How are we so much cheaper than the Big Brands?

We get this question all the time!  People historically associated higher price with higher quality - that is where we are different in the fly fishing world.  When we got in to fly fishing years ago, we quickly saw how crazy EXPENSIVE everything was and figured there has to be a reason for this, and there is: Wholesale vs. Direct to Consumer (DTC).

• Wholesale: The Company who manufactures product and sells directly to stores to sell to you. Think any brand you have ever seen in a store.
• DTC: The Company who manufactures and sells directly to you.

To make it easy:

1. The Wholesale Company manufactures a product. They must pay employee, raw material, and other costs to produce this product.  This is the cost to make the product itself.
2. The Wholesale Company then must pay payroll, marketing, sales reps and other "overhead" costs to get their product in to stores plus a little extra profit on top for rainy days or new boats.  This determines the Wholesale Companies' selling price of their product to a store
3. The store buys and then sells the product at the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP).  This MSRP is often 2x the cost the store paid for the product. The difference between the selling price and cost of the product is the profit margin. 
4. The store's profit margin is then used to cover rent, marketing, employee costs and profit for the store owner.

Simple math explains it a bit better:

So, in essence, you are paying 4x the cost the product took to make.

Now, we turn around, produce the product and sell it directly to you, the customer.  We don’t sell wholesale so we can immediately cut out that middle man store profit.  What this means is you are, essentially, paying wholesale cost for high quality product when you buy from us!

What we can promise is that you will not be disappointed.  We fly fish too much, or so our wives would say, and will never put something out that we have not tested and used with success.

Austin, CEO