I have a fancy Orvis Breatheable Rainjacket, Orvis moisture wicking breatheable Expsdition weight tee shirts, several sets of Orvis moisture wicking socks, breatheable waders, neoprene wading pants, my wife has neoprene bootfoots, I have all their Fluorocarbon leader in every size, books, hooks, & other small gadgets and gizmo's. All for free, lol.

I have a 3/4 black leather coat which I wear when it gets cold here (Kenneth Cole, not Orvis), and I dont' mess with guns. just for the record. I also do not wear silly cowboy hats, or cowboy boots, so dont' get too carried away with teh leather coat thing. I certainly can see you sporting a buttoned up Dickies collard shirt, Wranglers, adn heeled cowboy boots, with a 5 gallown hat, in a bar with sawdust all over teh floor, an electronic bull, adn buckets of beer. And 10 cents wing Thursdays. lol.

Sounds like the Good Old Days Just like ridding a " chopper " down a smooth rood with the wind in your face. Heaven !

I enjoy getting new Orvis catalogs I sorta feel like a kid getting a new Harry Potter novel. Their catalogs wisk you off to a land far far away yet as close as a phone and a credit card. Just think... somewhere out there is a guy sitting in an office thinking up new exotic ways to describe 12 oz cotton duck... Bob.

Billy, i've known you a while now, and there is definately something funny aboiut you.....are you the devil?


Andy Dear
Lamar Manf.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

Since you asked. Here is a pci from my job, I came into work dressed like that on Friday October 29th last year. I had a full length black cloak, so all you saw was my big red head & horns & such.

Nice pic Billy!

Of course, the fly-fishing industry is not alone in this - most marketing nowadays is driven towards invoking a certain feeling in the intended target audience. My favorite ad out there right now (well, most laughable) is the Bridgestone Tires ad - featuring scantily clad dancers cavorting in the rain, or yuppie suburbanite bar hoppers dressed to the nines - all to sell tires!! I guess those people need urban style tires on their SUVs that never see anything but concrete or asphalt. It's marketing an image, a feeling, a way that people want to be seen. I agree with Andy - reel grease and fishguts does it for me, but most people would rather buy an image. Why do you think 3/4 of the soccer moms in the country are driving big stupid vehicles that they cannot park easily at their local mall??

"The Revo series has been developed with the aim of balancing the cast ability of a fly rod with the immense power through the butt area to fight large fish yet unseen in fly rod design."

That is from CTS- one of the blank lines you sell Andy... What's that old saw about "he who is without sin?"

Seems like it says the rod is easy to cast but with a lot of power in teh butt. Now I'm not a fly guy, yet I think it means that rods in the past have either cast very well, and didn't have fish fighting power, or had fish fighting power, but didnt' cast well.

That's a far cry from some of the words Orvis used. Maybe I should have stayed in school so I could translate it into layman's terms, instead of relying on a Harvard GRad to translate it for me.

Did anyone here happen to watch Mad TV this past Saturday? TEhre was a skit where 2 couples are drinking wine, talking about what's going on in the World - and they got all the words wrong, pronounced everything wrong - it was really, really funny - and is a perfect match for this thread.

Mike,
Have you ever used a REVO, If you had, you'd know that statement is absolutely true...there is nothing in that statement that is not true. The REVO is a very powerful fish fighting tool, that is still able to cast large flies for billfish and the like relatively easy. Nowhere in that statement did CTS say that the REVO makes you a better caster, or will put more fish in your boat or that it is made from some special material that the AirForce designed. OR that each one of their fibers is encansed in some kind of protective sheath. All of which Orvis has done, and all of which are completely false. If Orvis had said, Hey, we have this new rod that is light, responsive, yet powerful and is made form a pretty high tech materail...that's fine.

Let me ask all of you this. What do you think would happen if Sage or Thomas & Thomas were to start selling doggy matresses or Women's fashion's or Men's dress shoes. And I don't mean flyfishing clothing...I mean Macy's style fashions like Orvis does. They'd lose credibility with a significant portion of their customer base in about 4.5 seconds. Of course, they might attract a whole new group of clients and make a lot more money, but I think they would surely lose much of their credibility as a premium flyrod manufacturer in the process, at least among many of their users.


And Mike, in case you didn't notice....nowhere on the CTS OR my website will you find women's tunic sweaters, mens leather loafers or comfy flannel doggy beds for you Golden retriever with the Lamar logo on them. You can however bet your good old Orvis anti-gravity rod that if I ever start to offer womens fashions with the Lamar logo on the, they'll be somehwhat more shall we say "revealing" than anything that stuffy old Orvis catolog has in it.

This will be my last post on this subject...my energy is spent, and I have to get back to work so I can go fishing this evening.

Andy Dear
Lamar Manf.

You were typing that same time as me.....thanks Billy you made my point before I could!

Andy

P.S. Mad TV is hilarious

Andy asked "What do you think would happen if Sage or Thomas & Thomas were to start selling doggy matresses or Women's fashion's" Well....

[www.thomasandthomas.com] is a link to where you can buy a snazzy Thomas and Thomas women's fleece sweater.

[www.sageflyfish.com] will get you to a site so you can pick up Sages "micro-fleece top with half-zip and front seams for more feminine fit. (Includes a black embroidered Sage logo on collar and pewter zipper pull). The "Mineral" color is spectacular.

Thanks for the softball, and welcome to the new millenium. Just because a company sells more than fly rods does not mean they don't make a nice rod.

I dunno, can't a woman wear a fleece flyfishing? I think there's a difference between a sweater for Mom to wear while driving the kids to school, or washing the Laundry, or cooking Pot Roast, and a fleece she could wear for fishing.

Mike...GEES READ my post! You left out the most important part!!

I said "Let me ask all of you this. What do you think would happen if Sage or Thomas & Thomas were to start selling doggy matresses or Women's fashion's or Men's dress shoes. AND I DON'T MEAN FLYFISHING CLOTHING. I MEAN MACYS STYLE CLOTHING LIKE ORVIS SELLS!!!!

It's one thing to sell promotional clothing with your logo...even I do that. It's called advertising. It's a completely different thing to base your product line around it and offer rods as an afterthought....

Nevermind, you win...I give up...Orvis rules...

Andy

I hear you Andy, I just happen to disagree. To make it up for you, how about if I buy you this very sassy Sage carry-on roller suitcase? It's perfect for the fly-fishing soccer Mom on-the-go.

[www.sageflyfish.com]

OK, OK, that was below the belt.. I'll stop.

Couldn't you use the suitcase when you travel to the Amazon to Peacock Bass fish? Or maybe when you fly fish Alaskan Halibut in 6,000 feet of water?

FWIW worth, and to give some of you a good chuckle, here's my Orvis story:
I used to buy Fly tying stuff from there, because it was local. I will stand by and say their clothes are pretty good, at least teh stuff I have bought, but it's ridicuously overpriced. I loved walking in there when I had long hair & my LONG goatee, tehy HATED me, never gave me help. I used to answer questions when none of the workers were around, used to drive them nuts. Then I'd get a $225 Bretheable rainjacket, which I paid for with 9!! $25 Gift Certificate rewards. The (insert expletive making fun of the not so smart) %##$%@# cashier couldn't use teh computer so he had to enter all 9 SKU numbers off the rewards, lol. It took like 45 minutes. I didn't give a care, I was at lunch during work, teh guy was all frustrated, I eventually asked another cashier for help.

Gon' fishin'


ANdy

A couple things we don't do here is bash any person or company, or get into heated arguments where people get insulted.

I can see several points being made in this topic. I think most of know that Orvis (and others) use very clever and effective marketing terms in order to sell the sizzle of their products. And, while the statements aren't necessarily true, they're not necessarily false either. The graphite fibers in Orvis rods are encased in sheaths of resin (and so is every other manufacturers graphite - that's the way prepeg is made), Orvis may have consulted with a guy in a firm somewhere who was once involved in technology for the air force. I don't know, but I doubt any of it is a lie, although some of it may be a stretch. It's clever marketing and Orvis, among others, is very effective at it. The products work, they're not exactly cheating anybody, so a little creative juice in the ad copy is not really fraud.

I have cast the Zero Gravity rod. It works just fine. I would rather build my own and believe that I can make a better rod, but if somebody wants to buy the Orvis because of the advertising hype, I'm not going to worry over it. And I suspect that they'll enjoy their Zero Gravity rod, buzz words and all.


.....................

You guys are probably done with this thread, but I wanted to add a thought to this thread.
What bugs me about Orvis is the pictures they use in their catalogs. They use a bunch of pictures of fishermen (decked in everything Orvis, of course) holding fish while depicting that those fish are alive and soon to be released.
Those fish seem dead to me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but fish are dead when their pupils are centered in their eye sockets, right? Fish that are alive, when lifted out of the water, have their pupils looking down, so-to-speak.
In many of their pictures - although most of them don't claim that the fish are alive - you can see water dripping from the fish, like they are just lifted off that water (and soon to be put back in). And, I've seen some pictures in Orvis catalogs in which their cutlines said that the "fish was released." Those fish certainly looked dead to me.
I think this is misleading. I'm not saying dead fish shouldn't be used for advertisement or no fish should be killed. But Orvis advocates catch-and-release in their ads and depicts those fish in their pictures as caught-and-released. They sure look dead to me.
If I'm wrong, please someone let me know.

Eijiro- I have noticed that also, interesting! No sure if they are dead or not. I am guessing they probably do a bang up job with the fish. I highly doubt the lovely Nancy in her sparkling clean Orvis Silver Labels and Battenkill vest caught the big brown fresh from the river........

My funny story from Orvis involves a young boy(whose dad had too much money) about 12 yrs old with his brand new Orvis 1 weight fishing for panfish. Hooks a Bass with the drag clenched down and snap a roo, bye bye Orvis rod. Whoops. WARRANTY WARRANTY!

I just went a took a closer look at the Zero G's and they have snake guides and I quote, " Three coats of finish, including a final UV blocking coat and a new system of fully finished ferrules results in seamless joints that are strenghtened to prevent cracking and checking." That alone ought to be worth $655! LOL.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/03/2005 05:42PM by Jason Pritchard.

There are obviously not a lot of Orvis fans here, but I could play devils advocate and defend them on a couple of counts. In the case of the T3, I read it more as advancement in the use of a toughened matrix resin, so it seems more of a material improvement than a design claim around the coated fibers themselves.

Does Orvis design and manufacture their own blanks? Some of these claims are probably not as bad as a rod company that claims to have (re)invented rod materials and components, but in reality is simply buying the blanks and components off the shelf from someone else. Orvis also has some interesting rod patents. So not to say they don't have their fair share of buzz, but there does seem to be a least a little bit of serious technical effort behind the hype.

[patft.uspto.gov]


I think the main claims about the Zero Gravity are the lightweight and small diameters (per comparable power?) and that would be easy to substantiate.

It's certainly easy to make the argument that Orvis products are overpriced and you're paying for the name etc.... but consider that some Loomis guys say that about Mega Bass, some Croix fans say that about Loomis, and Ugly stick guys can say the same about the Croix. So where is the logical conclusion? Certainly there is a value component but, take the most or maybe even the least expensive rod you own, and there's going to be someone out there who would say you paid too much and could get by for much less? Heck we could all be fishing with sticks, but that would put a dent into the custom rod building business!

mark