Even though it was 70 years ago, John M. Wise Sr. still remembers exactly how he felt when he was asked to join his wife’s family’s business in Luverne, which traces its beginnings all the way back to 1902.
At the time, in the mid-1950s, Steve H. Hicks ran a company that had evolved from a general store catering to the needs of farmers and their families. An offshoot venture focused on an outdoor activity that was flourishing in popularity and also happened to be something else that Wise had in common with his new boss other than the man’s daughter, Lilellen.
“Mr. Hicks wanted me to join him in this little fishing tackle business that he’d started, and I thought that was about the coolest thing you could do, because I loved to fish,” says Wise. “He was a great fly fisherman, so we had really hit it off when I had first met his daughter.”
Wise joined the company, now called Hicks Inc., at a time when there was a spirited demand for fishing gear, in part because of a recent innovation that made the sport more accessible. Just a few years earlier, an Oklahoma company had started manufacturing a game-changing fishing reel known as the Zebco 33. The new spincast design was simple to use and much less prone to those unexpected tangles in the fishing line that could bring the joy of fishing to an aggravating halt.
“All you had to do was push a button and make your cast, and there was no ‘backlash,’” says Wise. “So now, everybody could fish; it really opened it up to a lot more people, including children and women.”
At age 91, Wise serves as chairman and CFO of a company that has grown to become a leading distributor of fishing and hunting supplies. His son, John M. Wise Jr., helped to modernize their approach when he came aboard in 1980 and is now president and CEO. With their many decades of experience in the wholesale end of the business, they’ve seen countless trends come and go that have influenced how several generations of people enjoy their time outdoors.
For years, the elder Wise says, hardware stores had been the only retail outlets for fishing gear, but his father-in-law and other entrepreneurs in the region saw opportunities to do a better job of merchandising the equipment and supplies.
He credits his son with later leading the company into the computer era and also for building a team of inside-sales representatives working the phones rather than relying on traveling salesmen hitting the roads. The company has pretty consistently employed around 50 people, says John Wise Jr., and has a current staff of 55.
“Five of them are our road guys and 17 are our inside-sales people, and we’ve got 33 office and warehouse people,” he says. The five “road guys” live in South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Minnesota.
The younger Wise explains that most of their competitors focus on gear and accessories for either fishing or hunting, but usually not both.
“When I came here in 1980, there were maybe 25 distributors that handled fishing tackle and shooting sports, and now there are probably not five of us across the United States (that have both),” he says. “We’re sort of a hybrid between both of them, I guess you might say.”
Hicks Tackle Co. was the first national distributor for Zebco in those early days, and in the years since it’s been almost a rite of passage for kids to start out with an easy-to-use and dependable Zebco rod-and-reel combo, which has the additional allure of being relatively inexpensive. Though it has always been a consistent seller, it is among thousands of products, of both domestic and foreign origin, that the Wises provide to retailers nationwide.
The highly popular Shimano fishing reels are made in Japan, Malaysia and Thailand, for instance, but numerous suppliers are located in Alabama. Tru-Turn, the famous manufacturer of fishing hooks, is based in Wetumpka, just north of Montgomery, as one example. Other associated firms include a rod producer called Duckett Fishing, in Guntersville, while Frogg Toggs turns out its rainwear and waders in nearby Arab. In addition, Pradco Outdoor Brands has its headquarters in Birmingham for its hunting lines that include Moultrie, Summit and Texas Hunter Products.
In the Wises’ line of work, there are always new and exciting products on the market, and one effective way they get the word out to retailers is through trade shows that they typically host twice a year.
“We’ll have 100 to 200 manufacturers there showing their products, and we’ll have between 150 and 200 of our customers coming in to wherever we have the show,” says John Wise Jr. They have held the events at the Renaissance Montgomery Hotel & Spa at the Convention Center, he says, and also at locations in Huntsville and Destin, Florida. In recent years, the casino hotels in Biloxi, Mississippi, have fit the bill. “Once you check in, you never have to leave,” he says. “You can eat there and sleep there and they have entertainment there, so that’s really the best setup for us.”
Along with a detailed timeline of the company history, Wise’s father offers a rundown on how their center of operations has evolved into a sprawling space of about 100,000 square feet. Just a few blocks from the historic Hicks Mercantile building, the current office began its life in 1956 as a two-story structure that measured 100 feet by 29 feet. His father-in-law had figured that would be all the space the company would ever need, but it’s kept growing — and has room to grow some more.
“About six years after he passed (in 1960), I added another building that was 30 by 100, two stories,” says Wise Sr., “and then, four or five years later, I added another building that was 50 by 150. We just continued to add to our building as time went on, and now we’ve used up nearly everything we’ve got in the way of land, and we purchased the block across the street from us for the future, if we decide we want to do anything else.”
If they do, there are others from younger generations who are contributing to their Alabama business legacy that has stretched for well over a century. Now John Sr.’s grandchildren, Cole Wise and Klein Jones, are part of the business — Wise for about eight years and Jones for six years.
“We’ve got two of the family that are in position to help us, and they’re doing a great job,” says John M. Wise Sr. “The Lord has really blessed us.”
Jim Hannaford and Stew Milne are freelance contributors for Business Alabama. Hannaford is based in Foley and Milne in Auburn.
This article appears in the August 2026 issue of Business Alabama.
