Mail Order Melee
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Jan Fogt Long before Johnny Morris "revolutionized" the tackle industry in 1974 with his first Bass Pro Shops catalog, fishing purveyors such as Hardy Brothers of Alnwick, England, and the venerable Ambercrombie and Fitch of Madison Ave., New York, were producing saltwater fishing catalogs. In the early '30s and '40s, high-profile anglers such as Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway were regular customers, buying such hard-to-find items as fighting chairs, big-game gaffs, harnesses and oversize hooks.
Laptop Battery Since then, the number of fishing tackle and marine gear mail-order outlets has gone from a handful to a few hundred. If you were to talk to company presidents as we did, all of them would tell you that despite the competition, business is good.
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Thinkpad As the popularity of sport fishing has spread globally, the influence and importance of fishing-tackle catalogs has grown exponentially. In fact, fishermen such as Agie Vicente of San Juan, Puerto Rico, can't even imagine fishing being as much fun as it is without an Offshore Angler catalog, much less the dream books he gets from Murray Brothers, Capt. Harry's and Melton International. "When you live in a remote place, boating, fishing and other sports catalogs become essential, especially if you want to try to keep up with the latest trends," Vicente says. "Thanks to these modern times, the right equipment can be there the next day."
mail is then sent to the destination SMTP server which then delivers it to the recipients incoming mail server (POP3). 4) The recipient either views the mail directly on the server with a webmail application, or ideally, mail client (Outlook). With Webmail, you are viewing the mail directly on your POP mail server, mail Client like Outlook, you are downloading mail to your computer. A webmail application is great when you are traveling and do not have access to your own computer.
Microsoft Convenience, price, selection and availability are what help drive this trend in catalog and Internet marine-tackle shopping, which is expected to double by the year 2004. This year alone, total catalog sales are expected to top $93 billion, with the Internet generating another $11 billion. Compared to traditional retail-sales growth trends of 3.6 percent annually, catalog and Internet sales are one of the hottest trends going, says Amy Blankenship of the Direct Marketing Association. Not surprisingly, 8 percent of all catalog purchases are for sporting goods, including fishing tackle and boating equipment.
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Laptop Computers "Catalog sales are growing by 6 percent annually, while Internet shopping purchases have doubled annually for the past two years," she explains. "Buying on-line is the future," agrees Vicente, who this year has begun shopping the Internet as well as his favorite catalogs for hard-to-find tackle and gear. And since 84 percent of all catalog retailers have sites on the Internet, you can pretty much find any fishing and boating catalog in the world with a good search engine. In a nutshell, the selection and variety is overwhelming.
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Desktop Computer Murray Brothers; Murray Products
Notebooks When it comes to high-end big-game fishing-tackle catalogs with innovative gear, credit must go to captains Ed and Frank Murray for being among the first. With its first printing dating back to the 1970s, the Murray Brothers catalog was uniquely tailored to its clientele of traveling big-game fishermen with such first-of-its-kind gear as tag-line returns, scent-impregnated soft-trolling lures and spreader bars.
Lenovo "We never tried to be everything to everybody as so many of the tackle catalogs do today," Frank says. "We handpicked what we thought were the best ideas and highest quality items, and we featured those things along with our own custom-designed tackle, fishing chairs and boat equipment." In the early '80s, the Murrays went "professional" with the catalog and included professionally shot photos and art by one of the world's foremost marine artists, Stanley Meltzoff.
Hard Drive There still is a Murray Brothers catalog, but neither Ed nor Frank Murray have anything to do with it. And whereas 80 percent of the content of the catalogs produced by the former Long Island charter captains and cabinet makers featured terminal tackle and gear, today's Murray Brothers catalog focuses on the lifestyle of fishing, devoting much of its space to beautiful gifts, accessories and clothing.
Travelstar Last year, though, Frank Murray began producing a tackle catalog along with his furniture catalog once again. "We're not trying to make Murray Products by Frank Murray and Sons into another Bass Pro Shops catalog," he said. "Bass Pro Shops mails out millions of catalogs. We mail only a few thousand. What we've done with this catalog is to include some of my best fishing tips with vintage fishing photographs to give it a unique slant. And, of course, we have a few things you can't find anywhere else because we invented them, like the St. Thomas hook rig with single and double hooks and our new coiled safety line. And as always, we've got Murray Brothers fighting chairs, rocket launchers and tables."
Gateway Capt. Harry's
Laptop Parts Like the Murrays, Capt. Harry's Fishing Supply in downtown Miami has always been a family business. Harry Vernon III and his sister LuAnne Liederman literally grew up in the business, and not so surprisingly, it was LuAnne who decided the shop should put out a catalog for its international customers.
Software "Because we were located in downtown Miami, we always had a lot of international customers," Liederman says. "Since I was in charge of the mail-order department, I would get calls from all over the world asking for this or that." With the language barrier, the hardest part was trying to understand what some of them wanted, she explains. So the junior-high-school student convinced her father that handling overseas orders would be a lot easier if customers had a catalog with item numbers to help them describe the products they wanted.
Hard Drives "Dad was game as long as I put it together," she said. So sitting at the family's dining-room table, the youngster modeled the first Capt. Harry's Fishing Supply Catalog after the Sears and Pennys catalogs of the era.
Electronics "It was black and white, and I cut out all the pictures and wrote and typed up descriptions that went under the illustrations." Twenty-one years later, she's still in charge of the 120-page catalog, which has become a big component of Capt. Harry's sales, accounting for 40 percent of the company's business. "It's pretty amazing," she says. "We mail our catalogs to customers in 160 countries and have a very strong presence in Central and South America."
Canon Liederman says part of what distinguishes Capt. Harry's from the hundreds of other catalog retailers "is that we remain a real tackle shop, where there are always experts you can talk to about how to rig a lure or select the right size hooks. We're also an authorized service center for Daiwa, Shimano and Penn Reels, so if something does break, we can fix it. You don't find that with most of these start-up on-line tackle retailers or catalog companies."
Desktop Pc Another difference, she says, is the content. "The profit margins are so small on terminal tackle that you don't make much money. That's why so many tackle catalogs feature high-profit items like art, books, videos, apparel and gifts. We've always tried to stay true to our customers by featuring the best selection of saltwater tackle. That's why only 10 percent of our catalog is devoted to gifts."
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Think Pad Melton International
Repair The young entrepreneur behind the Melton International catalog thinks the global shopping trend is invaluable to big-game anglers, if only for the innovative products being developed in other countries such as Australia that the catalogs and Internet bring to the forefront.
Data Recovery Tracy Melton credits Australian tackle mogul Chris Hall with giving him the idea to produce his first fishing catalog while the two of them shared a charter with Capt. Marlin Parker off Kona.
Cisco "I was right out of college and had no idea of what I was going to do for the rest of my life, except to go work in my dad's business," he says. But when Hall told Melton he thought he had the personality and drive to make it in mail order, Melton jumped at the chance. His first catalog, published in 1993, was only 20 pages in length, but the 20-something entrepreneur had managed to parlay his fishing connections into exclusive offerings of hard-to-find, high-end items such as Marlin Magic and Joe Yee Lures that were previously rarely available outside Hawaii. Needless to say, the phones started ringing the first day. Today, Melton International is a 124-page color catalog with a mail-order list of 250,000. It also has a retail showroom in Anaheim, California.
Keyboard "What we've tried to do in our store and in the catalog is to raise the bar," says Melton. "We're always on the lookout for unique and exclusive items you just can't find in most catalogs." Case in point, he says, is the Ian Miller line of custom stand-up rods from Australia.
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Desktop Finest Kind
Infosys Producing a color catalog is a very expensive proposition, says Joe Lehrner, a bait-and-tackle-shop owner who sold his Stuart business and started selling tackle the trendy way - by catalog.
Refurbished Laptops "As a tackle-shop operator, I was frustrated by customers constantly coming in and flipping catalogs on my counter and asking me if I could match that price," Lehrner says. "Obviously, as a catalog retailer, you have more buying power, which frankly was part of the reason I got into this business."
Wipro Born and raised in New England, Lehrner has fished and owned boats all his life. "Because I travel and fish all over the world on my boat, I have a good sense of what works. Those are the items we carry in our catalog," says Lehrner, who, like most catalog retailers we talked to, also takes his turn manning the phones and answering product questions.
Lap Top Still ranked as a start-up venture, the beautifully photographed Finest Kind catalog has grown from 25 to 35 pages and from a mailing of 40,000 to 400,000 in just three years.
Refurbished "What we've tried to do with our catalog is focus on a specific niche, which for us is tuna and billfish. That's why we feature a bigger selection of harnesses, gaffs, crimping tools, spreader bars and lures than you find in many catalogs," Lehrner says. "One thing we sell that you don't find in a lot of catalogs is cedar plugs. Because they work, we stock them."
Memory Lehrner says Finest Kind stocks everything it sells, so it can be shipped overnight. "What a lot of catalog retailers do," he says, "especially those featuring lots of items, is to drop ship from the wholesaler once the order comes in. In other words, they don't stock everything they advertise. That's why sometimes it can take two or three weeks or longer to receive your order. With the exception of the big-game fighting chairs and furniture, we keep everything in stock."
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As400 Stalker Outfitters
Averatec Lee Green, owner of Stalker Outfitters in Long Island, says he learned the hard way how important good information and service can be.
Hardware "I fished for bluefish and bass off Long Island from the time I was a boy but had little experience fishing for tuna or marlin until I bought a 25-foot Mako." It was because of that learning experience that Green decided to start his own catalog business.
Dual Xeon "I'd go into stores or try to buy tackle through catalog retailers, and I couldn't get good advice on how to rig and use the stuff I wanted to buy," he says. "You'd go into a tackle shop and instead of selling you the hottest lure, they'd size you up as a novice and try to unload everything that wasn't selling. It wasn't until I bought a bigger boat and hired a professional crew that I started to figure things out."
Storage Stalker's on-line catalog was one of the most informative we visited. It was the only site with detailed illustrations on how to fish and rig lures.
Seagate "We pride ourselves on being informative and responsive to our customers," says Green. "The guys that take orders are actually my own fishing crew. We fish with everything we sell in our catalogs, and we design a lot of the items we sell, such as the spreader bars and new teaser bars we're selling."
Computer Sales Indeed, Stalker has one of the largest selections and varieties of pre-made spreader bars we saw anywhere.
Computer Hardware Another unique thing about Stalker is the fishing kits they sell. Geared to the busy sportsman who wants all the right equipment without having to itemize out every single piece of gear, Stalker offers several start-up sets, featuring everything from custom rods and reels, gaffs, tagging stick, terminal tackle and lures. These kits range from the $2,400 light-tackle kit to the $12,500 canyon kit.
Printers "The way I see it, fishing is fun, and it shouldn't be a chore to get the right equipment. So, we've taken our expertise and put it to work for the customer."
Technology That, in a nutshell, is the secret to success in this highly competitive business.
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