Tom Beckbe

Tom Beckbe opened its Mountain Brook flagship store in the Birmingham, Alabama area in 2015, the year husband and wife founders Radcliff and Mary Menge turned a single American made outdoor jacket into a full apparel brand. The company remains independently owned and operated out of the Birmingham area, without institutional, venture capital, or private equity funding, a point the founders make explicitly on their own site as a way of explaining why the brand has grown at its own pace rather than chasing rapid national expansion.

The name itself comes from the Tombigbee River, where Radcliff Menge spent much of his childhood hunting and fishing with his grandfather, and that connection to Alabama’s outdoors runs through the brand’s entire product line. The Mountain Brook store carries waxed cotton jackets, layering vests and pullovers, quilted outerwear, leather and canvas bags, premium shirting, and a selection of sporting gifts and books, all built around the idea of clothing meant to work equally well on a hunting trip and around town afterward.

The brand’s first product, the Tensaw Jacket, takes its name from one of the five rivers that make up the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, and it remains the company’s bestselling piece years after the founders began selling early runs directly to friends and family. A feature in Garden and Gun magazine helped turn that early, informal operation into an official retail brand in 2016, but the founding story, an Alabama couple building outdoor gear rooted in their own family’s hunting and fishing traditions, has stayed central to how Tom Beckbe presents itself.

Inside the Mountain Brook store, the space also includes The Loading Dock, a small private whiskey bar tucked into the back of the shop, a detail that reflects the brand’s broader aim of building a lifestyle destination rather than a straightforward clothing counter. Customers browsing jackets and bags can expect a shopping experience closer to a sporting goods outfitter with a Southern sensibility than a typical mall apparel store, staffed by people who can speak to how a given jacket performs in Alabama’s mix of humid falls and occasional hard freezes.

The store keeps regular hours Monday through Friday from 10 in the morning until 6 in the evening, with Saturday hours from 10 until 3 and the shop closed on Sundays, a schedule that suits both weekday shoppers and weekend visitors passing through Mountain Brook Village. Because Tom Beckbe has since opened additional stores in Alabama and beyond, including in Tuscaloosa and other Southern towns, the Mountain Brook location holds a particular significance as the original flagship, the place where the brand’s Birmingham roots are most visible in the buildout itself, down to the materials used on the shelving and the framed photography on the walls.

The founders have also leaned into conservation minded partnerships as the brand has grown, tying product releases to organizations focused on protecting the same rivers and wetlands that inspired the company’s name in the first place. That thread connects back to the Menges’ own upbringing, and it gives the Mountain Brook store’s merchandise a sense of purpose beyond simple outdoor styling, something regular customers often mention when explaining why they keep returning to the brand rather than switching to a larger outdoor retailer.

For visitors interested in Alabama made outdoor goods, Tom Beckbe offers a rare combination in the current retail landscape, a genuinely independent, founder led apparel company that has grown a national following while keeping its flagship store and much of its identity anchored in the Birmingham area where it began, a detail that continues to set it apart from larger outdoor brands headquartered far from the rivers that inspired them.