Realtree’s Bill Jordan CEO to CEO Interview
OutdoorHub 09.28.11
Outdoor Hub traveled down to Georgia in August to spend a few days on Realtree Farms. They were there to interview the men in charge behind the scene at Realtree camouflage. As part of the Chevy Deer Camp promotion Chevy, Realtree, Bone Collector and Outdoor Hub got together for the opening of hunting season. In between the fun events of the week, Outdoor Hub’s CEO, David Farbman, sat down with Realtree CEO Bill Jordan to discuss various topics.
Here follows a unique spin on the traditional interview. Farbman leads a casual conversation with Jordan inside of a Realtree AP wrapped Chevrolet Silverado. Watch all three videos to get interesting insights on Jordan’s business savvy, family values and of course, a complete tour of the “camo dipped” Chevy.
Back in the 1980s when Bill Jordan first came out with his camouflage design, it was a hand-drawn piece of art. Now, the company uses photo-imaging and has made other technological advances to keep Realtree on the forefront of the camouflage market. In this first clip, Bill Jordan discusses his company with Outdoor Hub CEO David Farbman.
Watch the second clip of to hear about Jordan’s family’s involvement in the outdoors lifestyle. He offers good advice for any parent who wants to share the hunting experience with his or her children. Jordan also talks about his relationship with his oldest son, Tyler Jordan and addresses the problem of declining hunting numbers and how family ties into the solution.
The coolest video by far, follow Jordan as he discusses the process it took to wrap an entire Chevrolet Silverado in Realtree camouflage. He goes around the whole truck to show off each element of the Chevy. There’s only one car like this in the world right now, but perhaps not for long!
This article is part of a series of interviews and videos surrounding Realtree and Bone Collector. Interviews are available with: Nick Mundt, Travis (T-Bone) Turner, David Blanton, Tyler Jordan, Bill Jordan’s CEO to CEO and NASCAR.
Additional videos include: Friends, Family and the Outdoors, Behind-the-Scenes and BLOOPERS.
Interview Transcript:
Part 1: Realtree Business
This is David Farbman, founder and CEO of Outdoor Hub. I’m sitting with one of my childhood idols, Bill Jordan. Used to be Jordan, now it’s Jerdan. And uh, no literally I mean, this has been one of the most, at least for me, hunting, you know you – we all find people that are mentors of ours that we watch. For some it was Fred Bear and for me it was Bill Jordan and the things that you were able to do with the Monster Bucks videos. I’ve grown up I recognize, I don’t know, a dozen of those deers, I saw ’em get killed on different tapes that I could remember and they were tapes too, not even, you know, not even DVDs back in the day. So I’m here with Realtree farms. We’re doing a piece with Chevy for this outdoor thing. And couldn’t be more cool to be out here. It’s on honor to be here with you sir and just to get here in this ridiculously phenomenal, phat truck with this camo wrapped AP all over, inside, exterior with the logo in front. I just, this is like redneck heaven in here man and it’s awesome.
00:01:03 Bill Jordan: I’ll tell ya what, it looks good too. You know, neat about it, this is our AP pattern we’ve got on the dash.
DF: Tell me a little bit about how you guys are innovating with technology. You know, obviously with Outdoor Hub I’ve been 400 websites in the outdoors and our lives being internet – we love technology. But how are you continuing to innovate Realtree today?
00:01:22 BJ: Well you know, two things. We use the internet and all the social stuff that we have available to us and we’re not done yet, you just don’t know what’s around the corner for all of us. You can do photo imaging, probably looks, the bark and the limb of the leaves look better than the bark and tree itself. So we’re able to come back and redesign the pattern all inside. But the technology is just what I’m trying to get to. It’s just unbelievable. From hand-sketched art camo patterns to now, what you can do with digital imaging and photography, you know, marrying those two things together. And how real you can make these patterns look to the environment in which you hunt.
00:01:56 So that technology in itself has just been unbelievable. But the social network, I mean you know, you have to be there. I don’t care what business it is you’re in. You know, we have teams of 20/30 year olds that are doing nothing but exploring what the next big thing is out there. You know, being anything in between, else, we do blogs, tweeter, and facebook and everything else and you know, on our facebook page, for us, it’s just been remarkable. We have over a million views, a million viewers on facebook and those big impressions are very important to us. But, you have to innovate yourself, and you have to have technology. And our marketing department does a fantastic job bringing new things to us and reaching that customer, that consumer in ways that we couldn’t reach them five/ten years ago.
Part 2: On Family
David Farbman: Talking about family for one minute and one of the things I’ve had the pleasure of being able to see is your love for Tyler and how important it is to bring Tyler up the right way, want him to really pursue you know, his unique abilities and what he does. You know, what advice would you give around familiarizing your son in the outdoors and how do you put it on him and where do you push him into it and where do you kind of let him walk to it? And just some of it is really dad advice, I guess.
00:00:32 Bill Jordan: You know, I think any parent whether it be the mom or the dad it’s uh, you know, you can show a lot of things to your children, whether it be a little girl/little boy, which, I have a little girl that’s six and a little boy – three and obviously Tyler’s now 19. But with Tyler, you know, being a little bit older, I showed him baseball, I showed him football, I showed him hunting, I showed him fishing and how much fun you can have with all of ’em. And then again, they’ve got to show a little bit interest back, you know, too. And with Tyler, he showed interest to the outdoors immediately and we made a big deal when we come up to our farm, we see turkeys when he was four/five years old, we make a big deal out about seeing ’em. You know, if we saw deer, we’d make a big deal about seeing ’em, you know, looking at the horns and so forth.
DF: Has your son ever taught you a thing out in the field? Have you ever yet picked up a tip from Tyler of value yet, or do you think it’s still dad teaching son?
00:01:22 BJ: It’s still dad teaching son, but he don’t want… he’s at the age where he don’t want dad teaching son as much. Tyler, Tyler is one of the greatest kids in the world, just has a great personality, he’s been a good teenager and now young adult being 19. But something Tyler that uh… Some people don’t know about he and I, we’re very competitive. I don’t care if it’s ping-pong, I don’t care if it’s shooting a shotgun, I don’t care if it’s shooting a bow, he wants to win. And it gets to him dear old dad at my age can still kind of handle that ping-pong table and dad at that time, you know, when it’s time to shoot a bow good, he shoots a bow good, but Tyler, to his credit, he practices his stuff, he wants to become better and he and I just have a friendly, father/son rivalry on everything we do. But it’s a good, healthy relationship.
DF: What are some of the things that Realtree’s doing now to try and grow the hunting numbers and what do you think some of the strategies are to actually making it happen?
00:02:18 BJ: I think one of the neat things for us and it’s been like this for several years. Obviously, us guys we have the opportunity you know, to show on television how good the outdoors can be and you see more and more like… Tyler’s been doing television stuff for me since he was four or five years old. So showing that family bond and those elements together and hopefully, I won’t push it if my little girl who’s about to turn six doesn’t want to do it, but just showing her the outdoors and you hope through television and by word of mouth that other families will say, you know that’s pretty good, I’m going to take my little girl or my little boy out into the woods and start them off slow. That has to be done and the same thing with uh… as these kids get older. And one of the neatest things for me to see, what I didn’t see 10/12 years ago, the more women getting involved with the television shows. How neat is that to have these women get involved? Instead of all of us guys, you know, doing our manly thing, there’s so many great women out there, you know Kandi Kisky, you know, Tiffany Lakosky and others, Vicki Cianciarulo, you know, those women and they have kids, you know, and they invite their kids, you know do more outdoor participation. I think it’s very healthy and people can see that through television and obviously through the social network stuff. You know, you can reach so many people. It takes each and every one of us, it’s television, it’s print, it’s social media you know, to kind of say to the younger people, this outdoors thing is pretty cool so we just need to continue that message from now on.
Part 3: Camo-wrapped Chevy Tour
David Farbman: Walk me around a little bit, show me some of the stuff you got going in this truck and what you did outside. And let’s just take a walk around it and check this bad boy out, cause it’s sweet.
Bill Jordan: I’ll tell you what, it’s a pretty cool ride.
DF: It’s really cool man.
BJ: You want to take it home with you, don’t you?
DF: Oh yeah.
00:00:23 BJ: I don’t know if the camera can pick up everything, obviously the grill plates up here and the front bumper right there at far as the grill plate in camo, AP, has a high gloss to it, which we wanted on there. Vents obviously.
DF: This is actually treated, that’s not… what’s that called there?
BJ: That’s actually, that comes out of one of our facilities and um, emersion graphics, it’s dipped. It’s an emersion graphics process, same thing with the plates inside, even all the air vents and dams inside are done with this process. Same thing with these levers, vents, you know right here. That’s all done in there as well. But look at the wheels.
DF: For those who don’t know, this is cool. I mean, it’s called redneck bling, right?
00:01:05 BJ: Yep, a little redneck bling right there. And let me tell you something, you’ve got to throw in the flames, if you want to go over the top, you’ve got to put these flames in here. Of course, this is done by camo wraps, you know, putting the flames in there. And the truck just keeps getting interesting even further and further back. One of the vents up there, same thing, dipped. And as you go back, we got our new Realtree antler logo. It’s really neat how they got this in here and even into the window. Realtree right here. Running boards down here in the bottom. Neat thing for us is having that emblem on it, you know, we’re very proud. And that’s so true right there. “The official truck of the outdoors.” And that’s Chevy and that speaks volumes.
DF: No doubt about it. We’re on the same page with that. To see this stuff, to see more stuff like it, tune in to outdoorhub.com, you can check out Realtree.com, you can check out his facebook page, you can check out just about anything you want, it’s going to be all over and hopefully we’ll just keep doing more and more and more of this kind of stuff cause this is about where the industry’s going and happening tomorrow. And we gotta be doing it to make sure that we’ve got a safe and protected sport tomorrow.
BJ: Outdoors is good.
