Bill Parks Former Prof Smoothes Out Rapids Of River Equipment Business

In the mid-1960s, Bill Parks was a young Ph.D. working as a business tutor at his alma mater, Michigan State University.

During the day, business people from across the nation would come to the school for lectures by the university’s professors. In the evening, it was Parks’ responsibility to clarify in layman’s terms what the academics had meant.

“After I’d explained it to them, they often told me, ‘That might work in the classroom, but it will never make payroll,”’ Parks said. “That always bugged me as a teacher.”

Parks became a professor of business, first at the University of Oregon, then at the University of Idaho. But what those businessmen had told him remained a sharp stone in his shoe - so uncomfortable that he started his own business in 1972, Northwest River Supplies Inc., in part, to prove them wrong.

Today, the Moscow, Idaho-based river sports supplier provides kayaks, rafts, and other river-running equipment to hundreds of catalog customers, stores, and guide services - from Riggins, Idaho, to Sao Paolo, Brazil. The company topped $1 million in gross sales in 1982 and has grown by an average of 15 percent every year.

The result: NRS is now the world’s largest distributor of inflatable rafts, kayaks and paddlesport gear.

Not bad for a man once chastised for trying to bring ivory-tower concepts to the business world.

Timing, Parks said, has been integral in his success. Some 25 years ago, his company was among the first with mail-order catalogs, just as river sports were catching on.

“Ultimately, I got so enthralled with river rafting, I knew other people would be enthralled too, because it was so fun,” he said. “But I realized people were going to have the same problem I was having - getting ahold of the equipment.”

So what began as a $2,000 capital outlay - and once included a couple of mortgages on his home in the 1980s, Parks admits - has now blossomed into a business with an 80-page catalogue. NRS added a Mexican subsidiary in 1991 in a move that enabled the company to produce its own inflatable rafts, and two years ago expanded its Moscow warehouse and light manufacturing facility to over 30,000 square feet.

Northwest Voyageurs, a river guide service located near Riggins, Idaho, has been using NRS boats for most of this decade. Larson Anderson, a river guide and office manager, said his guides use the boats because they handle well.

“Especially in big water, because you’ve got to pivot the boat very quickly,” Anderson said.

He said there are other advantages to having the distributor just a day’s drive away. Broken equipment is replaced quickly - often overnight on rush orders. As well, NRS is responsive to customer’s needs, regardless of order size, Anderson said.

Parks’ company also has been responsible for little innovations in the industry that have helped outfitters like Northwest Voyageurs. For instance, 10 years ago, NRS began making wetsuits color coded according to size, not a tiny hidden tag.

“Now, it’s easier to fit people and find the sizes they need,” said Anderson, whose company serves thousands of rafters a year. “It saves time, especially when you have as many people as we do.”

NRS employs some 20 full-time people in Moscow, with that number jumping to 50 when seasonal workers arrive in the spring. About 25 workers are employed in the Mexican factory, located in Tecate.

Currently immersed in the boating industry’s “high season” Parks takes time to stroll around the NRS complex and describe the operation. Although the company does about 65 percent of its business between March and July, Parks said things have become much less hectic since he retired from the University of Idaho faculty in 1994.

“You have no idea how much simpler life is when you are working one job instead of two,” he said.

The front of NRS is a small showroom, packed with rafts, kayaks, river sandals and life vests. Parks said it’s exactly that - a showroom. Very little of the company’s sales result from walk-in customers. In all, 28 percent of 1996 sales came from retail catalogue sales, with a larger portion of business - 34 and 36 percent, respectively - coming from shipments to wholesalers and the individual river outfitters offering guided trips all over the planet.

Even with the catalogue sales, Parks doesn’t think of himself as competition to dealers who carry NRS equipment - which includes a variety of its own brand-name items as well as gear from other companies, like Protec Helmets and a number of name-brand paddles.

Dana Bottcher, who owns Northwest Outdoor Center in Seattle, said NRS is good about referring customers to the brand’s local dealers. Even though some late-season discounting at the catalogue level might hurt dealers like Bottcher, it doesn’t take a substantial bite out of his overall sales.

Plus, many customers might use the catalogue to create their “wish lists,” then come to Northwest Outdoor Center - or Mountain Gear in Spokane, another NRS preferred dealer - where they can get a level of customer service unavailable in mail-order transactions.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo