BlackOvis and Camofire had spent more than a decade growing from a basement startup into a hunting ecommerce business generating tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue.
Then private equity entered the picture.
The money wasn't the only thing that changed.
Debt entered a business that had traditionally operated around available cash. Outside investors gained directional and financial control. Kendall Card moved into the CEO role. Hiring philosophies changed. Inventory grew. Leadership changed.
And over time, the company Kendall had helped build began to feel very different to him.
In Part 2 of this four-part First Generation Bowhunter series, Adam Buchanan sits down with BlackOvis and Camofire co-founder Kendall Card to talk about what happened after private equity entered the business and how the relationship between founder, investor and company evolved.
This is Kendall's account of those events, told from his perspective and recollection.
Watch Part 2: The Price of Private Equity
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The BlackOvis & Camofire Story
This article is Part 2 of a four-part interview with Camofire and BlackOvis co-founder Kendall Card.
Part 1: 17 Years Building a Hunting Company [ADD PART 1 LINK]
Part 2: The Price of Private Equity
Part 3: Tug of War [ADD PART 3 LINK]
Part 4: Bankruptcy and the Unanticipated Aftermath [ADD PART 4 LINK]
The complete series follows the companies from their beginnings through the October 2025 Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.
In Part 2
Adam and Kendall cover:
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What changed after private equity entered BlackOvis and Camofire
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Kendall stepping into the CEO role
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Introducing debt into a traditionally cash-conscious company
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The push toward additional acquisitions and growth
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Differences between founder and investor decision-making
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Hiring and spending disagreements
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Inventory growth following COVID
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The Kifaru relationship and inventory situation
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Changes within the private equity ownership team
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Kendall's changing role inside his own company
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Why Kendall eventually stepped down as CEO
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The shift in BlackOvis company culture
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Reducing inventory and headcount
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Bringing in new leadership
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Why Kendall ultimately decided it was time to leave
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The personal and family cost of building a company for 16 years
Private Equity Isn't Necessarily the Problem
Kendall begins Part 2 with an important distinction.
He doesn't believe private equity itself is destroying the hunting industry.
His concern is what can happen when investors without a deep connection to hunting enter the industry and evaluate decisions almost entirely through traditional financial measurements.
There are private equity investors who hunt.
There are investors who understand why someone might make a business decision based partly on relationships, conservation, industry reputation or a long-term commitment to hunting.
And then there are investors looking primarily at the numbers.
Neither perspective automatically makes someone a bad person.
But those different motivations can produce very different companies.
What Changed When Private Equity Entered BlackOvis?
One of the biggest changes was financial philosophy.
Kendall and Mark had traditionally run the company conservatively.
If there was cash available, they could do something.
If there wasn't, they didn't.
After the investment, that philosophy changed.
The company gained access to a large line of credit.
Borrowed money could be used to buy inventory, increase liquidity, acquire businesses and accelerate growth.
That approach is common in private equity.
Use leverage to grow the business, increase earnings and eventually service or reduce the debt.
But for Kendall, it felt completely different from the way he'd learned to operate BlackOvis and Camofire.
Kendall Became CEO
Kendall had traditionally operated as Mark's right-hand man.
After the transaction, he moved into the CEO role.
That created an unusual situation.
He was still the person many people throughout the hunting industry associated with BlackOvis and Camofire.
He was still a major shareholder.
He was now CEO.
But he no longer had ultimate directional or financial control of the company he'd co-founded.
Kendall describes trying to balance three things:
What he believed was best for the company.
What employees needed from him as CEO.
And what the private equity owners wanted from the business.
Those priorities didn't always align.
The Company Started Spending Differently
Kendall remembers being uncomfortable with the amount of borrowed money being used to purchase inventory.
The company also began adding positions at compensation levels he struggled to reconcile with the way BlackOvis had historically operated.
He questioned why certain administrative areas were growing when he would have preferred investing more heavily in marketing, buying or product development.
That doesn't necessarily mean one side was objectively right and the other wrong.
They were operating from different playbooks.
Private equity saw opportunities to build systems, professionalize the organization, leverage capital and grow.
Kendall came from 14 years of building a hunting business from the ground up and protecting cash.
Those philosophies were beginning to collide.
Kendall Takes Responsibility for His Part
One thing that's important throughout this interview is that Kendall doesn't place every problem on the investors.
He openly acknowledges mistakes under his own leadership.
He believes the company bought too much inventory.
He says the buying team needed stronger accountability.
He wishes better systems and processes had been in place.
And he wishes he had pushed back harder when he believed the company's spending was becoming too aggressive.
That's an important part of understanding what happened.
This wasn't one decision made by one person.
A growing company, changing ownership structure, shifting consumer demand, increased inventory and different leadership philosophies were all interacting at once.
The Post-COVID Inventory Problem
COVID created an enormous outdoor retail boom.
Consumers spent heavily on outdoor recreation.
Demand surged.
Companies bought inventory to keep up.
Then the market changed.
The buying patterns created during COVID didn't continue indefinitely.
Across retail, businesses found themselves holding far more inventory than they needed.
BlackOvis wasn't immune.
By late 2023 and into 2024, Kendall says the company had an inventory problem.
Too much had been purchased.
The business needed to reduce inventory and work its way back toward a healthier position.
Kendall acknowledges that much of that happened while he was still leading the company.
The Kifaru Situation
One of the more difficult chapters during this period involved Kifaru.
Kendall had spent years developing relationships and strategic partnerships throughout the hunting industry.
He viewed the relationship with Kifaru through that same lens.
But the situation became complicated.
BlackOvis ultimately took on more difficult inventory than Kendall believes it should have.
His instinct was that BlackOvis had committed to the inventory and therefore needed to deal with it.
The private equity owners approached the situation differently and believed the company needed to push back.
The conflict became another example of the tension between Kendall's relationship-driven approach and the more financially driven approach of the investors.
It also took an enormous personal toll.
When Business Follows You Into the Mountains
During the turmoil surrounding BlackOvis and Kifaru, Kendall had a mountain goat hunt planned with Aaron.
It should have been one of the greatest hunting experiences of his life.
Remote country.
A physically demanding hunt.
A tremendous mountain goat.
The kind of hunt people dream about.
Kendall almost didn't go.
The problems at home were consuming him to the point that he didn't even want to leave.
Aaron convinced him to come anyway.
They agreed to set the business problems aside and hunt together.
Kendall is still grateful he went.
But even on a hunt of a lifetime, the problems at BlackOvis were sitting in the back of his mind.
That's how deeply the business had begun affecting him.
Some Hunting Industry Decisions Don't Fit a Spreadsheet
Kendall tells another story that helps explain why the cultural difference between founder and investor mattered so much to him.
Years earlier, BlackOvis had an opportunity to purchase more than $1 million of Kryptek inventory at a massive discount.
Financially, the opportunity looked incredible.
Camofire was a liquidation business.
The company potentially could have purchased the inventory and generated a substantial profit.
But Kendall believed the circumstances surrounding the inventory weren't fair to Kryptek.
And the people at Kryptek were his friends.
So instead of taking advantage of the situation, he contacted them.
BlackOvis facilitated the inventory transfer and allowed Kryptek to effectively regain control of its own product.
Kendall says BlackOvis didn't ask for anything in return.
They left a significant amount of potential profit on the table.
He would make the same decision again today.
Relationships Can Have Value You Can't Measure
On a spreadsheet, walking away from a large potential profit can look irrational.
But that's Kendall's larger point.
Hunting is a relatively small industry.
Relationships can last decades.
People move from company to company.
Today's competitor can become tomorrow's partner.
Someone you help today might unexpectedly help you years later.
And sometimes you simply make a decision because you believe it's the right thing to do.
There's no clean cell in a spreadsheet for that.
That doesn't mean investors are evil for evaluating financial return.
It means a founder who has spent decades inside an industry may assign value to things an outside investor has difficulty measuring.
The Private Equity Team Changed Too
The investors themselves weren't static during this period.
Kendall explains that the private equity group originally had three principals.
One eventually left or was bought out following a falling out within the investment group.
That mattered because people connected with that principal had been significant participants in the original BlackOvis and Camofire investment.
Now the makeup of the controlling investment group had changed.
According to Kendall, one remaining partner wasn't particularly involved in the investment.
Another became much more active.
Then, in the summer of 2023, Kendall arrived at a meeting and was introduced to Tom.
Tom was coming into the business to help.
Or, depending on how the transition is described, to run it.
Was Kendall Still CEO?
This is where the leadership structure becomes murky.
Kendall says he was initially told Tom would be helping him.
Later, during a board discussion reviewing the company's history, the transition was described as Tom becoming CEO in the summer of 2023.
Kendall felt the investors wanted him to step down.
He doesn't claim to know whether that was deliberately orchestrated.
But that's how the situation felt to him.
And founder transitions after private equity investment aren't unusual.
The problem was that Kendall wasn't a typical founder who had sold most of his ownership and walked away wealthy.
Most of his financial future was still tied to BlackOvis.
Kendall Stepped Down as CEO
By January 2024, Kendall officially stepped down as CEO.
The transition was emotional.
This was a company he'd spent roughly 16 years helping build.
Tom became CEO.
Kendall moved into a president/head-buyer type of role.
Tom had a background in restructuring distressed companies and would travel between New York and Utah, generally spending alternating periods in the office and working remotely.
The plan was for him to serve as an interim CEO while the company worked through its problems.
BlackOvis needed to reduce inventory.
It needed to reduce obligations.
It needed to stabilize.
Was BlackOvis Already a Troubled Company?
This distinction matters.
When private equity initially entered BlackOvis and Camofire, Kendall does not characterize the companies as distressed businesses.
They were growing.
By late 2023 and early 2024, however, he says the situation had changed.
The company was over-inventoried.
Debt and obligations had grown.
The post-COVID outdoor retail market had softened.
Now there were legitimate problems to solve.
That's when restructuring experience became more relevant.
BlackOvis Started Cutting Back
Through 2024, the company worked on reducing inventory.
Headcount came down.
Obligations began coming down.
Growth wasn't the immediate priority anymore.
Stabilization was.
Kendall gives Tom credit for helping accomplish some of that.
The company wasn't thriving the way it once had, but from Kendall's perspective it was making progress.
Liquidity remained.
Inventory was moving toward healthier levels.
From the outside, BlackOvis could still look like a strong hunting company.
Inside, though, the culture was changing.
It Didn't Feel Like Kendall's Company Anymore
This might be the emotional center of Part 2.
Kendall had helped create Camofire.
He had helped create BlackOvis.
He had spent years building the relationships, culture and reputation behind them.
Now he was working inside the same company while decisions were being made differently from the way he believed they should be made.
He describes himself as a team player.
A good soldier.
He didn't always voice how burned out he was becoming.
But internally, he was reaching his limit.
A New CEO Was Hired
By fall 2024, BlackOvis began looking for a permanent CEO.
Candidates were interviewed.
The field was narrowed.
A new CEO was ultimately hired.
For Kendall, that created what looked like an opportunity.
Maybe this was finally his chance to leave.
He had spent years trying to operate inside a company that no longer felt like the company he had built.
Now someone else could run it.
The Company Got Leaner
As the business moved toward 2025, BlackOvis became substantially leaner.
Kendall says employee count dropped from a high around 47 people to roughly 30 to 32, with approximately half working in the warehouse.
Employees were wearing multiple hats.
The company was trying to operate more efficiently.
And Kendall gives credit to the leadership team and employees doing the work.
But his own relationship with the business continued deteriorating.
The Moment Kendall Knew He Was Done
In February 2025, Kendall had a confrontation with the new CEO.
Voices were raised.
For Kendall, it hit differently.
He thought back to roughly 14 years working alongside Mark.
Despite the stress, long hours and enormous challenges of building multiple companies together, Kendall could remember only one occasion when they had raised their voices at each other.
Now he'd experienced that kind of conflict multiple times within a matter of months.
That was enough.
He told his family.
He told close friends.
He was done.
Then His Son Said Something He Couldn't Ignore
But the realization had actually started earlier.
At a family dinner, Kendall's youngest daughter announced that she had made her high school's varsity soccer team as a freshman.
Kendall told her how proud he was and said he couldn't wait to watch her play.
Then his oldest son responded.
Don't count on it.
According to Kendall, his son remembered his dad attending only one of his games in four years.
Kendall believes he attended more than one.
But he also realized something much more important.
It didn't matter.
That was how his son remembered it.
For roughly 16 years, Kendall had poured an enormous amount of himself into building businesses.
And sitting at that dinner table, he was confronted with what some of that success had cost.
The Real Price of Building BlackOvis and Camofire
It's easy to tell a business story through revenue.
Employees.
Inventory.
Valuation.
Debt.
Growth.
Ownership percentages.
Those numbers matter.
But they're not the whole story.
There's another ledger.
Family dinners.
Soccer games.
Hunts.
Friendships.
Stress.
Time.
The moments you thought you'd make up later.
Kendall had helped build BlackOvis and Camofire from almost nothing into significant businesses in the hunting industry.
Private equity changed the business.
But this story isn't simply about private equity.
It's also about what happens when a founder realizes the company he's spent years building has taken more from him than he wants to continue giving.
By early 2025, Kendall had made his decision.
He wanted out.
But the BlackOvis and Camofire story was far from over.
That's where Part 3 begins.
FAQ's
When did private equity invest in BlackOvis and Camofire?
The investment followed years of significant growth at BlackOvis and Camofire. Part 1 of this series covers the events leading to the transaction, while Part 2 focuses on what changed inside the companies afterward.
Did Kendall Card remain CEO after private equity invested?
Kendall moved into the CEO role after the transaction. He later stepped down as CEO in January 2024 as the company's leadership structure continued changing.
Did private equity add debt to BlackOvis?
According to Kendall, the company gained access to a large line of credit and began using significantly more borrowed capital than it had under the founders' previous operating philosophy.
Why did BlackOvis have too much inventory?
Kendall describes a combination of aggressive purchasing, insufficient buying controls and the broader post-COVID retail slowdown. He accepts responsibility for purchasing decisions made while he was leading the company.
Was BlackOvis struggling when private equity originally invested?
According to Kendall, BlackOvis and Camofire were growing when private equity originally became involved. He says the companies faced more serious inventory and financial challenges later, particularly during the post-COVID retail slowdown.
Why did Kendall Card step down as BlackOvis CEO?
Kendall describes growing differences between how he wanted to operate the business and the direction preferred by the private equity owners. He also discusses burnout, leadership changes and the personal toll the company had taken on him.
What happened between BlackOvis and Kifaru?
Kendall describes a difficult inventory and partnership situation involving Kifaru that became another point of disagreement over how BlackOvis should respond. The episode presents Kendall's recollection and perspective on those events.
Did BlackOvis reduce employees before bankruptcy?
Yes. Kendall says headcount fell from a high of roughly 47 employees to approximately 30 to 32 as the company reduced expenses and worked through excess inventory.
Did Kendall blame private equity for everything that happened?
No. Kendall repeatedly acknowledges his own mistakes, including allowing the company to purchase too much inventory, not creating enough accountability within the buying team and not pushing back more forcefully on spending decisions.
Why did Kendall Card decide to leave BlackOvis?
Kendall describes burnout, disagreements over leadership and company direction, and the personal cost of spending roughly 16 years building the business. A family conversation about how often he'd missed his son's games became an especially important realization.
What eventually happened to BlackOvis and Camofire?
BlackOvis and Camofire ultimately filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy in October 2025. This four-part First Generation Bowhunter series follows the story from the companies' creation through the events leading to bankruptcy and its aftermath.
Continue with Part 3: Tug of War
Watch Part 3 Here
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First Generation Bowhunter tells the stories, lessons and realities behind bowhunting and the outdoor industry.
Hosted by Adam Buchanan, the show features conversations with hunters, founders and outdoor industry leaders alongside the experiences of figuring out bowhunting as a first-generation hunter.
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