Decoy Maker Finds Success Faking It
Jim Cripe moved to Spokane in 1980 primarily because there was plenty of land to develop and a bounty of geese to hunt.
But all those hours in the goose pits eventually led the 55-year-old real estate developer to a new career - and even better hunting.
“The main thing on my mind was how I could make a better decoy,” he said last week. “The goal in goose design has always been to make the product more lifelike.”
A few cold mornings in an inactive goose blind can be discouraging to some hunters. To Cripe, the occasional lulls were a great motivation to develop a unique silhouette-type decoy.
The product of Cripe’s patented process isn’t just a silhouette. It’s a detailed photograph on a board.
“I knew it was good when I first started testing it,” he said. “But once in the marketplace, hunters told us it works better than any other type, including full-bodied decoys,” said Cripe, owner of Outlaw Industries.
“From the horizon to the last 20 yards, my decoys are much more effective than full-bodied decoys. I have endorsements from the top waterfowl hunters in the world to prove it. The geese are so convinced these are live birds, they don’t come in skeptical. They’re pre-sold.
Growth figures help tell the Outlaw decoy success story.
“We started very small in 1991 and grew 210 percent in ‘92 and 265 percent in ‘93,” he said.
Then disaster struck. Outlaw was one of six businesses destroyed by an arson-caused fire in April 1994.
“Even though we were shut down for seven months that year, we still sold more decoys than we did the previous year,” he said.
Perfecting the manufacturing of the decoy took three years, he said.
“The stakes are injection molded at Liberty Lake. The artwork is processed in Spokane. But no printing presses in Washington or Idaho are big enough to do what we do. The patented printing process is done in the Midwest.”
Cripe said the company won’t completely recover from the 1994 fire for at least another year. But there’s no smoke in Cripe’s vision.
The Outlaw catalog debuted in 1992 with 12 pages. This year’s catalog has grown to 64 pages full of decoys, calls, boats and useful information for waterfowl and turkey hunters.
The company offers three different Spokane-made boats designed and camouflaged for waterfowl hunting.
The recently introduced wild turkey deeks have been a marketing hit, he said.
“A turkey hunter buys only one to five decoys where a goose hunter buys one to five dozen,” he said. “But there probably are 10 times more turkey hunters than goose hunters.”
Cripe said he’s convinced the deeks are the most effective of any on the market.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo