They are coming!

This is probably only the first of the new "Fruit and Vegetable" rods to hit the market in 2010.

From a bass website:

DeFoe to use Citrus Sticks 1/5/2010

Tennessee FLW Tour angler Ott DeFoe announced that he's signed a 2010 agreement to fish Citrus Stick rods, which are produced by BCS Manufacturing of Lebanon, Tenn.

The rods are a lime-green color from just above the reel seat to the tip and are designed to deliver high-end performance at a value price. Five models are currently available, with more on the way.

“With the rods I have used so far, they are really sensitive and extremely lightweight," said DeFoe, who was previously aligned with Fenwick. "The handles with the foam grips are very comfortable and not slippery like cork handles can be.”

Bobby Feazel

[www.shockwaverods.com]

Conventional wisdom will not open the box.

I prefer those new Skeet Reese yellow \'Naner rods. Maybe they will put a Chiquita sticker on them at some point.

"fruit rods" need you say more

A lot of apples and oranges leave the treey headed somewhere! Production companies selling rods are truly "sensitive" to the unprotected brain/eye and open wallet of most fishermen - Orange, Yellow, Golden Sparkle, White, Lime, Blue etc - Do you remember what P. T. B. had to say? Only thing I would change at present is minute to second! Bobby, you put the Golden Micro Rod on Dewey's scale yesterday and commented it felt light - amazing huh - what can a poor fisherman do that does not have a scale in his pocket when he purchases a rod?

Color will be the next marketing issue for production rods - badge of identification - performance maintains position on a lower rung of their marketing ladder.

Bobby Feazel consider this !
Put one on the market that is wood grain color, Hickory or maybe Box Elder Burl. Call it a Timber Stik !! Should sell better than "Nanner Puddin" !

J.B.Hunt
Bowling Green, KY

When the big boys run out of development ideas, or ideas to steal from custom builders. All that is left is the trickery of the eyes, by attracting potential customers to the bright colors.

Just as the magician uses bright colored scarf’s to keep the audiences attention distracted from the fact of what is really going on underneath.
All he is doing; is deceiving them and getting paid for it.

We all can use a good New Years laugh! But someone is getting big $$ here for these ideas! The old fiberglass painted rods are maybe not always so bad! Dig them out again...

Naners, oranges, carrots, apples, maybe we need to rub our rods down with Fruit Fresh, or some fruip preservative in the future.... We never know! They may cast farther!

Jay, I like the Timber Stick idea. When I was a kid, I used a willow stick to catch chubs! Never knew it was cuttung edge technology! The short ones Mom used as a switch!

Maybe we should come up with a "spud" rod. Sure sounds catchy...

Kyle Robinson

Corn silk, now that's an idea, you can't even put that stuff through a garbage disposal.

Well the good thing about em is if the action is too stiff, you can boil em and they'll soften up a little!!!

This is nothing new. And it's not limited to fishing rod sales. Most things are sold this way and always have been - "sell the sizzle, not the steak." Obviously it can be taken to extremes, but painting rods in bright colors and giving them fancy names isn't such an extreme. It's been done many times before and will continue for decades to come.

In the last few years you have almost all the reel manufacturers taking reels, painting them bright colors, tossing in a dozen 10 cent ball bearings and then charging guys $300 to $500 for a reel that has the same guts as their $50 models. But, the guys who buy them are proud to own them and happy to use them.

I've always wished that more custom builders would take a lesson from how the big companies market their products - not from the standpoint of misleading anyone but rather from the ability to create some "sizzle" in order to excite potential customers.

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

Color can be very important in marketing, in the IP field it is called “trade dress” and can be protected indefinitely unlike patents which expire. I used to design fuel pumps for race cars and the owner of the company strongly defended our color scheme of a black motor and red body. When the competing pumps came to the market they had blue or purple bodies, he would have been very quick to quash anyone selling red pumps to the same market.

Guess I am not the only one to figure out the reel company scams, I always look for the lowest cost reel within a family, and then I can upgrade it if I want to. Ball bearings to fit handle knobs cost about 50 cents apiece so for $2 you can have an upgrade that would probably come on a reel costing at least $50-100 more.

Custom builders DID come up with "SIZZLE" that worked!

Build a better rod -

Not only does the sizzle "excite potential customers" -

It makes them get off the fence, out their wallet and buy their first custom rod on the spot!

At my price point!

MICRO

I think Bill summed that up. Hard to generate a comparable sizzle when you don't have the marketing budget to pay to have your stuff in magazines, etc. Sure you can do press releases, but that doesn't always cut it and you have to be in the pipeline to have them seriously considered for inclusion anyway.

Even the Citrus Sticks are dropping some serious cash on a bit of marketing blitz in various locations and they didn't get a small headline on a fishing website until they signed a pro...

There's been a lot of sizzle around my way on micros for a good while now... about 2 years worth - wondeI know where that came from :) There was also a big enough sizzle nationally from custom buidlers that we're now looking at 3 OEMs who hopped on the micro wagon.

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AD

I'm gonna sell everyone of my GLX's' RX8's and get some... Holy cow man! With a name like that, they gotta be good! Just when you think the marketing genius' hit their all-time low....

Paul Rotkis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm gonna sell everyone of my GLX's' RX8's and get
> some... Holy cow man! With a name like that, they
> gotta be good! Just when you think the marketing
> genius' hit their all-time low....


Thanks for the kind thoughts...I am the creator of the Citrus Stick and former custom rod builder turned mass production builder. Yes, all of the things that I put into the Citrus Stick; I picked up from building over the years.

The yellow and green rod is for marketing stand points. I wanted our rod to stand out and that is what it does. The name came from the color. Citrus Shad.

Will this rod out perform a custom rod. Maybe, maybe not but it is hard to mass produce a custom rod but this as close as I can get. Will this rod out perform any other factory rod...I would put this rod up against any rod mass produced today and fair pretty well.

As a former custom rod builder I understand being proud of your work but don't be so quick to judge the rod. Alot of thought and hard work went into developing it.