Wren & Ivy article in Winter 2021 issue of Porch + Prairie Magazine

WINTER ESCAPES

www.porchprairiemag.com

Volume 2 • 4

Faith, Family, and More Than a Few Feathers Photos courtesy of Wren & Ivy

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BC and Kim Rogers have simply done it right. Good-hearted folk with great souls, thankful for every moment they get to spend in the great outdoors. They grew up hunting and were practically born with either a duck call or a gun in their hands, but more than that, they base each day on their faith in the Lord, and their commitment to raising their children in the outdoors and sporting life.

Growing up in Mississippi, the opening of each iteration of hunting season comes with its own unique sense of excitement and for decades, those season openers have been circled on the calendars of BC and Kim. Dove season in September? That means the sunflowers needed tending all Summer long.

Deer season in October? The food plots are primed and ready to go, eager for the family to climb the ladder and sit for hours patiently in a blind for Mr. Big to show up.

Duck season in December? The Rogers family puts on the waders and piles into the blind, carefully taking note of every cupped wing that drops into the timber.

And turkey season in the Spring? Well, I think the gentle cuts, clucks, and gobbles become the primary language of the whole family.

This is a hunting family, stretching back generations in Mississippi, right in the heart of some of the country’s most prime waterfowling zones. The family at the center of it belongs to BC and Kim Rogers, who together with their children, bring the bonds of family to whatever hunting adventure comes next. Like most of the South, their ability to enjoy the best of the outdoors comes with a

nod to the man upstairs and a genuine appreciation for the life and world He provides.

That life includes many great things--- each other (the pair has been married for 11 years), their children, their love for the outdoors, the journey they get to enjoy, and Wren & Ivy, a lifestyle brand founded on the premise that classic hunting gear and goods are best paired with modern advancements and technical additions.

Those augmentations to classic pieces make them the essential field and travel gear for the sportsman who wants to pay homage to his sporting roots no matter if he is in the office, at the airport, knee deep in the Mississippi mud, or anywhere in between.

The story is incredible and speaks glowingly of the American spirit and the ingenuity of the American craftsman that BC is. We sat down with him during a rare chaos-free moment to talk about all things family, hunting, his company, and the lessons he hopes his children glean from a life spent in the outdoors.

P+P: So BC Rogers, this is nothing new for you because you grew up hunting, yes?

BCR: I did grow up hunting. I come from a hunting family.

Actually, my mother these days hunts probably more days of duck season in my dad. My mom and dad were always hunting together and that's how my sister and I were raised, and then when I marry my wife Kim, I was able to introduce her to waterfowling. She grew up in a deer hunting family with a little bit of bird hunting too, but then she came to just fell in love with it like so many of us. She and I spent a lot of time duck hunting and turkey hunting.

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P+P: You grew up right in the heart of it all, Mississippi, as far as waterfowl hunters are concerned. What was that like for a young duck hunter?

weird life experiences that made me able to be the guy who knows how to do it but I didn’t try to become that guy.

P+P: What was Serial #1 from Wren & Ivy?

BCR: Growing up on the Mississippi Flyway and having my family be from Greenwood, which is sort of one of the centers of waterfowling for Mississippi, I didn't know what being here meant for ducks in the beginning because I grew up in it. It was just sort of something that me and my family did so I didn't have that experience of, “oh wow, I'm getting to grow up in this waterfowl Mecca.” It’s really just all I ever knew.

P+P: You get to live the brand everyday and take the products you make into the field with you for your hunts. For the journey as the CEO, how do you look back on the history of Wren & Ivy? BCR: Yea, CEO and Head Toilet Cleaner as well!!!! I didn’t start Wren & Ivy because I thought I was starting a company, I started Wren & Ivy because I built a bag for myself and people really liked it, so I built some more bags and people like those too. I know it looks like I had a plan but I didn’t. Wren is our daughter and Ivy is our son and the only reason we named it Wren & Ivy is because I was just naming that particular bag. The whole thing started as a hobby and it took off. I mean, its been a huge blessing but by no means did I start out saying that I was going to have a leather and canvas sporting travel line--- that’s just not how it worked. God put me in these

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BCR: The first bag is called the Heirloom Ditty bag and its still on the lineup now. I grew up and my father used a bag that we called a “ditty bag” and he used one by a company called Gokey’s, which at the time was its own company, and then we used another brand, and then the Filson version of that. I loved all three of those bags but coincidentally, all of those companies either went out of business or stopped making that bag, so I couldn’t find that bag. Here was the end of life for my great bag, so I just made a replacement for it. The difference is that we wanted a bit more functionality that we put into it.

P+P: And that product was different how?

BCR: There’s a lot of people that make really nice, well-made canvas buckets but they don’t have a lot of specific pockets for what you really need in the field, so that’s what we tried to do and tried to do throughout the line. That transitioned into travel also. I want a classic look with modern functionality. There a lot of guys that want a bag that looks like it was their grandfather’s but they need to have a place to put their laptop, they need a place to put their chargers and water bottles and all those things that didn’t exist 100 years ago.

P+P: To create a great product has to start with great materials meant to last and stand the test of time of course, no?

P+P: Where do you think Wren & Ivy is on its path as a brand? If I asked 0 through 100, where do you think you are on the timeline?

BCR: Absolutely. We took our “outside” materials, which are the very traditional materials of bridle leather and waxed canvas, mixed with solid brass hardware and solid brass zippers. On the insides of the bags, we use a lot of very modern materials like Velcro and pack cloth so there is a nice bridge for the corporate officer walking into the office but it has a certain look that says something about who they are outside of the office. So many of us have a lot of pride in our outdoors stewardship that we want to represent that in our day-to-day life.

BCR: I’d say 6. People ask me all the time where I come up with ideas for things and what the next thing I am going to build is. It’s actually the last thing I worry about. At this point, 7 years in, it feels like I have an unlimited number of things that I would like to build. Right now, we are finalizing our collection and there are eight pieces I’d love to go to market with but my guess is that only five will make it. We build it, we prototype it, and if its perfect then we will put it out, we push it to the next year. Last year we released a product for us that’s been really great called The Distiller’s Travel

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Case that was prototyped in year 2 of the company and then kept doing prototypes until we got it perfect.

P+P: It’s no doubt that having your wife and family next to you in the field is one of the things you value the most. Describe that experience a bit for us, if you will.

BCR: Kim has been hunting ducks 20 plus days for 13 years.

Compared to most waterfowlers, she is pretty darn experienced at this point. Its been amazing to take the kids hunting with us and its been great having the ability to go to a place that is kid-friendly. But taking the kids hunting is not so much me as it is my parents. They raised me and took me at that age, so now I have the template of what that should look like from my own experience.

P+P: Your folks clearly have made their mark on how to raise children the right way and to appreciate the outdoors more. How has that translated into your time afield with Kim, Wren, and Ivy? BCR: Even though I grew up doing that with them, what I’ve learned is that their sacrifice and what they did is very rewarding.

It’s worth every bit of it. It’s a lot more work to go out and take your kids. It’s not that much work to go out and take your wife when she is pretty darn good. But it’s a lot of work to take your kids and absolutely worth the extra effort at this stage in their life and for them to learn what we want them to take away from the experience the most.

P+P: At the core of all of you and your family’s experiences is your relationship with God and your appreciation for the gifts he has helped see you to. Out in the field, do you often think about the journey He has led you on?

BCR: When you spend time in God’s creation, it brings you closer to Him. When we spoke with a marketing firm a bunch of years ago, they told us we needed some hashtags for social media. Truthfully, I had to ask someone what that even was, but after that, we came up with “Our Other Church” to represent our life in the woods and it has really rung true for us being that we feel closest to God when we are in His creation. I feel like without beating their head over the way I feel about my salvation, it is a gentle way of showing them where we are in the grand scheme of things. The more time we spend outdoors, the more you realize how small we are in the world and I hope they pick up on that.

Me and my father have a wonderful relationship and one of the reasons for that is that when you put a gun in a young person’s hands, you have to be an adult. You quickly become one of the men, or one of the women, so my father and I spent a lot of time where I wasn’t in some ways his subordinate—we were hunting buddies. I think it changes the relationship you have with your children for the better when you do that.

P+P: How do you maintain the authenticity of the hunt at a time where it seems that everyone is on Instagram and trying that “keep up with the Jones” mentality?

it. I am passionate about it. So, we try to not to be “He-Man, the Duck Killer.” I am lucky enough to hunt with guys who are great duck hunters but we don’t consider ourselves the know-all to duck hunting. I don’t think that needs to be part of it in order to enjoy duck hunting like I do.

P+P: You don’t seem to care if you kill 10 ducks or if you only kill 2… is that right?

BCR: Many of my friends will tell you--- I want to go duck hunting. If we kill ducks, that’s secondary. I don’t keep up with how many ducks I kill a year but I do keep up with how many days I get to go. It’s funny because I’ve actually had to put a pretty fine point on that because people ask me questions about it, but I was doing that before they were asking questions.

P+P: In a world driven by social media of who does what and needs to post about it, you’ve kept life relatively simple--- showcase you and great people just out enjoying their time together. Kill ducks, don’t kill ducks… it doesn’t matter. Does being the “influencer” ever matter to you?

BCR: It goes back to authenticity a bit. I’m not cool enough to be “that guy” or some kind of Instagram hero. I knew I wasn’t cool enough to be that guy so people would see right through it anyways.

I wasn’t faced with a challenge of “man, I really want to make myself look cool” because I knew they weren’t going to buy it. I just want to be who I am and if that’s okay, that’s okay. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I can’t do anything about it.

P+P: You’ve seen a lot of this country, but has there been that one dream trip you’re wanting to go on more than others?

BCR: A dream trip though would be Europe. I’ve always wanted to go hunt in Europe and go do a driven pheasant hunt in Europe.

I think it would really cool to go where it kind of all started, but I’ve been able to do some neat things in the past – I’ve hunted Canada to Mexico for ducks--- but then there are these legendary waterfowl spots like the Chesapeake Bay or even California. California has a higher mallard count than we do in Mississippi and they have a lot more days of duck season but it’s hard because they don’t have a lot of public land waterfowl. You need to know somebody because they don’t have a lot of guided hunts in the area with most of the hunting being clubs on private land. Just outside of the vineyards are the best spots.

P+P: In closing, hardest question of the day--- ducks or turkeys?

BCR: My favorite thing to hunt is ducks, but chasing turkeys is a close second. In fact, if you ask me that question in February I might just say turkeys, but here we are before duck season and its ducks.

BCR: I try with much help from Kim to show our followers and our customers who we are. I don’t consider myself the world’s greatest duck hunter, or caller, or dog trainer, or shot, but I do love PORCH + PRAIRIE magazine | WINTER 2021 - 97

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