and turning out high-quality fly rods and reels. Perkins, who recently retired, lived the life he sold. Orvis united his love of sales with his love of the outdoors. The book is packed with gripping adventure tales about fly fishing for bonefish off the Florida Keys, hiking the backcountry of New Zealand, Argentina, and Mexico, encountering bear in Alaska and tiger in India, and once almost getting poisoned to death in Africa. He even includes chapters on his favorite bird-hunting dogs and his efforts to protect open space. Written with Geoffrey Norman, the book should appeal to both business and outdoors types. --Dan Ring Perkins gives the reader an enjoyable as well as insightful account of his years as CEO of C.F. Orvis Co., the pioneering Manchester, VT-based mail-order fishing- and hunting-gear company that has existed since 1856. From 1965 to 1992, he used good business acumen, learned while working in sales management, to turn an ailing company that he had bought for only $400,000 into a successful one that grossed over $200 million in sales at the time of his retirement. With seasoned writer Norman, a contributing editor at Forbes FYI, Perkins tells how he did it, beginning with the lifelong love for fishing and bird hunting his mother instilled in him as a child. Delightful prose detailing many outdoor scenarios, along with accounts of successful business decisions, give hunters, fishermen (and women), managers, and even CEOs an adventure and business history difficult to put down. -ASteven J. Mayover, Free Lib. of Philadelphia Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Orvis is a nearly 150-year-old Vermont-based sporting goods and mail-order company with sales approaching $200 million. Although overshadowed by such rivals as Eddie Bauer and L. L. Bean, Orvis is known for selling a "way of life" and connection to its customers. Certainly anyone who has ever fly-fished in New England is familiar with the name. Perkins bought a foundering Orvis in 1965. His innovations in catalog marketing and his use of technology turned the company around. He ran the company until 1992, when he turned it over to his eldest son. In this memoir, he celebrates the outdoors and offers down-to-earth, usable advice on business and management. Perkins inherited his love of hunting and fishing from his mother, who was his "principal sporting companion for the first 18 years of [his] life." The family was financially well-off, but Perkins discovered a flair for selling and found himself in the enviable position of being able to combine successfully the two things he loved most: sport and business. David Rouse Perkins, former CEO of Orvis, has never had a bad day fly fishing or bird hunting, nor many selling the sports and their accouterments to the public, as reported in this memoir written with sporting journalist and Forbes FYI contributor Norman. Perkins was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but his father encouraged him to go into business: ``He knew only a few men who did not work and were happy and that they were inevitably men of very high intelligenceHe added that he didn't think I qualified.'' Perkins keeps this self-effacing tone brewing throughout the book, giving credit to his co-workers and his customers and his own native wits to turn Orvis into the grand sporting emporium it became under his near 30-year stewardship. Equal emphasis is placed on Perkins's business philosophy and his days afield. In a twangy voice, he'll drop his nuggets of business wisdom, most of which possess a Dale Carnegie common sense: love your work, be serious, innovate and stay ahead of the curve, listen to the customer, don't be governed by a cash push but rather by the pull of an idea. These points, and the various tactical moves he made situating Orvis to capitalize on the fly-fishing boom of the 1980s, are invariably nestl