For more than a decade of television, any of the regulars who walked into the fictional Boston bar “Cheers” were greeted by a chorus of folks calling out their name. “NORM!” they’d yell in unison as character Norm Peterson ducked into the bar from where the sitcom took its name.

It’s kind of the same way at Mark’s Outdoors, a specialty hunting and fishing retailer in Vestavia, Alabama, a suburb about 15 miles outside of Birmingham. Behind the knife counter near the door, long-time employee Randy Yerkes greets regular customers much like the bartenders did on “Cheers,” shouting out their name as they saunter in.

“I know it sounds like a tired cliché, but the basic premise for us here is to treat a customer like you want to be treated,” said Mark Whitlock Jr., who runs the 25,000-square-foot shop that’s stayed in the same location since it opened its doors in 1980. “We try to make sure that when somebody walks in, we make a connection — whether we’re shaking hands with new customers or having Randy yell out the name of our regulars. We want to make people feel attached to the store.”

Attached they are. While much of suburban America is dotted with big-box retailers that suck consumers out from the nearby downtowns, it’s the family-owned Mark’s Outdoors that attracts hunters and anglers from Birmingham and beyond.

Mark’s Outdoors has a customer email list with more than 30,000 addresses and sends regular emails. The store has active social media accounts (the Facebook following is about 13,500) and buys targeted banner ads online.

“We offer free coffee every day of the week and free popcorn on Saturday,” Whitlock said. “We have guys who stop in here on their way to work for a cup of coffee, and we have guys who come in for coffee in the afternoon, dressed in business attire, as they wait for traffic to die down before heading home.”

The idea of having a welcoming, low-pressure outdoor shop began with Mark Whitlock Sr., who started the business as a bait shop in 1980. Slowly and surely, the store expanded its footprint in a strip mall. When Mark Sr. lost his battle with cancer in 2012, his wife and co-owner Dana (now Dana Stockli) took over. Mark Jr., 28, came onboard a few years ago, after graduating from the University of Alabama. Dana is still at the store five days a week or more, giving her son guidance and business assistance.

Staying true to his father’s vision, Mark Jr. is a stickler for keeping the friendly atmosphere alive. But he’s doing so while balancing the changing pace and face of specialty retail in the United States. Just this year, the store finally began selling a limited number of its products online, a reality that took some time to come to grips with.

“My dad hated the idea of online sales,” Whitlock said. “It’s kind of a race to the bottom to the lowest price. But it’s also necessary in this day and age because of how drastic the changes in retail have been over the past few years. You can try to fight it as long as you want — and we did — but eventually you have to be where the customers expect you to be.”

Mark’s Outdoors puts only a limited number of items for sale on the website, and Mark Jr. is solely responsible for responding to, and filling, orders. “We have to keep focus on the idea that just because you’re selling online doesn’t mean you can’t also have a rock-solid brick-and-mortar shop as well,” he said.

Email Marketing, Too

Whitlock, whose college degree is in marketing, has started to use other modern-day marketing techniques well beyond just online commerce. Mark’s Outdoors has a customer email list with more than 30,000 addresses and sends regular emails. The store has active social media accounts (the Facebook following is about 13,500) and buys targeted banner ads online.

Whitlock also routinely turns to small, local T-shirt makers to simultaneously build community and supply his shop. He has also expanded the product offering to include more active lifestyle brands.

“We do well with brands like Mountain Khaki and KUHL,” he said. “We’re not just selling fishing and hunting gear; we’re selling things for people who like to play outdoors.”

But there is a small case study in hunting gear that strengthens the notion that Mark’s Outdoors is a shop that deftly straddles the line between old-school outdoor shop where regular customers linger and new-school retail hotspot selling the trendsetting gear.

“We have absolutely crushed it with Sitka Gear,” he said, “and I am as surprised as anybody. When we started thinking of carrying $600 jackets to hunt whitetails in Alabama, I thought it was absurd. I didn’t think we stood a chance of selling any.”

But, Whitlock said, Sitka now makes up a solid 40 percent of the store’s camo sales. “These guys here just eat it up,” he said.

Part of that, naturally, goes back to the Mark’s Outdoors sales force (27 full-timers and just four part-timers) who know intimately the products they sell and are able to talk to customers in a non-hurried, informed way.

“I like to think we stand out with our customer service,” Whitlock said. “That’s the big difference between us and the big box stores. Our employees live and breathe the outdoors, and they’re knowledgeable about what’s working and what isn’t. My dad used to say we’re not really salesmen, we’re actually acting as therapists for people who walk through that door.” 

“We have guys who stop in here on their way to work for a cup of coffee.”