Wesson’s Steel Outdoors Returns to Hunting Roots Under New Leadership

By Bob Arnold

   Steel Outdoors, a Wesson-based metal fabricator, is going back to its original  product emphasis under a new CEO after a two-year struggle to survive against increasing competition.

      Brandon McLemore, son of Steel Outdoors founder Dwayne McLemore, is charting the company’s new course taking the corporate leadership reins from his father, who is now pursuing a career in the ministry.

      The elder McLemore started Steel Outdoors in 2007 in a backyard truck trailer with his wife Pam, fabricating a product line oriented to hunters and outdoors enthusiasts, expanded into design and production of customized metal items for industrial companies and then moved into the housing market with metal roofing, siding and purlins.

      From its initial operation, Steel Outdoors moved its facility to a 10,000 square foot utility building, and, in 2018, to a 55,000 square foot manufacturing and office building on Highway 51 in Wesson, where it envisioned growing its workforce to 50 to meet the needs of housing contractors.

        “We never realized that lofty vision,” says Brandon McLemore.  “Housing contractors  varied in quality and reliability.  It was not a good market for us.  At the same time, fifteen metal fabricators now compete for our business compared to a handful when we started.  Two years ago, we cut the business to skin and bones, dropping our housing products line and reducing the workforce.  We now utilize half our 50,000 square foot building and lease the other half to another company.”

      The new CEO, however, thinks the hard times are in the past, and foresees the workforce growing to 10 to 12, up from currently six employees.

      He is now emphasizing the niche outdoors products his father started producing almost 20 years ago when he formulated the company’s slogan:  “100% American-made Steel Products made by hunters for hunters.”  Among its current products are shooting targets, feeders, deer hunting houses, special cut outs, hand rails and gates. 

      “We’re also still producing customized products for industry, designing and crafting metal products that provide solutions to problems such as safety guards and other parts for conveyors and pipelines,” says the younger McLemore.

      He has made the company’s website shopper-friendly, and the first recent $3,000 online purchase seems to confirm that ecommerce is a sound marketing strategy.

      Brandon McLemore quit Co-Lin to come to work for Steel Outdoors in 2009.  “I found college studies boring and wanted to work with my hands,” he explains.  When his father said he wanted to retire from the company, he readily volunteered to take it over.  “I had swept floors, done grinding and welding and started designing products.”  McLemore’s wife Jordan is the corporate secretary, and they have two sons, Brailen, 9, and Mathis, 7,  whom they homeschool at the company.