Wisconsin-based outdoor apparel brand ‘Hooked’ on success

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

April 14, 2025

EAGLE RIVER – A “faith-based, family owned” business – according to its co-owners and husband-wife team, Tom and Sarah Zidek – is helping people across the Northwoods and beyond live their best outdoor lives.

The Zideks said their business, Hooked & Tagged – which has two locations in North Central Wisconsin at 107 E. Wall St. in Eagle River and 515 Oneida St. in Minocqua – was initially founded in 2013 as an online-only store when Tom was attending college.

“I just started it as a hobby,” he said. “It was cool to get one hat order a week, or a day, and progressively I started getting more and more orders.”

Tom – who is originally from the suburbs of Chicago – said he fell in love with Wisconsin’s North Central region through family retreats up to his grandfather’s cabin in Flambeau.

“We’ve been coming up here basically my entire life,” he said. “My parents bought a vacation home (in Eagle River), then we bought the storefront in 2019 and then Sarah and I moved up here.”

Tom and Sarah – who he said grew up in the Central Valley of California – lived and were married in Illinois prior to relocating to the Northwoods just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down businesses across the country.

“We moved to Wisconsin once we bought the storefront (and) got it all situated, remodeled it, and that was right when COVID hit,” he said. “So we thought we made a huge mistake, but it ended up being extremely successful.”

Product offerings, demands

Tom said Hooked & Tagged’s first home base was his parents’ house in Illinois – which Sarah said quickly became cramped with boxes of merchandise as the business began to grow.

“Our business was essentially taking over the house,” she said. “We literally had boxes everywhere – in the kitchen, the extra rooms and the hallways. So that’s (what inspired) us to buy the storefront here in Eagle River.”

The couple said they first became aware of the storefront property after Tom’s mother found it was for sale while on a walk at their vacation home.

“His mom just so happened to be walking downtown with a friend, and she noticed that… it was for sale,” Sarah said. “At first we were like, ‘we don’t know if we want to do a storefront,’ but we came up, looked at it, and it was just a fantastic deal – the store was immaculate.”

With no prior retail experience, Tom said it was a game of guess-and-check as he built the business, and his family at the same time.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” he said. “Sarah and I had no prior retail experience, so we’re learning this on the fly. With YouTube, you can basically teach yourself just about anything now.”

Tom said Hooked & Tagged was created to “provide quality apparel to people that love hunting and fishing and the outdoors.”

Offering apparel for hunters, fishermen, golfers, hikers and many other types of nature enthusiasts, Tom said the goal is to be the brand of choice for outdoor recreation.

Working with third-party graphic designers and manufacturers, Tom said he and Sarah always try to keep up with evolving customer demands.

“We are really trying to dial that in and provide quality goods,” he said. “Keeping up with the trends, obviously, is sometimes a challenging thing.”

Currently, Tom said they are working on “new designs and different types of products” that are expected to come out “very, very soon.”

“(We’re thinking) maybe late spring or early summer,” he said. “I hate to give a deadline without having the physical product – because we’ve learned before not to spill the beans too early until we have the products in our hands – but there’s always new and exciting things that we’re coming out with.”

One product area Tom said Hooked & Tagged’s customers are increasingly searching for is outdoor apparel for children.

“Our kids line is really exploding, and there’s a huge demand for kids’ apparel,” he said. “Getting kids excited about the outdoors at an early age is something that we’ve definitely wanted to, and have been, focusing on as well.”

In addition to its clothing apparel, Sarah said Hooked & Tagged also sells home decor, accessories, coffee and children’s books, both from their brand as well as other Wisconsin-based businesses.

“Apparel-wise, it’s just Hooked & Tagged,” she said. “But as far as goods outside of apparel, we partner with other small businesses – a lot of them are actually Wisconsin-based as well – to sell their products.”

Current success, future expansion

Since first launching its online store more than a decade ago, the Zideks said Hooked & Tagged has opened a second location, as well as a distribution center – which opened in 2021.

“We outgrew (the) Eagle River (location) fairly quickly, so we had to actually open our distribution center first and then (we opened the Minocqua location),” she said. “We would frequent Minocqua often, and one of the times Tom and I were walking downtown – again, kind of the same scenario – we had noticed that there was a ‘for sale’ sign in (a) store.”

Several years after initially contacting the owners of the Minocqua storefront, Tom said “the stars aligned,” and they were able to purchase their second location a few years after opening the distribution center.

Now, the Zideks said they are not only selling their apparel at their two Hooked & Tagged locations but are also wholesaling their products to other retail stores across the country.

“Everything ships out of (the distribution center), whether it’s online or it’s wholesale,” Sarah said. “We actually do quite a bit of wholesale, especially (after) we were picked up by Scheels in 2019. Ever since then, we’ve been in all of the Scheels (stores) and a lot of mom-and-pop shops throughout the nation.”

Early on in the business, Tom said there were “a ton of mom-and-pop shops” across the country who took a chance on Hooked & Tagged and agreed to carry its products.

“We’re forever grateful for other family owned businesses (that took) chances on us,” he said. “A lot of the store owners that own the mom-and-pop shops, whenever they see us – maybe at trade shows – or email us, they’ll say, ‘Hey, I was kind of on the fence about bringing you guys on, but I (did) and it’s selling out like crazy. I need to make another order.’”

The distribution facility, Sarah said, also serves as Hooked & Tagged’s warehouse.

“It’s kind of like a hub for our two stores as well,” she said. “We’ll keep a lot of our products there, and then whenever we need to restock each store, it’ll essentially come from the distribution center.”

The ability to sell Hooked & Tagged’s products both online and at other retail stores, Tom said, is how they’re able to stay in business when the Northwoods’ tourism rates drop.

“The off-season is extremely slow,” he said. “The saying ‘zero to 100’ is exactly what the Northwoods does (in the summer) – and then it’s 100 (back down) to zero (in the winter).”

Though they are reveling in Hooked & Tagged’s current success, Tom said he and Sarah are always looking for ways to carefully expand the business.

“With how successful both stores (have been), down the road, we have plans to scale the business as well,” he said. “We’re always looking to expand in a wise and strategic way.”

Above all else, Sarah said faith is a central mission in her and Tom’s personal and professional lives.

“That’s why we started all of this and why we’re continuing,” she said. “Our legacy here is we love our family, and it’s such a joy to share the outdoors and to teach our children to also love hunting and fishing as well. We just wanted to share that with the world.”

To learn more and explore Hooked & Tagged’s product offerings, visit hookedandtagged.com or find them on Facebook.