As far quality BPS has always been lower quality in the Clothing and Fly tackle departments than Cabelas. I suspect it's the nature of their home markets. With a Northern MW home market and people fishing and hunting a lot in colder rougher conditions plus Ice Fishing and a destination travel business that featured a lot of travel to AK and CA. They had much larger market for high tech clothing solutions so they produced some fairly good quality private label waders and clothing. On the Fly side, being close to the American West gave them a lot of traveling fly fisherman in the stores. Their market (MW-northern) created a demand that BPS market didn't. I happen to fish with one of their Fly tackle buyers, he lives in this area and worked for Hardy for a while too, he knew what he was doing when it came to fly tackle and their private label stuff reflected that. They knew they had to own the mid-priced market as the guy looking for a top of the line rod wasn't shopping there.
As far as BPS, they built their marketing around the pro bass circuit in conventional tackle. If you'll notice the high tech clothing boom was late to the bass pro circuit. Fly Fisherman were wearing tech shirts for 30 years before the Bass Pro's caught on, the Huk, Simms conventional, and Under Armor contributions are mostly within the last 5-10 years. Consequently BPS has been behind the curve on that market almost completely. As fas as Fly, they knew they didn't know it, that's why the put Orvis in their White River fly shops to give them some credibility, they still don't get it. Their people just don't think like fly fisherman, they are the PBR crowd not the Talisker 10 crowd. The sad thing is a Simms or Far Bank order from BPS is still a huge percentage of their business and hugely effects inventory availability for their core fly shop customers.