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Bruce Hutcheon: Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. Today we’re very fortunate to have Bruce Kowalski, Vice President of Elusion Camos and owner and partner in the Descendants Outdoors. Bruce is a veteran. He served in, I believe the United States Army, is that correct, Bruce?
Bruce Kowalski: It is.
Bruce Hutcheon: And he comes to us from the East Coast. So, Bruce, welcome to the show.
Bruce Kowalski: Thank you very much, glad to be here.
Bruce Hutcheon: Well in the warm up we were sharing about the genesis of your involvement in the outdoor industry. Let’s just start right there. Tell us where you were and who you were talking to and what happened after that.
Bruce Kowalski: Well, basically it’s like I told you before. My military affiliation and my partner, Fred Butler, we met together in the military. We both have big, huge families that share the outdoor enthusiasm. We were both raised hunting and fishing and all of that stuff with our families. We served together in Afghanistan. It was Fred’s first tour, my second, and through that we became very, very good friends. Basically brothers, you know? Fred’s like my family. And we both told each other that if we made it through everything we were going through over there, that we were gonna come home and we were gonna do something in the outdoor industry and we did. We came home and started finding a way to get involved in the industry and stuff like that. Always said we wanted to be on TV or we wanted to do something in the outdoor world and it eventually evolved into us taking part in a TV show that was based on military veterans and stuff like that.
And we were the New York team together on that TV show and then from there we built our affiliation with Elusion Camo and Fred eventually bought the company out and took over. And we started Descendants Outdoors which was our way of complementing the television show and showing off everything about Elusion Camo. We’re here to take over the industry, I guess you could say. We’re here to break all the rules everybody has about regular camo and teach them about our camo and teach them that there is not just two big dogs on the block. There’s a bunch of up and comers and we’re hungry.
So I guess that’s the way you can easily put it with our affiliation. We raised our families in the outdoor world. Descendants Outdoors it’s all based on us being descendants of people who hunted and us raising our kids in the same affiliation. All of our kids hunt, they all fish, and it’s a big family thing for us. Without our family nothing’s possible. I truly believe that if it wasn’t for my family backing me and Fred’s family backing him, man, we would get nowhere. Our families are very, very tight together and it works out well, man. We complement each other in business, we complement each other in friendship, and we complement each other in family. It just works out great that way.
Bruce Hutcheon: Thank you for sharing that. Let’s talk about where you were indoctrinated to the hunting tradition.
Bruce Kowalski: My father. I remember as a kid chasing my father and my brother all around. If they weren’t deer hunting they were trapping. If they weren’t trapping we were fishing. My parents split up when I was very, very young and when I was with my father that’s all I did. Now just because my parents split up, my mother supported everything I did when I was with her. If there was anything new in the outdoor industry or something like that that came out that I wanted to get my hands on and stuff like that I guess mom always took care of me and made sure I had what I wanted, what I needed to chase after my passions. She always beat it in my head that I needed my education and everything like that but she was never afraid to just let me go run and we always camped with our parents and everything like that.
But my dad took us out. My dad’s a former military guy, too and he always told us that he would teach us everything in the outdoor world because if one day we needed to use our outdoor skills to take care of ourselves, he wanted to make sure we knew everything to take care of ourselves. You know, put food on the table and possibly put a few dollars in our pockets. Maybe selling furs or whatever it happened to be. So I grew [Inaudible 00:04:49] and hunting with my brothers and chasing fish on the creeks. I’m a big steelhead fisherman and salmon fisherman. I love it here in New York. I get a well-rounded, people don’t think New York and hunting and fishing, but we have a great fishery here. Salmon fishing off of Lake Ontario is probably the world’s best freshwater salmon fishery besides saltwater, you know Pacific and Atlantic coasts, I would imagine. You ain’t getting any better. We’ve got some massive steelheads. . .
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Bruce Hutcheon: You’re sitting with Fred and you’re making plans for the future, what drew you to that industry? We already heard about the hunting tradition but hunting and doing that for fun versus a business and a career and a livelihood and supporting the family. What’s the draw in the outdoor industry for you?
Bruce Kowalski: We’re a tight-knit family in the hunting industry and I really wish. . . it’s really cool that you mention that because one of the things that bugs me about the hunting industry the most is everybody thinks posting a picture and trying to say your deer is better than somebody else’s deer or whatever it happens to be is the way to be. But we’re not. We’re all hunters. We’re all sportsmen. We’re all conservationists. We all want the best for the animals we chase. We don’t only chase these animals to hunt them but we’ve got deer management, we’ve got NWTF, you’ve got QDMA, you’ve got all of these organizations out there that are there to take care of your animal population. What I like about the hunting industry and what draws me in there is there’s no other industry on the planet that takes care of the fellow sportsman like we do.
I’m out there to make the best product for somebody to go out and enjoy themselves in the outdoors along with every other company that we work with. And not only that but we take care of the majority of the conservation. We are the reason why bald eagles have been taken off the endangered species list. We are the reason why, unfortunately, the wolf population has come back to be the way it is. Now it’s a little bit too much and it’s disruptive. We are the reason why everything that was going away has come back. And I like to think that we are, as an industry, all focused on saving this for the future as well. I believe it’s only through sportsmen that our livelihoods will survive. And we are a small group of people that take care of each other. And it kind of gets back to the roots of things to where I believe we are just like our forefathers before us. The original hunters and fisherman that wanted everything coming up and they just pass it on down. It’s like our show Descendants Outdoors, it’s all about passing it down. And you only see that here. You name me one industry outside of the hunting industry that, we are all about our guns, we’re all about our hunting, we’re all about our animals, we’re all about our conservation. There’s no other group in the world that does that. Not even PETA is as strong as we are. And that’s what draws me to it.
It’s almost like the military but in the civilian world and it’s great, man. It makes for great friends, it makes for great family members, it makes for great companies to work with. And instead of everybody trying to one-up each other and be better than each other, I really wish everybody would just learn to work together because we have enough fighting against us in this industry and just in the things that we like to do as a hobby. And if we all learned to work together a little bit better, it’d be a heck of a lot easier to keep it all together.
Bruce Hutcheon: You and Fred are veterans and you decided when you were in theater that you were gonna start the business. Now this is for our listeners, Bruce, did you have any business background or was it just the passion and the knowledge of hunting that drew you to creating what you’ve created?
Bruce Kowalski: Coming into this my only back business before this was before coming into the industry and all of that stuff I was military. I was military and I worked at a hospital. It was just a draw into the outdoors, you know? I wanted to start pursuing something different, something that I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to be that guy on TV. I’ve always watched Babe Winkelman growing up, and I always watched the Drury Brothers growing up. And I always said that I would like to be like them. And it’s just I’ve never had a moment in my life up until when we were in Afghanistan, and I never had anybody that was standing next to me that said, “We could do that, too.” And Fred just happened to be that guy. It came up in conversation and Fred was like, “Dude, we could do everything they do. We could be just like them.” And I said, “I would imagine we probably could.” Before that, I guess there just wasn’t a standing moment where it clicked in my head that I could do that.
I had written letters and gotten products from companies and stuff like that to try stuff out or our local sportsman show would come up and we would talk to a guy about a new product and he would help us out, “Here, try this, let me know what you think,” and blah-blah-blah. But I never thought of trying to pro-staff for a company. I never thought about going after a bow sponsor or anybody like that for sponsorship for anything that I like to do. It just wasn’t my thing. I had a regular job and stuff like that and I didn’t worry about it. But I guess I was just at that point in my life that I was looking for a change and if I was gonna change my life and I was gonna go after something different than I had been doing for so long that it was going to be the outdoor world. And it just happened to be at the same time I met Fred and we dove in head first and just went after it.
Bruce Hutcheon: So, listeners, you just heard Bruce share that he didn’t have really any business experience. Solid military background. Learned a lot of lessons. Learned how to lead. Learned how to follow orders. Knew how to be dedicated to the task, committed to the task. All of those things he brought forth, but there’s nothing standing in any of our listener’s way if you wanna get into this industry and you are willing to work. W-O-R-K.
Bruce Kowalski: It’s work. It is definitely work. I will tell you that. I can honestly tell you it’s been five years strong, every year driving, and driving, and driving to stay in this industry and to stay a part of new things coming on. And this year is our big year. This year is the year we really. . . Elusion camo came out a year ago, and I won’t say that it wasn’t a big push on the industry, but this year has been a bigger push. We have connected with a lot more companies. We have made that further push into the industry with companies that are gonna do stuff with our camo. Clothing companies that are putting it on their clothes and stuff like that where this is our big year. This is the year that we’re really gonna drive. And from here it’s all uphill and it hasn’t been without struggle and it hasn’t been without possibly some regret and some thought to where I was like, “Why am I doing this?” You take that dream that you love, that thing you wanna do all the time and yeah, everybody always says, “Man, I wish I could hunt and fish all the time.” And then you do it, and you don’t realize what it really means.
Once you pick up a sponsor you have to represent that company as well as yourself. You have to give them what they want which means you have to be successful. And when you go out and you fish for fun, it doesn’t matter if you catch one fish or you catch 15 fish. You’re out there to have fun. When you start doing it for a living and you have to show that you’re catching or you’re hunting and you’re killing and you’re doing these things specifically for these companies, then it puts that added little pressure on there and it can be overwhelming sometimes. But if you want it bad enough you can have it. That force inside you has to drive forward to that.
Bruce Hutcheon: Let’s talk about Elusion Camo. What makes them different? Obviously we’re not gonna get any proprietary information, but tell our listeners what makes Elusion Camo special.
Bruce Kowalski: We have a technology built into our camo that is unlike any other camo out in the industry. Mossy Oak, Realtree, other camouflages that are out there are just a printed camo. They use layering systems and stuff like that to build their image through imagery to camouflage you in the woods. Elusion Camo will not camouflage you in the woods. Our tag line is, “Become the woods,” because that’s what we intend to do. We intend to make you become the woods. Whether it be our marsh monster pattern in the grass or our airborne stalk pattern in a cornfield. But with the technology, the end-selection technology and that technology is the natural way, or the way nature absorbs and reflects light naturally. Our camouflage does this. We figured out through our imagery and the way that we make our camo that we can copy that in some way, shape, or form which gives you the possibility of taking this camo and not only using our airborne stalk in a cornfield but you can also use it anywhere else in nature and it’ll blend in.
And when an animal sees you, they see a natural element. They don’t see a dark blob in a tree. They don’t see shadows. They don’t see depth and definition. They see a natural element. And you can be in sunlight and our camo will look one color. You can be in the shade and it’ll look another color, or you can be in both at the same time and you can see the difference in our camos. And with that technology I believe that gives us an advancement over regular camo. We’ve had the comment that we might be a little pricey on a shirt which I don’t think $59 for a shirt is pricey with Under Armour and comparable companies that are out there that have their price point set at whatever because we have a technology built into the camo. And that’s what everybody doesn’t understand. When a basic consumer buys a shirt they look at it and they say, “Okay, I like that camo pattern,” and, “I’m a Mossy Oak fan,” or, “I like that pattern. I’m a Realtree guy.” They have you fooled. They have the industry fooled to think that those are the only few camo patterns that are out there in the woods. And they’re not.
I can tell you my grandparents hunted in red and black checker. So anybody can hunt in anything. But for those of you that truly wanna disappear in the woods or truly wanna become an element in the woods and not have to worry about where you’re hunting or what you’re hunting in, that’s where Elusion Camo comes in and that’s where our technology is built in. We make you disappear to where nobody’s gonna see you, and we’ve had animals get killed feet from the hunter. We’ve had animals get grabbed by hand because the animals walked right up onto the hunter. I’m sure these things have all happened in other camos, but this is my camo and I’m gonna brag about it I guess you could say.
Bruce Hutcheon: Go right ahead. That’s what we’re all about here, bringing information to our community. So absolutely, feel free. So talk to us about your line.
Bruce Kowalski: We definitely love it.
Bruce Hutcheon: What’s in your product line right now?
Bruce Kowalski: Right now we have our basic product lines out. We’ve got several different regular clothing items a pair of season six-pocket pants. You know, cargo pockets on the side. Your basic slash pockets for your hands, your back pocket for your wallet and such. We have the regular hoodies, T-shirts both long sleeve and short sleeve. We have a [inaudible 00:17:29] vented button-up shirt. It’s a short-sleeve button-up shirt that’s got some vents in the back to keep you a little cool for those that like to summer hunt or early season or late season turkey or stuff like that to where the weather is warm. You can hunt yourself. Throw on a real nice little T-shirt underneath it and keep you nice and cool as you’re working. We are working on our mid-grade and our heavy-grade gear right now. We have a real nice jacket with buff sleeves. It turns into a vest. Maybe you wanna go out and you’re hunting at middle to getting into the middle part of the season where the weather’s warm when you’re walking in the woods and then you’ve gotta add to it.
So maybe you throw on a vest. You don’t wanna deal with the bulk and all of that stuff. But as you’re coming out of the woods it’s a little chillier. You can go ahead and zip your sleeves on. We’ve got a really nice three-day pack that’s actually, it’s a butt-pack style. Shoulder straps that are removable. You can use it as a carry bag. You can use it as just a waist pack, or you can use it as a three-day. Some of the guys out West, your area, stuff like that they all like that. Shoulder strapped, butt-pack, three-day pack. You can pack all your stuff in it. It’s got room for water bottles. Like three or four different compartments in there. You can strap your jackets on the top of it or underneath it. To be able to carry quite a lot of equipment in a small, little pack it makes it very convenient. Sticks it in the small of your back. You can run around the hills and not have a problem. If you’re a treestand hunter you can strap it to a tree, out of the way. You’re up there. You’ve got all your equipment with you and it’s not in the realm of your bow-hunting or anything like that. And we just keep adding to the line.
We’ve also started working with a company called Shooter King. Shooter King mostly does their products overseas. They have the European hunting market and South American hunting market and I believe they’ve got some stuff in Australia as well. But they wanted a new camo pattern and when they seen ours, they felt that they had a really good need for it in their hunting industry as well. And they picked up our line and they’re actually using us to come to the United States and they’re gonna start doing a lot of wool brand clothing. Wool pants, wool jackets, and stuff like that. A little bit of warmer gear for the late winter and those situations. But every day is a new finding. If I find something that I like, I take several pieces of the clothing that I’ve hunted with over the years. I like the pockets on this one. I like the way the suede’s set [SP] on this one. I like the insulation that’s in this one because it keeps me warm. I take all of those ideas, and we’ll sit down around the table. I’ll talk with Fred and the rest of our guys and we’ll brainstorm. And we take all of the things we like from all of the hunting clothing we like, and we try to turn that into a product for the consumer.
We’ve also taken a lot of stuff from our field staff and our pro-staff guys and told them, “Let me know what you like about your favorite hunting jacket. Let me know what you like about your favorite hunting pants.” My father is a big guy and he likes to hunt in overalls. He likes the overalls style so when he sits down in the woods or he’s in a stand that his pants don’t come down and his shirt doesn’t pull out of his pants. If he’s hunting in overalls he doesn’t deal with that problem. So right now I’m designing a pair of overalls for that consumer because a lot of guys like that. So it really all depends on what the public wants. We take all feedback. We’ve got contact submission on our website and all that stuff and anybody that has an idea. You want a certain, specific type face mask, you want a certain type hat, we’ll talk about it amongst ourselves. We’ll find out what the need is for it, and we’ll make it. I’ve got no problem working with anybody out there that has a crazy idea. A newer company that’s going to be coming out on the market, they’re Pistols N Paisley. It’s gonna be a female clothing line.
Meg Abbott happens to be the lady. She’s former military. She liked the fact that we were a military owned and operated camo company and she came and she talked to us about some of her designs for her female clothing line. And right now we’re working with her to bring her jacket and her clothing line to the market, as well for all the lady hunters that are out there. Gotta have both male, female. We have a kids’ line. Myself and Fred, between the two of us we have eight children. And they all love to hunt, and they’re all everywhere from like two years old to 14 years old. So you’ve got a broad spectrum of need there. And we’ve used all of our kids to design our clothing, our kids’ clothing lines around them so it works out pretty well.
Bruce Hutcheon: You really do have a family affair going on, don’t you?
Bruce Kowalski: Absolutely, man. We’ve got big, huge families and we love it. Our Vice President, John Lopez, or sorry our President, John Lopez, he’s got three boys. I’ve got three boys and a little girl. Fred’s got two boys and two girls. And I can honestly tell you the only one that’s with the company that doesn’t have children yet is our head Sales Manager and that’s Don Moore. And I love the guy to death and everything like that, but he just hasn’t gotten around to starting his family yet, but I’m sure when he does he’ll have just as many running around as the rest of us do.
Bruce Hutcheon: Let’s talk about scent control in your product. Where is that going?
Bruce Kowalski: That’s a really good question. We’re actually working with Scent-Lok as we speak. Scent-Lok is talking about doing a whole line for us. It’s probably gonna be under Savannah Series. We’re gonna push into doing stuff with them probably in 2016. We’ve kind of missed the window to hatch stuff out this fall through them. But through them we will have their one series. I believe Shooter King does have a scent control built into their clothing. And we are currently working with a company to do some liners for our own clothing and some of the midweight and heavyweight stuff that we have coming out for the fall that should have a scent control lining in them.
Bruce Hutcheon: I’m just looking at the clock. We’re into 30 minutes already and this is the time in the show, Bruce, that you just get to recap about Descendants Outdoor, Elusion Camo, share anything that you haven’t shared, and then share just a little bit about your passion for youth in hunting. The mic’s yours.
Bruce Kowalski: My passion for the youth hunting is great. Again, I truly believe I started all of this because my father started with me when I was a kid. And being able to share everything I do with my kids it hits home for me. It’s all I really wanna do. I just had my kids out for their youth turkey season and one of my sons happened to miss, but it wasn’t that big of a deal, you know? That stuff’s gonna happen, but it was his way to learn that not every time we’re gonna go out in the woods is he gonna score on an animal or something like that. And my other two boys were there and we hunted the two days during the youth season, and we called some other birds in for them and they just didn’t get in close enough to kill. But these guys all know that every time we go out it might not do that. But we had a blast, man. I have so many memories on camera with these guys that I probably never would have. And the way I hunted with my dad I never got to videotape anything because videotape wasn’t back there and [inaudible 00:25:27] or anything like that. And that’s why I tell everybody to watch Descendants Outdoors.
Our TV show broadcasts all of that stuff. It’s all the memories. It’s the hunting it’s not the killing. It’s getting out there with family and having a good time and having fun and just joking around with your kids. Even if it’s just pitching a spinner in a small pond because you’re out camping and you’re having fun and that’s what you wanna do for the day. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about what you share with family and all of that stuff. That’s where my drive’s at. My drive is to raise my kids in the outdoor world and show them that there is more to hold than a video game controller. There’s more than a TV to sit behind and they can go out and they can experience all of these things. And they can hunt, and they can hike, and they can fish, and they can camp, and they can go RVing, and they can go four-wheeling. My one son loves to ride dirt bikes and race motocross. And they can go do all these things, and they don’t have to be cooped up in a house. They don’t have to sit behind the boob tube and play an Xbox or be on an iPod 24/7.
The world is their iPod to play with. It’s their Xbox to play with. You can go out there and you can run around and you can do everything that you see on that Xbox but for real. You can go out and race those dirt bikes and just have a blast and that’s what I wanna showcase to other people. I wanna showcase that it’s not just about you and what you share with your buddies at hunting camp. That you can do that same thing with your wife and you can do that same thing with your kids and you have just as much fun with them as you do with anybody else in hunting camp. Or just camping in general or whatever it happens to be. And, in turn, that’ll pay back and hopefully they teach that to their children when they get a little bit older and they start having kids themselves. It really does build that family bond. As far as everything else, check us out at ElusionCamo.com. Check out our clothing. I’m not saying we’re better than anybody else. I’m just saying we’re here, and we’re not going anywhere. I love our camo line. I hope you guys all love our camo line, too.
Our patterns are there. If you have any questions, we have a great staff. You can send any one of us an email. We’re usually on it within an hour or two and we’re more than willing to talk to anybody on the phone or by email or by text message. Hit me up on Facebook. Let me know if you’ve got an idea for something, and we’re always there to talk to our consumers and stuff like that because you guys are the ones that are gonna drive my company. When you call, you’re gonna talk to one of us main people in the company. You’re not gonna talk to somebody that works for us because there’s only four of us that run our company. So we’re taking fresh ideas right off of, I guess you could say the hunting street, and we’re putting them right into our product for you, for the consumer to get what they want. And that’s what sets us aside from everybody else. Through us, you’re not gonna get somebody else’s idea. You’re getting your ideas on your hunting clothing, and we’re gonna be here and we’re gonna make it last. I wanna say thank you to you, Bruce, for having me on the show and letting me run everything. I guess I love to talk on and whether it’s radio or camera or whatever it happens to be, I’ll ramble on all day if you’d let me. But I really do appreciate you letting me do this.
Bruce Hutcheon: Bruce, on behalf of the Whitetail Rendezvous community, thank you for sharing. And more important than that, thank you for the service to our country.
Bruce Kowalski: Thank you, sir. You’re a veteran, too and if it wasn’t for guys that came before me such as you, my father, my grandfather, my stepdad, and everybody like that, I would have never had a chance to serve. And I’ll also say thank you to all the guys that are thinking about serving and thinking about going in now. You never know what might be that life changing experience you’re really looking for.
Bruce Hutcheon: Thank you again, Bruce, and thank you again Whitetail Rendezvous community for listening to some insights of what it takes to make a company grow in the outdoor industry. And with that may all your hunts be great ones.