This has been a taboo subject that gets brought up, skirted around, and shelved from year to year, but we expect more serious talk on warranties at IFTD this year.
I know the retailer who sent us this chart is ready to talk about it…
Those are real sales statistics over the past 17 years. You can see that this shop has grown sales tremendously, despite the fact that rod sales have remained flat.
Which may be okay. Maybe rods are to fly fishing what copy machines are to Office Max… the real money isn’t in the machines, but in the ink and toner that makes them run. Maybe that’s also true with fly rods.
But there’s something that causes rod sales to be flat, despite great technology improvements and (mostly fair) marketing efforts to support them.
Is that the warranty? If not, tell us what you think it is?
