Bill Fenimore calls himself a “born-again person.” His sighting of a Black-billed Magpie as a child sparked his love for birds. Decades later, after retiring from his job in corporate America, Fenimore returned to his old hobby.

He purchased the Wild Bird Center franchise in Layton, Utah, just outside of Ogden and a 30 minute drive north of Salt Lake City.

A birder all his life, Fenimore turned his love of birds and nature into a profitable business that educates the public, equips the hard-core hobbyist and welcomes the backyard birder. In September, Fenimore was awarded the International Franchise Association’s Franchisee of the Year award for his business.

"Bill enthusiastically adopted our business development program to grow his business and is now one of the top three, high-growth stores in our franchise," Wild Bird Centers of America CEO Henrik Lehmann Weng said.

Starting Out

"I wanted to be very diverse and appeal to everyone," Fenimore said. "Through birds, you can learn so much environmentally.”

And he speaks from experience.

Fenimore was drawn to birds at a young age by his mother, who often fed the birds in the family’s backyard during the winter. Memories of pressing his nose against a cold window to watch the colorful winged-wonders converge in his backyard to peck for seed moved Fenimore, 62, to create a place that would further an avid birder’s desire without scaring away a newly-smitten one.

Once Fenimore decided he wanted to devote his retirement years to birds, he also decided to buy a franchise. He wasn’t a retailer.

The only part about shopping he understood was being a traveling hanger for the cluster of shopping bags accumulated by his wife at the mall. He needed guidance on how to find lenders and distributors and figured that following a proven business model was the best way to go.

His target audience being women, Fenimore had to carry items that would appeal to them. He didn’t have the foggiest idea how.

He found his window to the world of women at conferences where other birding-business owners gathered to exchange ideas.

His natural charm and honest enthusiasm for birding made it easy for him to befriend a few female business owners who taught him about the colors, textures and trends that would draw women into the Wild Bird Center and send them out with lighter wallets.

Another factor bringing bodies into the store’s double doors was location. Nestled in a concrete jungle among retail giants such as Old Navy and Barnes & Noble, his sign “Wild Bird Center” had piqued the curiosity of many people looking for parakeets, he said.

But after having to turn away many exotic-bird seekers, slowly but surely, business began to pick up.

Out of curiosity, Fenimore instructed his employees to ask people how they found out about the place. He was stunned to find out that about 70 percent had been referred by other customers.

"It just reinforces that we are doing things right," Fenimore said.

Business Decisions

The key isn’t just to win over customers but to win over their spouses and families. Many of Fenimore’s customers are birders while their spouses are not.

Many of his customers’ spouses actually hate birdseed — his top seller — because they want pristine lawns and deplore the seedlings that often spill into the grass and sprout into unsightly weeds.

That kind of annoyance could lead the spouse to put “the kibosh” on any repeat business Fenimore may have hoped to get from the customer.

Since that discovery, Fenimore decided to carry the non-sprouting kind and the result has been a success.

Part of keeping up his image of being “the Nordstrom of nature stores” means Fenimore is constantly encouraging a business-wide culture of excellent customer care, knowledge of products and knowing when to tell his customers to simply go to Wal-Mart.

Yep, he actually turns people away.

At the store, which he runs with his partner and son Billy, it’s about cultivating a relationship with a customer. If the customer is looking for a cheap birdfeeder and an enormous bag of $5 birdseed mixed with fillers, he directs them to a store with a bird aisle.

"That’s not our customer and not the type of person we want to cultivate," Fenimore said.

Continuing Education

Fenimore’s fascination with birds and nature doesn’t end when the shop closes. In fact, not only does Fenimore regularly go bird watching and lead bird walks while continuing to log his rare bird sightings in his book more than 700 species thick, but he also educates his customers with events at the store.

Teaching customers to encourage a bird habitat instead of just feeding birds is his goal. A nature lover, Fenimore has even helped create bird habitats on the roofs of buildings in downtown Salt Lake City.

While trying to stock his store with books for the casual birder, Fenimore only found lengthy books that would be overwhelming to a layperson. He couldn’t find just a regular birding guide.

So he wrote it. He’ll eventually write one book for each state in the U.S., listing each state’s top 25 birds. He’s on book number nine.

Fenimore is also the host of a morning radio show and regular nature columnist in the Salt Lake Tribune.

"I’m a business man too, so I am not a crazy tree-hugger," Fenimore jokes. "You can be pragmatic without being nuts."

One of Our Own

We usually do not write about our own contributors. But it has been an award- winning year for Bill Fenimore, who writes the Customer Service 911 column each issue.

In addition to being named Franchisee of the Year by the International Franchise Association, Fenimore also won two prestigious national awards: The Roger Tory Peterson Nature Education Achievement Award from the Roger Tory Peterson Institute and the Ludlow Griscom Award for Outstanding Contributions to Regional Ornithology from the American Birding Association.— Mitch Whitten, editorBill Fenimore’s retail philosophy:• Provide excellent service. 70 percent of his traffic is generated by word of mouth.• Do your job well. Fenimore bucks the trend and serves field and backyard birders.• Be willing to turn some people away. Folks who want cheap seed are not his customers.