SOMERSET, Ky. — A southern Kentucky community welcomed a full-line fishing tackle distribution facility in late October.
Gov. Andy Beshear, along with Pitman Creek leaders, unveiled the new headquarters in Lincoln County. But how the company started in a basement, is the journey told best by a Somerset couple.
What You Need To Know
- Pitman Creek unveiled the new headquarters in Lincoln County
- The company started in a basement by former owners
- Original founders Don and Marella Stevens say they began by making custom fishing lures
- Now, Pitman Creek distributes for more than 5,000 retail stores
"Sold a lot of those. Spooks. These are old spooks. Sold a lot of those," said Don Stevens, former owner and founder of Pitman Creek while he reminisces using objects from his tackle boxes.
It's nostalgia for Stevens.
"Right here's I don't know whether they still make those or not. it’s a killer B-2 and we use to sell a lot of those. They were made by Bagley," Stevens said.
He was looking through one of the several boxes full of bait. But the one he's using stores the original custom-made lure.
"Single blade spinnerbait, which is that one that's for fishing deeper when you want go down deeper," Stevens said.
He and his wife Marella created their company in the basement of their first home in Somerset.
"I work usually worked till they all closed and then I drive back home. and what I didn't have on the truck, we would ship out, ship it back to them the next day so we worked two o'clock in the morning getting everything ready for shipping the next day," Stevens said.
He put a lot of miles on the road those days when they started Pitman Creek in 1978.
"There were a lot of days she would sell more I would be on the road and her in the warehouse people calling in for wanting orders you know," Stevens said about Marella.
She explained the process 40 years ago involved handwriting the orders as they went along.
"I don’t know, we just unloading trucks and taking phone calls and traveling with him to go the different places," Marella said.
In 1993, the Stevens sold Pitman Creek to James Coffey, who moved the location to Stanford, Ky.
"Yea I told him (James) when he bought it there was plenty of business out there, all he had to do was work for it, and he has," Stevens said.
Today, Pitman Creek has grown, becoming a full-line tackle distributor for more than 5,000 retail stores across the U.S. and 10 countries.
"It’s hard to realize from where it started to where it's at now," Stevens said.
With the recent grand opening, the company also announced 60 additional new jobs were coming to the area.
"When he bought us, I’d say we was probably selling 75, 7,500, or 75,000 to a million dollars a year and now he does that in a day," Stevens said.
Pitman Creek said they contribute to the more than 600 logistics and distribution facilities employing nearly 86,000 people statewide.