A Chat With David Isham, president/CEO, National Roper’s Supply

Our philosophy was if you wanted free shipping with your order, just buy six ropes. You could buy whatever else you wanted as well, but if you bought six ropes, shipping on the whole order was free. We also guaranteed the ropes. We guaranteed the ropes we shipped had never been uncoiled or swung by another person. If you walked into a typical tack store and went to the rope section, you’d find all these ropes opened up and lying around because guys were swinging them. That lowers a buyer’s confidence level, seeing that someone else had already swung the rope and rejected it. So I would guarantee that no one else had swung the rope, and our customer would be the first person to touch it. And then I included a postage-paid return shipping label so if he didn’t like any of the ropes, he could slap the label on a box and ship it right back. Those things put our customers at ease, taking the risk out of mail order.