Badge-engineering is a term that I am sure most of you will be familiar with. Older readers will recall the British Leyland range of cars of the 70’s with the likes of Austin, Morris, Riley, Wolsley, MG, and Vanden Plas being basically six versions of the same car, but with BL’s ‘penny plain, tuppence coloured’ approach to pricing.
Now, the point of this introduction is to explain that for those amongst you who think TickleTackle shut up shop for the summer holidays and swan off to Barbados or the Maldives to spend your hard earned cash, nothing could be further from the truth.(Mind you, we were pi55ed when Branson’s place burnt down, we had block booked the place for our Xmas party). New ways to fleece, rob blind, leave penniless, blag, sorry… assist our customers to select the appropriate product in relation to their fiscal standing are always being sought.
To that end, an unfortunate incident that befell one of our very, very, junior assistants was recently turned into a brilliant new marketing opportunity for TT to launch into a whole new and previously untapped demographic.
This poor underling was wandering around in an area of a town unknown to him which it turns out was very much on the wrong side of the tracks. Whilst trying to escape from the clutches of Frosty Jack soaked beggars, charity tin rattlers and Big Issue sellers (plus their dogs) he dived into one of the few shop doorways that didn’t have the obligatory homeless person bedded down blocking the entrance and found himself in what is known as a ‘Pound’ shop.
Pausing only to catch his breath before planning his escape route out of such an alien world, this bewildered individuals’ eyes alighted on a wire basket by the till. Piled in this point of sale display were fishing reels no less, for sale, for the price of £1 (obviously) Not sure that anyone back at TickleTackle would believe this, our lad purchases said item and then runs the gauntlet back through the town and makes his way to our high security R & D establishment.
Perhaps unadvisedly his first stop on his return was our Engineering Department, where the first sight of the complete and utter lack of quality of his new purchase brought on a mass attack of the vapours and smelling salts all round was the order of the day. Disappointed with this response, he walked through to the Marketing Department where he just left it on a table. Sometime later a member of our ‘Imagineering’ team happened upon the package and was intrigued. A cursory examination of the reel and its packaging, a quick brain-storming session and a ground-breaking new opportunity emerged.
First for a make-over was the packaging. Originally a clear plastic bag, the addition of a TickleTackle sticker and a re-branding as a see-through reel case takes it to another level. This simple and highly original approach saves the angler valuable fishing time by not having sort through their tackle boxes to open up lots of different reel cases to find the right one.
Taking the reel itself, it was time to push the positive features. First of all is the extremely light weight brought about by a ‘less is more’ approach. In fact, continuing the motoring analogy, it appears that in Lotus car’s best tradition it has ‘added lightness’. The main body of the reel is manufactured is a composite material, heavy and expensive bearings are shunned in the internal mechanism, complicated bail arm closing apparatus is eschewed in favour of a more positive, manual approach.
No need for the complication of a roller on the bail arm, it would only attract dust and dirt and end up jammed. More simplicity with the handle, no over-engineered fold away gubbins, no ambidextrous option deemed necessary nor offered.
To round things off the front drag has the no-nonsense on or off approach that is all you really need. The composite gearing in the clutch means none of that metallic clattering you get with other reels, just a healthy ‘click, click’ of plastic on plastic. And for those who have noted that a Baitrunner facility has not been incorporated, simply unwinding the front mounted clutch will give you exactly the same effect, albeit with a need to manually wind the clutch back up again should you get a run.
A retrieve ratio of 3.5:1 is deemed more than sufficient, if you want your tackle to come back in quicker, just wind faster, simples as they say. An anti-reverse is fitted at no extra cost, and we can confirm that the action is positive, to say the least
The reel came pre-loaded with 7lb nylon, this is kept as backing and an additional 50 feet or so of high quality braid is added to fill up the spool. As a final touch of quality a TickleTackle HEG (Hyper Expensive Gear) logo is affixed to the body of the reel and a ‘Redline’ is run round the spool to differentiate this reel from any others on the market, and on the bank it will show other anglers just what a discerning individual you are…
And what is the thinking behind all this, you ask, and why the reference to badge-engineering at the start? Well, it cannot have escaped you attention that in the world of centrepin reels, one particular model is tinkered with and marketed at different price points, usually lower than the original. By upselling this Redline reel, TickleTackle are doing exactly the opposite, naturally. We take a cheap product and make it eye-wateringly expensive. We take the ‘less is more ‘concept very seriously indeed and vow to continue giving you far less and charge you much, much more for it.
Given the amount of development we have had to do to bring this new product to the market, and the cachet that our branding brings we think that a price point of £59.99 is about right, falling as it does just below the weekly JSA payments making it eminently affordable in our opinion. And it hasn’t escaped our marketing people that those on JSA have a lot of time on their hands to go fishing, so there could be many more opportunities to target a specially tailored range of products aimed directly at this particular demographic
So there you have it, the all new Redline reel. Supplies aren’t at all limited, you are welcome to buy as many as you like, just form an orderly queue at your local TT approved retailer…
