Bass Pro Shops Brand Guidelines: The Outdoor Cathedral, Johnny Morris & Cabela’s

Bass Pro made stores a wild-outdoors attraction.

Bass Pro Shops is a lesson in turning a store into a destination. It was founded in 1972 by Johnny Morris — a former professional bass angler — starting with just 8 square feet of space in the back of his father’s liquor store in Springfield, Missouri. That tiny fishing-tackle section, plus a mail-order catalog from 1974, grew into a giant outdoor-retail empire. The genius wasn’t just the products; it was the idea that a store could be a place to visit, an attraction in its own right. (Honest caveats: no official brand hex or wordmark typeface is published, so the colours and type here are approximate.)

Bass Pro is defined by its cathedral-scale, immersive “Outdoor World” megastores — vast lodges filled with aquariums, waterfalls, indoor ponds, log-cabin architecture, taxidermy and restaurants. The most extraordinary example is the Memphis Pyramid (opened 2015): a 32-story store inside a giant pyramid, complete with the Big Cypress Lodge hotel, huge aquariums, a cypress swamp, one of the world’s tallest freestanding elevators and a glass-floored observation deck. The Springfield flagship and the adjacent Wonders of Wildlife museum and aquarium (2017) round out the destination model. This is experiential retail at its most ambitious.

In 2017, Bass Pro acquired its main rival, Cabela’s — a deal that closed at about $4.5 billion (revised down from a ~$5.5 billion announcement), making the two long-time competitors one company. On ownership, Bass Pro is privately held and founder-owned by Johnny Morris (under Bass Pro Group / the Great American Outdoors Group, which also holds Cabela’s and White River Marine). The identity leans hard into nature: a leaping largemouth bass on an oval, in a woodland green-brown-and-gold palette. A brand where the store is the experience.

Bass Pro lives in outdoor greens and browns. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Bass Pro Shops’ palette is drawn straight from nature — woodland hunter green, warm lodge brown and a bass-yellow/gold accent, plus red touches in the logo. The greens and browns evoke forests, lodges and the great outdoors, perfectly matching the immersive log-cabin-and-aquarium store experience, while the gold adds warmth and a retro, sporting feel. It’s an earthy, rugged, outdoorsy scheme that makes the brand feel like a cabin in the woods rather than a big-box store. The honest caveat: Bass Pro publishes no official public brand hex — the greens, browns and gold here are observed approximations, not a confirmed spec.

The lesson is a palette drawn from the environment. Bass Pro’s greens and browns come straight from the outdoors it celebrates, making the whole brand feel authentic and immersive. For designers, it’s a reminder that an environment-based palette can transport and immerse. The takeaways: pull colours from the world your brand belongs to (forest greens and lodge browns for the outdoors); add a warm accent for retro sporting character (gold); and treat specific hexes as approximate when no official spec is published.

The wordmark is a heavy, retro slab — rugged and sporting.

Bass Pro Shops’ heavy, retro slab-style wordmark is rugged and sporting — bold, chunky, characterful letters that feel like a vintage outdoor-sports badge, matching a brand built on fishing, hunting and the great outdoors. The retro heft signals heritage, ruggedness and authenticity rather than modern minimalism, and it pairs naturally with the leaping-bass logo and the woodland palette. It looks like it belongs on a lodge sign or an old tackle box — exactly the timeless, outdoorsy character Bass Pro owns. (Because the exact lettering is a custom display face and undocumented, the honest description is “a heavy, retro slab,” not a named font.) The type behaves like the brand: rugged, sporting and timeless.

Bass Pro made the store the attraction.

Bass Pro Shops is a lesson in making the retail experience the brand. In an age when anyone can buy fishing gear online, Bass Pro built stores so immersive — waterfalls, aquariums, a giant pyramid — that people drive hours to visit them, turning shopping into a family destination and a conservation showcase. That experiential strategy is the whole brand: the products matter, but the feeling of being in an outdoor cathedral is what people remember and return for. Combined with an authentic, nature-drawn identity and the Cabela’s acquisition, it built a dominant outdoor-retail empire. The experience is the marketing.

For designers and brand-builders, Bass Pro offers a clear takeaway: an immersive experience can be a brand’s most powerful, un-copyable asset. The lessons: make the environment itself the brand (the Outdoor World megastores); draw the identity from the world you celebrate (woodland greens, a leaping bass, a rugged slab wordmark); and turn shopping into a destination people seek out. It’s also a reminder to keep the facts precise — Bass Pro was founded in 1972 by Johnny Morris in the back of his father’s Springfield, Missouri liquor store, is famous for immersive Outdoor World stores (including the Memphis Pyramid), acquired Cabela’s in 2017 (closing at about $4.5 billion), and is privately held and founder-owned. Bass Pro made experience the brand — proof that an immersive destination can be an unbeatable asset.

Keep Bass Pro Shops’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.