In 1986, very early in the camouflage revolution, Bill decided to try his hand at designing a camouflage pattern. For hours, Bill sat in his parents’ front yard sketching and coloring an exact replica of the bark of a giant oak tree. Coincidentally, Bill’s mother, Kitty, still lives in the house, and the tree that started it all still stands guard over the front yard.

Bill believed that by layering the images of twigs and leaves over a vertical bark background, he could create a three-dimensional appearance that would match a variety of terrain, and also make his pattern distinct. Again, using local mills, Bill fought through the printing process until he finally had a set of camouflage clothing to photograph.

Always the promoter, Bill began to photograph the garments on bowhunters in tree stands. He sent the images at regular intervals to the hunting clothing buyers across the nation. He did this every month for about seven or eight months leading up to the 1986 SHOT Show. “We couldn’t get the pattern to stay on the pants,” remembers Bill. “It rubbed off. I had only one suit and no additional fabric, so I kept sending photos. December rolls around, and the buyers are all saying, ‘Send us some garments’. I didn’t have any garments. The pattern rubbed off. I couldn’t tell them that, so I just sent them some more photos.”

Things got tight leading up to the show. It was a miracle that things came together at all. Bill finally began working with Eastbank Textiles, who solved the printing problem just days before the show. In fact, a week before the show Bill was hand-carrying about 30 yards of printed fabric from the mill to his home, when the airline lost it. They sent the box to Columbus, OH instead of Columbus, GA.

“I finally got the fabric on Monday and the show started that Thursday,” said Bill. “I rushed it to the manufacturer and they made the basic garments by Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon I flew out for the SHOT Show.

“I have naked mannequins at the SHOT Show, and I’m sitting in Columbus waiting to get pants sewn. Then we are dressing naked mannequins at midnight, the night before the show started. The anxiety at that point was unbelievable. I had no credibility in this business and here I was - after teasing all these buyers - and I’m dressing my mannequins with the only garments I’ve got in the whole world just hours before the show starts.

“I have no manufacturer making this clothing- just Spartan, and Spartan has no money. I couldn’t even sell to the first retailer if I wanted to. I had no licensing agreements to work with, and no real idea what I was going to do next. I only knew I had a few pieces of clothing, a 20 X 20 foot booth and hopefully some very influential people stopping by to see me.

“On opening morning of the show, at 9:30, here comes the Bass Pro Shops buyer. Ten minutes later the Oshman’s buyer walks into the booth. After another ten minutes, here comes the Wal-Mart buyer. I have all three of them in the booth at the same time. I’m thinking, ‘Now what am I going to do?’”

Wally Switzer, from Wal-Mart, asked Bill if he was going to be able to make the garments to fill their orders. Bill told him that he never could begin to handle the orders. It takes a lot of money to fire up a clothing manufacturing business and Bill was out of cash. Wally told Bill that Wal-Mart had a company called Walls that made some of their hunting clothing. The Bass Pro buyer said the same thing, and so did the Oshman’s buyer. The name Walls kept coming up.

“Then they asked me, ‘Who’s your hat company? Who’s your glove company?’” added Bill. “I said, ‘Hmmm, I don’t know, who do you want it to be?’”

The three of them stayed in Realtree’s booth for a long time that morning, talking and asking questions. Finally Wally Switzer left, and then came back with his contact at Walls. Walls wanted to buy the fabric from Eastbank Textiles, manufacture the garments with it, and then see how well they sold. That’s when licensing was born.

Eastbank Textiles had been responsible for solving the printing process, so they became Bill Jordan’s first licensee. They paid the license fee on each yard of fabric and passed the cost on to the manufacturer. No one really knew how to set up such an agreement, and the contract that Bill hammered out with Eastbank Textiles became the model for all the agreements he has done since.

As a humorous aside, Spartan-Realtree Products (the company's new name) couldn’t afford to pay for the entire 20 X 20 foot SHOT Show booth that year, so Bill worked it out so that he could pay half up front and the rest on arrival.

Representatives from the SHOT Show stopped by the booth several times during show hours looking for Bill to collect the remainder of the money, but each time Bill was conveniently gone. Bill didn’t have the money to pay them at that time, so he ducked out the back of the booth whenever one of his employees saw the officials stalking down the hallway. At the end of the show, Bill finally found a way to pay his obligation to the SHOT Show.

There are dozens of stories like this. Much of Realtree’s early growth was financed on a shoestring budget. In fact, the company’s first facility was an empty church that they rented. The upstairs office served as the office space for Bill and two or three employees. He stored his boxes in the baptismal room, and the sanctuary was his first warehouse. But these were exciting times, and each small success was celebrated by the entire staff.

Early in the licensing process, Bill realized that the promotion of the camouflage pattern was important to his company’s success. He also knew that manufacturers would only promote their own garments, and wouldn’t care which camouflage pattern was on them. It became obvious that Bill would have to do all the promotion himself in order to create demand for the pattern. Bill poured his efforts and meager finances into every possible avenue that could create positive publicity for Realtree. In many ways he became a pioneer in the way products are promoted in the outdoor industry.

The risk paid off, and as a result, vision has become Jordan’s greatest attribute, and promotion his company’s greatest strength. Since that stumbling start in the late 1980’s, Realtree has steadily grown to become one of the strongest brands in the hunting industry. Today, Realtree employs more than 80 people in Columbus, Georgia, and has operations in Europe. From that first licensee in 1986, Realtree has grown to include more than 800 licensees.