Before BlackOvis became one of the better-known online retailers in western hunting, there was Camofire.
Before Camofire, there were two friends, a basement, a few thousand dollars of inventory and an idea for a hunting version of the flash-sale websites that were beginning to change ecommerce.
And before all of that, there was a layoff.
In Part 1 of this four-part First Generation Bowhunter series, Adam Buchanan sits down with BlackOvis and Camofire co-founder Kendall Card to tell the story of how the companies began, how they grew, and the decisions that eventually led the founders to bring private equity into the business.
This isn't the story of the bankruptcy yet.
It's the story of how BlackOvis and Camofire were built in the first place.
Watch Part 1: The BlackOvis and Camofire Story
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The BlackOvis & Camofire Story
This article is Part 1 of a four-part interview with Camofire and BlackOvis co-founder Kendall Card.
Part 1: 17 Years Building a Hunting Company
Part 2: The Price of Private Equity
Part 3: Tug of War
Part 4: Bankruptcy and the Unanticipated Aftermath
The complete series follows the companies from their beginnings through the October 2025 Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.
This is Kendall Card's account of that journey, told from his perspective and recollection.
In Part 1
Adam and Kendall cover:
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How the idea for Camofire began
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Kendall's layoff from Backcountry.com
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Starting a hunting ecommerce business during the 2008 financial crisis
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Why Camofire almost never launched
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The first Camofire sale
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Running the business from a basement and garage
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Growing Camofire through email and word of mouth
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How closeout Sitka inventory helped accelerate the business
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The creation of Core4Element
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Why Core4Element was sold
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How BlackOvis was created
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The beginning of BlackOvis-branded products
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Building relationships throughout the hunting industry
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Growing from a side business into a $30+ million operation
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The personal cost of years of rapid growth
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Why Kendall and Mark began considering outside investment
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The decision to bring private equity into BlackOvis and Camofire
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Why Kendall stayed with the company after the transaction
Camofire Started With a Layoff
The story starts in 2007.
Kendall Card and Mark had worked at Backcountry.com. Kendall was part of the marketing team when he was let go during a round of layoffs.
On the drive home, Kendall called his wife with the bad news.
Then he called Mark.
The conversation eventually turned toward something much bigger:
Let's start a business.
They considered several ideas, including getting surprisingly close to starting a property management company in Park City.
Then Mark brought up another concept.
What if they created something similar to Steep and Cheap, but specifically for hunters?
Kendall's initial reaction?
There probably weren't enough hunters shopping online.
That assumption turned out to be very wrong.
Where Did the Name Camofire Come From?
The philosophy behind the Camofire name was simple.
Don't choose a brand name that limits what the company can eventually become.
Rather than calling the business something generic like "Hunting Discount Store," Kendall and Mark brainstormed names that were memorable but could develop their own identity.
They eventually landed on Camofire.
They bought the domain.
And an idea started becoming a business.
Camofire Almost Never Launched
The company could have ended before its first sale.
Mark's son was born in September 2007 with a serious heart condition, creating an unimaginable situation for his family.
The business was put on pause.
At one point, Mark called Kendall and told him he was shutting the entire thing down.
He needed a job.
He needed to support his family.
He needed to focus on his son.
Kendall hung up the phone believing their business idea was over.
Then his wife challenged him.
Her message, as Kendall remembers it, was essentially this:
If you don't at least try to launch this thing, you'll spend the rest of your life wondering whether it could have worked.
Kendall called Mark back.
They decided to keep going.
Camofire Launched in 2008
Camofire officially launched in October 2008.
The timing sounds terrible.
The United States was in the middle of the financial crisis.
Businesses were struggling.
Unemployment was climbing.
Consumers were nervous.
But for the business model Kendall and Mark were building, those conditions unexpectedly created opportunity.
Outdoor brands and retailers had excess inventory they needed to move.
Camofire was designed to sell exactly that kind of product.
They had stumbled into an unusually good moment to launch a hunting closeout business.
The First Camofire Inventory
This wasn't a venture-backed startup with millions of dollars sitting in a bank account.
Kendall remembers using roughly $5,000 to $7,000 from a tax refund to help buy product.
The inventory was small enough to fit against a wall.
And even that amount of merchandise felt intimidating.
How were they possibly going to sell all of it?
Then the orders started.
The first Camofire customer wasn't even a hunter. She was a friend who bought a camo shirt to support the business.
She also inadvertently discovered one of Camofire's first technical problems.
The website hadn't charged her shipping.
Welcome to ecommerce.
They fixed it and kept moving.
Don't Wait Until Everything Is Perfect
That story illustrates one of the business lessons Kendall repeatedly returns to during the interview.
Launch.
Mark had an ability to push things forward even when every detail wasn't perfect.
Kendall describes himself as naturally wanting things more polished and complete.
Camofire didn't have that luxury.
They had to solve problems while the company was already operating.
Product had to go live.
Orders had to ship.
Software had to work.
Customers needed answers.
Problems were fixed as they appeared.
The business moved forward.
From the Basement to the Garage
Camofire began in a basement.
Then it consumed more of the basement.
Then the garage.
Eventually neighbors walking their dogs would see Kendall and Mark shipping boxes and wonder what exactly was happening inside the house.
It's easy to forget how different ecommerce felt in 2008.
Consumers were still becoming comfortable entering credit card information online.
Fast shipping wasn't an expectation.
Amazon Prime itself was still relatively new.
Camofire focused on getting orders out quickly and taking care of the customers willing to trust this small hunting website with their money.
That trust became one of the company's biggest assets.
Camofire Grew Through Email and Word of Mouth
Camofire didn't have a massive advertising budget.
It didn't need one.
Word of mouth became an enormous growth engine.
Email became another.
Kendall describes attending early hunting expos with one objective:
Get email addresses.
They weren't even focused on selling product at the show.
They wanted hunters to voluntarily join the Camofire email list because they could see a direct relationship between the size of the list and revenue.
Every day, subscribers received the latest deals.
Open rates were strong.
Click-through rates were strong.
Customers shared the site with other hunters.
The audience grew organically.
Kendall also emphasizes that Camofire never bought or sold email addresses and didn't automatically add customers to marketing emails simply because they made a purchase.
Trust mattered.
Relationships Built the Business
Another theme runs throughout Kendall's story:
Relationships are business.
Camofire developed relationships with people throughout the hunting industry who began referring brands with excess inventory to the company.
Those introductions created new opportunities.
One relationship led to another.
One closeout deal led to another.
Eventually, some of those connections became much larger businesses.
Kendall and Mark weren't necessarily building those relationships because they expected a future payoff.
They were trying to be good partners.
The opportunities followed.
The Financial Crisis Created Camofire's Opportunity
The 2008 financial crisis was devastating for many businesses.
But it created an unusual inventory environment.
Retailers struggled.
Orders were canceled.
Brands were left holding merchandise.
Sportsman's Warehouse went through bankruptcy proceedings.
Suddenly there was a significant amount of hunting inventory that needed somewhere to go.
Camofire became one of those places.
The business gradually developed a reputation as an outlet capable of moving excess hunting inventory quickly.
Then came one of the relationships that helped change everything.
Sitka Helped Propel Camofire's Growth
Early Sitka Gear looked considerably different from the brand hunters know today.
At one point, Sitka was producing apparel in traditional camouflage patterns including Realtree and Mossy Oak.
According to Kendall, Cabela's had committed to taking a large amount of that inventory and later declined to take it.
That left Sitka with a major inventory problem.
Camofire started buying what it could.
And hunters ate it up.
Some Sitka deals sold out extremely early in the morning.
Demand became so intense that Camofire started creating additional sale opportunities around the inventory.
Kendall describes sitting at his desk late at night manually loading products, writing descriptions and pushing deals live.
Sometimes he literally fell asleep at the desk.
The business was growing faster than the systems behind it.
Customer Service Became a Competitive Advantage
The early Camofire model created another strange problem.
A customer might place several orders over the course of a weekend because new deals continually appeared.
Each order generated its own shipping charge.
Customers started asking whether Camofire could simply combine everything into one box and refund the extra shipping.
So Kendall did it.
Manually.
He would work through orders, calculate actual shipping costs and issue refunds.
It wasn't efficient.
It was simply the way they believed customers should be treated.
That philosophy helped create the kind of loyalty most brands would love to have.
Core4Element Entered the Picture
As demand for certain camouflage patterns remained strong, Kendall and Mark saw another opportunity.
They started their own hunting apparel company called Core4Element.
The brand gave them an in-house product line and helped fill demand that wasn't being met elsewhere.
Now they were juggling multiple businesses.
Camofire was growing.
Core4Element was growing.
And another concept was sitting on the sidelines waiting for attention.
BlackOvis.
Why Was BlackOvis Created?
Camofire had a very specific purpose:
Deals and closeouts.
But Kendall and Mark wanted to become better retail partners to hunting brands.
They didn't want their relationship with a brand to exist only when that company had old inventory it needed to liquidate.
They wanted the ability to sell current, full-price products too.
Trying to mix those products into Camofire risked confusing the entire reason Camofire existed.
So they developed a separate retail concept.
BlackOvis.
The name referenced Ovis, the genus associated with sheep, and the idea of the black sheep: doing things a little differently.
Selling Core4Element Helped Launch BlackOvis
There was one major problem.
They were trying to do too much.
Camofire required focus.
Core4Element required focus.
BlackOvis required focus.
Eventually Easton approached them about buying Core4Element.
Kendall and Mark initially weren't interested.
Then Easton essentially made the point that everything has a price.
So Kendall and Mark threw out a number they thought was high.
Easton still wanted the company.
They sold Core4Element and decided to concentrate on two businesses that fit naturally together:
Camofire for closeouts.
BlackOvis for traditional retail.
BlackOvis was officially off and running.
BlackOvis Became a Western Hunting Retailer
BlackOvis began growing into a specialized western big-game hunting retailer.
The company carried brands such as Sitka and other products designed for western hunters.
It also began developing BlackOvis-branded products.
Because of a non-compete associated with the Core4Element sale, the early BlackOvis apparel assortment was limited.
But they could still produce certain products, including merino base layers.
Those products offered better margins and gave the company more control over pricing and product development.
Over time, the BlackOvis brand itself became a much bigger part of the business.
Camofire and BlackOvis Grew Without Chasing a Giant Payday
There's an important distinction in Kendall's story.
For years, there wasn't some massive exit number written on a whiteboard.
Kendall says his original ambition was much simpler:
Could this business replace his income?
Could he work for himself?
Could he create something he owned?
As the companies grew, the goalposts kept moving without Kendall and Mark necessarily sitting down and deciding where the finish line was.
Eventually they were running a business doing tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue.
But there still wasn't necessarily an agreed-upon destination.
They kept growing because that's what they had always done.
One of the Biggest Business Lessons: Know What You Want
Looking back, Kendall identifies this as one of his biggest lessons.
He and Mark didn't regularly stop and ask each other:
What do you want from this business?
What does success look like to you?
How big do we actually want this company to become?
When do we want to leave?
What happens if one of us wants something different?
Those questions matter because people's lives change.
Families change.
Responsibilities change.
Priorities change.
What a founder wants from a business at 30 may be very different from what that same founder wants at 45.
Kendall believes those conversations should have happened more often.
Growth Has a Personal Cost
By 2020 and 2021, BlackOvis and Camofire were operating at an entirely different scale.
The companies had dozens of employees.
Revenue had grown dramatically.
COVID drove more consumers outdoors, and the business performed extremely well through the surge.
But growth came with a cost.
Kendall reflects openly on the amount of time he gave the business and the effect that had on his family.
There were periods when work came first.
Hunting and other personal pursuits sometimes came second.
Family could end up third or fourth.
Those are years and moments he can't get back.
At the same time, the sheer complexity of managing a larger company was increasing.
The founders had built something successful.
They were also tired.
Why Did BlackOvis Bring in Private Equity?
By 2021, potential buyers were calling.
For years, Kendall and Mark had essentially told interested investors they weren't for sale.
This time felt different.
They were managing roughly 45 to 50 employees.
The companies had grown dramatically.
Their lives had changed.
And the risk was substantial.
When much of your financial life is tied to one company, taking some money off the table can become attractive even if you still believe strongly in the business.
Kendall describes it as de-risking.
It also offered another possibility.
Mark and Kendall had separately helped build the North American Crispi business.
Kendall had become increasingly energized by building something smaller and faster again.
He was learning something about himself:
He loved building.
Managing a large organization wasn't necessarily what he wanted to spend the rest of his career doing.
The Private Equity Vision Was Much Bigger
There's an important difference between what the founders appeared to want and what outside investors saw.
BlackOvis and Camofire had grown from essentially zero to more than $30 million in annual revenue.
Private equity looked at that trajectory and saw the possibility of something much larger.
Could this become a $100 million business?
Kendall wasn't nearly as convinced.
He had spent more than a decade building the companies.
He understood how difficult that growth had been.
And by that point, simply growing for the sake of growing wasn't necessarily what he wanted.
That difference in perspective becomes important as the story continues.
Kendall Stayed With BlackOvis and Camofire
The eventual transaction wasn't a simple sale where the founders handed over the keys and walked away.
Kendall and Mark had been equal 44.5% owners before the deal, alongside smaller minority shareholders.
Kendall reduced his ownership only slightly, from 44.5% to 40%.
Mark sold a much larger portion of his ownership.
The private equity investors received control of the company despite Kendall and Mark collectively retaining more than 50% of the shares.
According to Kendall, their attorney warned them that the arrangement was unusual.
But Kendall accepted it.
Part of the reason was deeply personal.
A Decision Between Friends and Business Partners
Mark's son had lived with a serious heart condition since birth and eventually used a wheelchair.
The family's existing home was filled with stairs and wasn't well suited to his needs.
The transaction gave Mark the ability to step away from BlackOvis and Camofire, focus on Crispi and build an ADA-accessible home for his family.
Kendall stayed behind.
He believed that's what a friend and business partner should do.
But there was something he didn't clearly communicate.
His heart wasn't necessarily in BlackOvis anymore either.
If Kendall could have freely chosen between staying at BlackOvis and returning to the smaller, growing Crispi business, he says he would have chosen Crispi.
He just didn't tell Mark that clearly.
Instead, Kendall stayed.
He rolled nearly all of his ownership back into the company.
And he committed to working with the new private equity ownership.
The Stage Was Set for What Came Next
This is where Part 1 ends.
Camofire had grown from a basement startup launched during the financial crisis into a major hunting ecommerce business.
BlackOvis had grown alongside it into a respected western hunting retailer.
The founders had built multiple brands, created jobs, developed deep industry relationships and grown the businesses to more than $30 million in annual revenue.
Now the structure had changed.
Outside investors had control.
One founder was largely stepping away.
The other was staying in a company he wasn't sure he wanted to stay in.
And the new ownership believed there was significantly more growth ahead.
That's where Part 2 begins.
FAQ's
Who founded Camofire?
Camofire was founded by Kendall Card and Mark after developing the idea for an online hunting flash-sale business in 2007. The company officially launched in October 2008.
Why was Camofire created?
The original idea was to build a hunting-focused ecommerce business similar to flash-sale and closeout websites that were becoming popular at the time. Camofire specialized in limited-time hunting gear deals and excess inventory.
When did Camofire launch?
Camofire officially launched in October 2008 during the financial crisis.
How did Camofire grow?
Camofire grew heavily through word of mouth, email marketing, customer loyalty and relationships with hunting brands that needed to move excess inventory. Opportunities involving Sitka and other major hunting brands helped accelerate the company's growth.
Why was BlackOvis created?
BlackOvis was created so the company could sell current, inline hunting products without changing Camofire's closeout-focused identity. This allowed the business to become a more traditional retail partner to hunting brands.
What was Core4Element?
Core4Element was a hunting apparel brand created by Kendall Card and Mark while they were building Camofire. They later sold the brand to Easton and focused their attention on Camofire and BlackOvis.
How big did BlackOvis and Camofire become?
According to Kendall in the interview, the businesses eventually grew to more than $30 million in annual revenue and employed roughly 45 to 50 people around the period when outside investment was being considered.
Why did BlackOvis and Camofire bring in private equity?
The founders had spent more than a decade building the companies and were dealing with the complexity and personal demands of managing a much larger organization. Outside investment offered an opportunity to reduce personal financial risk, change responsibilities and potentially accelerate future growth.
Did Kendall Card sell BlackOvis and leave the company?
No. Kendall says he reduced his ownership from approximately 44.5% to 40% and remained with BlackOvis and Camofire after the transaction. The private equity investors received control of the business as part of the deal.
What 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' beginnings through the private equity transaction and the events that eventually led to the bankruptcy.
Continue with Part 2: The Price of Private Equity
Watch Part 2 Here
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First Generation Bowhunter tells the stories, lessons and realities of bowhunting and the outdoor industry through conversations with hunters, founders and industry leaders.
Hosted by Adam Buchanan, the show is built around learning as you go, asking the questions other hunters may be afraid to ask and sharing the experiences behind the people and brands in hunting.
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