That makes me curious. If the bait is that good, why would they discontinue it?
You have to understand how the industry works. What works for you or the best thing since sliced bread doesn’t mean crap. I see the vast majority of all innovative ideas FAIL.
Two main reasons. 1. Advertising Budget 2. Store and distributor BUYERS.
1. Most manufactures are spread financially so thin. R&D, printed publications, promotions….eat up their over head and profit so fast. Then calculate costs for all the shows – ICAST, buy groups, distributors…the costs for this is overwhelming. If huge orders arent taken in, failure is almost certain.
2. Store Buyers are guided to one thing – selling a SKU #. DOESN’T MATTER WHAT IT IS. All buyers have a very limited budget. That limits what and how many sku’s they buy. They know a particular sku will sell X amount a year or season. T9 bring in a new sku, they need to delete a SKU. So why delete a SKU they know they will sell 50 of to take a chance on a new item??? Most will not. They want to protect their job by being incredibly cautious. Risk is not how a buyer has longevity in their job.
Additionally, and this us where I make enemies with many buyers, they are LAZY.
Stores like Farm and Fleet, Wal-Mart all seek stock balancing from their distributors. So in essence, the distributor determines what items are stocked because if they don’t sell, they take them back into inventory. Plus, most buyers never do their homework. They don’t scan the forums for what people want and use. They don’t seek input from staff and guides.. only what a report on sold SKUs have sold. You would be disgusted to see and know how many forum pages I have printed and presented to buyers at shows only to see them tossed in the garbage. I spent years as an end users advocate to communicate the wants to buyers. They don’t care…just want guarantee of how many will sell.
As for fish getting educated on a particular bait, yep it happens. Give it a couple years for the next couple year classes to grow up and it’s game on again.
I’ve spent many years learning/mastering how to use lipless baits like a blade bait. Vertical jigging, pitching, and mocking y.o.y. bait. The lipless baits were God’s gift to mankind. Knowing which brands to use because how the head is designed and weighted is priceless. I tried for almost 10 years to have a manufacture tweek a mold design to adjust how a Gizzard shad would fall and the need for micro sizes. Every year I got a lecture on how expensive that would be. Unless they had guaranteed sales of 20k units each, it wouldn’t happen. Then Rapala introduced the rippin rap that had most of the fixes I had been asking for. Not the colors I want or exact body style, but they did get the nose dive correct. They also have deep pockets for advertising, product placement and so on. Amazing how that worked out
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