A new trend?
Wednesday, 30 June 2010 15:35
There appears to be an underlying movement (and I’m not sure when or how it started) to make fishing funky – along the lines of skateboarding or in-line skating.
Different terms are being bandied about to sum up what it is all about, but I guess the best is ‘urban fishing’. Basically it’s all about trying to get youngsters involved in the sport for a couple of hours a day, particularly on the inner-city rivers, canals and waterways.
They pretty much fish lures on short, stiff rods (not too dissimilar, I imagine, to the bass rods found in the US and Japan). There appears to be a little confusion as to what these kids might want to wear – trendy hoodies, baseball caps and trainers or a slightly more uniformed look akin to baseball tops. The probability is that they won’t want to be seen dead in the more conventional fishing gear that us seniors are more comfortable with.
Of course, it has great potential and it will be important for the more trendy of our consumer angling magazines to engage these ‘new’ anglers and offer some form of education and tuition on the dos and don’ts of fishing.
The last thing that we want to see is groups of kids buying into fishing, but then because they may have a lack of understanding as to why people fish or for the environment and fish welfare they leave a trail of havoc behind them.
This looks like a great opportunity and, given the poor start to the year that a number of companies are reporting, then I think it is one that we should take seriously.
ICAST and beyond
Just short of 9,000 people are set to head to Las Vegas in July as ICAST opens its doors again to the world. Looking at the history of the event there certainly has been a steady rise in the number of international attendees in recent years – getting on for 1,000 in 2009.
As the world appears to get smaller every day and travel (despite recent volcanic problems) gets easier I do believe that truly international shows are going to become increasingly important, no matter what industry you are in. Of course, as a business you have to justify any trade and for sure the American market is not the easiest one to crack. I think for us at Tackle Trade World it took three years before we started to make inroads into the country, but now we do very nicely out of it and work very closely with a number of American companies.
ICAST is not an easy show to do. Vegas is a long way for many. It’s also a very big show and the Las Vegas heat can be a killer. Having said all that, though, the organisers do a great job in making it as comfortable and as easy as possible.
One of the other things that can always be found at ICAST is that one product that really is different – its new-product showcase is by far and away the best in the industry, so you are always in with a fighting chance of getting one over on your competitor. And that’s always got to be worth a few dollars in the till.
Enjoy the show.
