Went out rockcodding yesterday. As luck would have it, 1/2 the folks on the party boat were current or previous deckhands. In not too long I started having them poking at my spiral rod. The spiral line treatment rather stood out with the yellow spectra I had on it. Quite a group of skeptics. By the end they were intrigued enough to be considering the concept.

Apparently local builders are over $400 for rods, so they tell me. None of these deckies had any concept of how to build a rod and thought it some sort of black art. Did my best to demystify it for them and gave them my contact info. Heck, maybe I should be looking at a lowend business?. As it is though, I think I will just help the guys out. Hard working and rather underpaid bunch of guys. Told them for $100 in materials, some time, and minimal equipment they should have some very fishable pieces. Suspect my goodwill will go well on future trips too, if any of these guys are working the boat.

Equipment these guys had was obviously well beaten about, fairly cheap, mostly stainless guides, and a mix of mono and spectra. I looked over their guides, as we were recently talking about guide grooving here, and you know these things had some tough usage. Didn't have my magnifier with me of course, but I didn't note any grooving on the inside of the rings. Some pretty good scuffs and abrasions on the outside of the frames tho from severe handling. Why not many ceramic rings on their rods? They claimed they break too easily. And while all the equipment was rather 'patinated', they obviously put more more care into their reel maintenance and quality, than their rods.

Was all bluewater equipment. With no grooving noted, would seem to say that spectra does not groove anyhting commonly found as a ring guide by itself. Only if it picks up contaminants in the braid perhaps, like sand/silt/mud.

Took a bit for the guys to believe that the rod I had with me was one I made. No labeling at all. Label was the first thing they were looking for after seeing the odd guide arrangement. My proof to them that I made it was to one by one point out little flaws in it. :-)

BTW,,, education went both ways. These guys could target specific fish very well! Captain moved the boat multiple times because there were too many fish (mostly nice blues) while folks really wanted anything but the blues. The whole time I hardly hit the bottom because I was hooked up into the blues on the drop. So I learned from these guys what blues don't like, so you get a chance at other stuff on the bottom. Looks like I'm going lure shopping!

Probably back out with the same boat once or twice more this coming week. Going to look over the rental rods this time.
Certainly noted that having an eye catching rod in front of folks is pretty darn good marketing, if you wanted business



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2007 12:17PM by Dave Hauser.

"If you wanted business", lol. It often draws too much attention.

**...It often draws too much attention**
Yeah your stuff might. And you wouldn't have to 'luxury' of being able to point out as many mistakes as I can. You probably have the additional problem of trying to prove you aren't using decals everywhere too. I don't have that liability. :-)

Dave, I don't build rods commercially -- when you take money for doing something you love, it can take away most of the fun, and I don't want to do that with building rods -- but I've believed for a while that you could do better by building a lot of "low end" rods than by building fewer stuff with expensive components.

Though I build my rods to be as inconspicuous as possible -- black thread, no fancy stuff, etc. -- I do stuff with them (like cord grips) that still makes people notice. I also fish the surf with Alvey reels, one of which is canary yellow, and people are always stopping to ask me about them too. When I tell people that A) rodbuilding is not rocket science (If I can do it, anyone can), and B) that you don't need hundreds of dollars of equipment to get started, they're amazed. When I say that with a little bit of time effort, you can get a far superior rod for about what you'd pay for a medium-level factory rod, they don't believe me -- they think custom components are WAY more expensive than they really are.

My favorite surf bait rod has very run-of-the-mill parts (glass/graphite hybrid blank, aluminum oxide guides, etc.) and cost me only about $90 to build. For a surf rod, this is in the El Cheapo price category. But I'd stack it against just about any stick on the coast; it is just about bulletproof, and has reeled in some big fish (including a six-foot sandbar shark last spring). I think if I was building commercially, I'd find it much easier to find guys willing to spend $200 for something similar than to spend $600 for a rod with titanium guides on a $300 Lamiglas blank.

By the way, I agree with you about guide grooving: it's possible, but very unlikely.

The customers in my area expect to pay well over $200 for the simplest custom rod, and well over $400 for a basic custom surf rod. The believe the Key Largo Custom Rods are indeed custom - there's little understanding of what custom really is.

There's a heck of a market for "low end" custom rods. The question is, what are you willing to take for your time, in addition to the cost of the parts?

We are indeed building a custom business, and that means producing "low end" stuff to get our name out there, and high-end stuff for the customers who want them. Most of the high-end folks complain that they can't find quality custom work locally - great for us. The rest are pretty much price-sensitive - they want rods in the $135-$150 price range for a saltwater trout rod, for example. Then there are the folks who will insist on a specific blank that they consider "expensive" - such as Loomis, St. Croix, etc., but at a price that is about the same as the rod they saw on the rack that they want you to build, but in their colors and with their name on it and - well, you know the rest.

The fun ones are the rods you build for folks like those guys on the boat. They will teach you things about real-world fishing and the rods and gear they use, just to watch you be amazed. You can amaze them with an affordable rod that meets their needs. You can also make some nice customers by offering a cleanup and repair service at a reasonable price.

Uncle Russ
Calico Creek Rods



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/25/2007 01:10AM by Russ Pollack.

Yeah, I had the definite feeling that $250 would be about the limit these guys. But you know, this isn't a business for me. I suspect I do much better at my real job than if I went into rod building. Still, it's a retirement thought.
I think I am likely to build these guys some rods (1 each) for kicks and at cost. Certainly good karma with the deckies I see regularly. Should run into a few on a special tuna trip this weekend and will see where they are left wanting.

I'm primarily a surf guy, Dave, and I'm a loner to boot, so I don't run into other fishermen much. But building party boat guys good customs at cost sounds like a GREAT idea to me. It won't cost you anything other than time, and you'll get A) some good publicity out of it (Hey, that's a nice rod! Who built it? Dave Hauser) and it'll also make you some friends on the party boat circuit. That by itself would make it worth it.

One of the problems with party boat fishing is that every captain always says the fishing's great. What's he gonna do, tell you it stinks and that you shouldn't come? Just a few tips from these guys telling you to stay home and wait for things to improve (or calling you and telling you when things are red hot) would save you the cost of a rod or two, and would make the whole thing worthwhile. I'd do it if I were you.

Chris, that's not always true about PB's telling people the fishing is always good. There are quite a few which tell you teh truth, knowing full well they are doing teh right thing in the long run and they won't get a bad rap for that crap. Once you become a regular, you end up going regardless of the fishing reports, you just go to have a nice day on teh water & hang out wiht friends. That will never happen if you are always lied to by boats...you'll get on the boat after hearing these stories, then hear how bad it actually was from others who were there eyesterday or from the mates themselves. It's just bad business practice and not a common one. I'm not saying they won't embellish, lol.

If you are going to run a business you want a large clientele to sell your product to, that is, if you want to make money on a regular basis. I have had a retail rod shop for 15 years with sales of over 100k a year for 13 of those years. The average cost of my rods is 150.00, the highest was 600.00. The key to any business is buy low and sell high, it took me a while to to get to the point where I could buy in quanity but its a big difference in price in buying one , or buying a 100 blanks at a time. By "buying right" I may have 30.00 in the rod that sells for 150.00 and I sell a lot of them. If yor going after the guy that buys the 600.00 rod then your not going to have 1/4 of the sales I will have simply because there are not that many 600.00 customers out there. All rod builders like to think their rods are the greatest thing since sliced bread but truth is , they are only worth what someone is willing to pay you for it. Go for the numbers, that's where the money is. Jesse

J Man - do you have variable prices when considering forms of payment? Do you get more for a VISA rod than a Master Card rod. Which form of payment gets the best "price".

UNOWHOOOO!

> One of the problems with party boat fishing is
> that every captain always says the fishing's
> great. What's he gonna do, tell you it stinks and
> that you shouldn't come?
Guess it depends upon the boat. The ones I tend to go with are very upfront on the conditions and go out of their way to be good. One I was out with on Sunday, it was a no-brainer that fish would be caught.:Faralon Islands. If you can't limit out the boat there in an hour or so you must not have lines in the water. Difference with this captain tho is he didn't just call it an early day, he decided to give albacore a try and burned up 2.5 hours of fuel searching. He didn't need to even make the attempt to do what he said he would,,, rockfishing. Captains who go the extra mile, like that, gain good karma and reps.
I think we also have one of the largest fishing clubs around, Coastside, with 15k members. Someone treats folks right, word goes online fast. Even faster if someone feels slighted or wronged. A party boat that plays the clientelle wrong will soon find its clientelle shrinking.

Jesse,

The money is at both ends. I rarely ever sold a rod for less than $600. And I didn't have to build many of them to make even more money than you did. I got to spend the rest of my time fishing while you were slaving away building more $150 rods.

Nothing wrong with going "for the numbers" but you have to put in a lot of hours that way. It amounts to operating a low volume commercial rod business, really. Not so much a custom rod business. Few custom rod builders do well on the high volume, low margin type of operation. They soon find out that there are only so many hours in the day and they can only build so many rods.

I'm happy it works for you - but for most custom rod builders, it doesn't.

...........

I think it takes both approaches. Jesse's $150 way builds your customer base, and I think it leads to Tom's $600 customers as well. If you control your costs, you can make money on both ends, but more on the $600 end, of course.

But I think that the "low end" rods plus the repair work are what keep the rent paid and the drying motors turning, unless you have an Abercrobie & Fitch customer base. That was the experience and the wisdom from a couple folks round here who had shops but quit or died.

Another approach is to sell to stores. It provides the exposure to the customers without the oiverhead of your own store, although the retailer's cut is in itself your overhead or burden. OK, so you price (and control costs) accordingly. But you have to start somewhere. I would advise, though, that you choose your retailers carefully and DO NOT DO CONSIGNMENT deals!. You don't care what they sell your rods for, as long as you get your costs and some profit. But an "upscale" store will support a higher retail price and therefore a higher wholesale price. Besides, that's the kind of market you want for your rods. Look for someone who's willing to have you train his staff, to sell your rods (not just wait for the customer to take them to the register) and who will also want you to do "events" with him (fishing club meetings, holiday "tent sales", etc.)

After a time, you'll have enough of a reputation and following to sell rods at both ends of the scale. Are the low-price rods "come-ons"? Well, I don't think so - I believe they are just as valuable to the $150 customer when it's one of his "finest" rods, as is the $600 rod to that kind of customer. As long as they brag about it to their friends, and their friends want one as a result, I'll take it either way.

Tom's right, though, the $600 rods leave you enough time to fish. But just now we're building our business and the freezer's a little empty. It's OK, though, 'cause someday we'll have a store like Jesse, with a boat tied up just past the back door for demos - and catching lunch or dinner.

Uncle Russ
Calico Creek Rods

Tom, You must not have had enough of those 600.00 customers cause your producing a magizine now instead of fishing rods. I love what I'm doing and can still fish if I want, just don't want to like I use to. My friend that ran my shop while I was in the hospital comes in to open the shop at 10:00am and stays till 1:00pm and I'm in from 1:00pm untill 4:00pm Mon thru Sat so we both have more time off than we need. It seems like all the advice is coming from the guys that "woulda", coulda, shoulda, and I'm the only one that "did" and made a "go" of it. Jesse

No, I had plenty and in fact, had to turn down orders each year. There are plenty of guys out there willing to pay $600 and up for rods, but they demand excellence and performance beyond what commercially made rods offer. I did well enough that I was able to pretty much retire at age 40, and spend my spare time producing a magazine.

I was very successful and you'd be badly mistaken to assume otherwise. Others have taken the same road as me and are also very successful. Talk to Russ Gooding, Ian Miller, Mike Ballard or Bob Meiser, or one of the others who are building specialty rods for a very discerning clientele.

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

Shortly after I made this post, I got an email from Jesse saying that the "word on the street" is that the "IRS retired me due to failure to pay excise taxes." Of course, it's not true in any way, shape or form and is only a rumor that was started by a jealous competitor.

In 1988, following some bad Sportsfishing Excise Tax advice I got from the old RodCrafter Journal, I was contacted by the IRS who let me know that excise tax must be charged on the entire sales price of the finished rod, not just the labor portion. The Journal got a lot of people in hot water with the bad information they printed. I ended up having to pay the IRS $4000 in back taxes. I continued selling rods to the public until 1998 and audits done every 2 years (I had a 637 exemption so the audit was automatic). All subsequent audits found perfect compliance.

In the early 1990's, I spent some time with the IRS in Washington, DC and got the full run down on the Sportsfishing FET. I wrote an article on it that appeared shortly afterwards in Fly Tackle Dealer magazine. Not long after that, the local field agents for the IRS FET division congratulated me on the article and asked to make it available to other tax payers who might need the same information. The article also ran in an early issue of RodMaker and what you see in the library is a more modern version of that original article.

There are all sorts of successful business plans in custom rod building. Some build in volume and operate on a low margin, others build high end rods for a very discerning clientele. Each builder has to decide what his local fishing demographic will bear when it comes to custom rods. What one person does may or may not work in another person's area.

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