Worker, latest UA grad buys Fayetteville retail biz

It might be troublesome for some latest faculty graduates to search out full-time work. That’s not the case for Justin Macedo.

Macedo, 23, closed a deal on Nov. 23 to purchase Uncle Sam’s Safari Outfitters, the outside gear and clothes retailer at 1494 N. Faculty Avenue in Fayetteville’s Evelyn Hills Procuring Heart.

Macedo graduated on Dec. 17 with a small enterprise administration diploma from the College of Arkansas. He additionally labored part-time for Uncle Sam’s and the earlier proprietor, Ryland Arnold, since Could 2018.

Macedo mentioned a small enterprise class mission throughout the spring semester of 2022 set off the concept of shopping for the enterprise.

“It was Mark Zweig’s class,” he defined. Zweig is the entrepreneur-in-residence within the UA’s Sam M. Walton Faculty of Enterprise. “I did a consulting mission on Uncle Sam’s, and he requested if I’d ever be serious about shopping for it if it was ever up on the market.”

Macedo mentioned that when he requested Arnold about his long-term plans, he realized that the proprietor was serious about promoting the enterprise — and a deal he’d been engaged on to do this had just lately fallen by means of.

“[Arnold] mentioned, ‘If you’d like it, it’s yours.’ We began engaged on it then,” Macedo mentioned.

Macedo grew up in Texas however moved to Northwest Arkansas earlier than his sophomore 12 months of highschool after his father accepted a job as IT director for town of Fayetteville. He graduated from Farmington Excessive College.

Phrases of the sale weren’t disclosed. Arnold purchased the shop in 2020 from his father, J.R. Arnold. Arnold acquired the enterprise in July 2011 from Robert Ginsburg, who opened the shop in 1982 within the again room of the outdated Second Time Round clothes retailer on Dickson Road in Fayetteville. The enterprise relocated to Evelyn Hills in 1985.

Uncle Sam’s has six staff.