N40 Mountains: How Mount Cecelia came to be the North 40 Outfitters Logo

If you've been with us long enough as a customer, then you will remember us as Big R Stores. About 3 years ago, we realized that we were going to run in to an issue using the Big R name in the e-commerce world.

We'd already been receiving emails from customers that were in stores that weren't our stores, and others bringing in print ads or ads from the internet from a different Big R company.

At the time, there were 11 other ownership groups of Big R, all with their own individual store teams, service areas and owners. So, when we say this change was to clear up confusion for our customers as we made the move from strictly brick-and-mortar into the eCommerce world, honest and clarity, differentiating our family run business from other Big R Stores online--that was our goal when looking to change our name and brand.

We began to explore options and used outside experts in the field of "branding" to help us on our journey to a new look that our customers could easily identify.

We finally settled on North 40 Outfitters... which wasn't a quick decision. We spent many hours talking about what it meant, how the "outfitters" would be interpreted by our core customer base, how it would look on our stores and on the web-site... the discussions went on and on.

We decided that "North 40" meant a lot to our agriculture and ranch communities, and was a common and well known term in the farm and ranch industry (1892 homestead act). However, to our more urban demographic it wasn't as well-known, but the comments we got back was "sounds cool."

We revealed our new identity to some of our most loyal customers and captured their reactions. Our brand is about outfitting work and play, and this video shows the range of people we serve here in the Northwestern United States

We had finally come up with a North 40 Outfitters logo, and at this point in the process, quite a few of us just wanted it done. The logo was good, but needed one last touch of character. So as we were driving out to fish the Missouri, which we often do when contemplating live's big decisions, we commented on the mountain that we always talk about just outside of Cascade which we always called "sleeping giant."

We made up a stylized outline of the mountain scene that we often look at while driving to work--it's one of the most distinct looking mountains in the Great Falls skyline.

The next weekend I went on a climbing trip to the Devil's Thumb in Helena and on the way back I realized I was looking at what most people from Montana refer to as the "sleeping giant," which is formed by the distinct shape of Beartooth Mountain.

Man did I feel dumb. Since high school, I had been calling the one outside of Cascade the Sleeping Giant Mountain. As soon as I got home from Helena, I broke out the topo maps and sure enough, the mountain outside of Cascade is known as Mt. Cecelia.

My dad still razzes me about it by pointing out Beartooth Mountain every time we are up at Holter Lake Walleye fishing.

I got made fun of a little, but at least now there is a good story to go along with our little mountain hit found above the North 40 Outfitters text in our logo.

We will really miss the Big R name, it means a lot to all of us that helped build this company, and we are NOT excited to let it go, but we have fully embraced our new identity and continue to develop our brand identity to help our customers understand who we are, and what we stand for.

The video below is a brief introduction to how how we hope to maintain our connection to the customers that loved who we were as Big R and we think will love us as North 40 Outfitters.

We are very excited to bring to all of our customers our new identity as North 40 Outfitters, and we appreciate all of our loyal friends and customers in their support of this process-- stay tuned for more great content like this.

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