Woody’s Angle – Death of a Tackle Shop

Jeff Woodhouse

Jeff caught his first fish at the age of five, a mackerel from a Torquay fishing boat. That was the starting point 53 years ago and the sight of that living silvery image coming up from the invisible depths had him hooked for life. Since then he has practised virtually every type of fishing, although not always successfully.

He doesn’t just like fish, he has a love affair with them, in his living room, in his garden and at times, in his freezer. Lately he has spent more time either running clubs or assisting them to become successful. Now he admits to being too old to chase monsters, he’s happier getting as much fun as possible out of what’s before him.

In this monthly series Jeff indulges the rebel within himself, trying to think differently about the usual trends in fishing.

Marsh Tackle – going, going…….gone in May

DEATH OF A TACKLE SHOP

It was with great regret that I discovered last Saturday my local angling store, Marsh Tackle, High Wycombe, is to close. I was speaking with Roy, the owner, and he has frankly had enough of it. What brought the decision on, amongst other things, was last year his turnover was down yet again to less than £ 400,000 and he made a loss of £ 4,000. He will keep the premises and rent them to an Indian restaurant for £ 20,000 a year, clear profit, no hassle!

This is not a small corner shop type of business, it has a floor area of around 3000 sq. feet, which is reasonably large for a tackle shop in the UK. Anyone who has read my previous article about J&K Tackle in Bicester will know that I am probably partly responsible for the local store’s demise. I have called it for the way customers are treated and the presentation of goods in the shop. I believe it could have been managed better and kept a lot neater and some attention to special lines should have been done better.

However, these are Roy’s points and to some degree I have to concur with him, but let me explain first that he is the owner and shop is managed for him. He has spent some time there because it was his ‘hobby’, not his main income. He has, alongside this, a highly successful plant hire company that’s been going for years and a skip business that he picked up about 11 years ago that he has built up into one of the major waste skip businesses in the home counties. His sons run that side now, but it is a tribute to Roy’s general business skills in that field.

He told me about how he has been treated by the manufacturers and their agents over the years, how they all want more business, bigger orders, but just don’t care how he gets rid of the stuff he’s already bought. He told me of the damage done by the mail order companies and to be fair some of his prices on rods and reels are comparable, or even cheaper when you add in the postage costs at times. He also complains that eBay has helped to kill his trade too, which I can understand to some extent, but a lot of that is down to manufacturers and product dumping.

He also told me of ‘incidents’ with the customers, like the day he caught one slipping a 99p packet of hooks into his back pocket. He confronted him and after the usual ‘effing and blinding’ the guy put all his stuff down, emptied his pocket of the hooks, walked out of the door and no more was said. However, that customer was buying up to £ 20 worth of bait and bits per week and Roy lost that regular business, all over a 99p packet of hooks.

Why the guy wanted to steal them in the first place, I can’t imagine, but like Roy says, he has lost a lot of business through incidents like that. Furthermore, in order to cover his losses he put the prices of the hooks up, above the RRP, in order to cover the pilferage. That too lost him even more business, a business that used to sell over 200 gallons of maggots and around 100 pints of casters per week. (I must say they were really good quality bait too.)

Enough is enough, he has cried and sometime in May he and the manager will lock up the shop for the last time. Local anglers will then have to travel either 7 – 8 miles one way or 10 miles the other way for their pints of maggots and packets of hooks. I have no idea yet what Mick, the manager, will do, although he has hinted at keeping the more profitable side of the shop, the gun trade, going in smaller premises.

So what really did go wrong? Much as I like them both I don’t think they have retailing in their blood, much like you find shop assistants these days who only do it to earn a crust rather than treat it as a vocation. For Roy, his plant and skip hire was his main business and he only treated the tackle shop as a hobby, he didn’t need it for his income. As for Mick the manager, when I have asked him in the past he’s vague about his previous jobs, but I don’t think retailing was a part of them hence he has no experience of dealing with general retailing situations.

Between them, they more ‘expected’ customers to come through the doors rather than beckoning them in. I think there was a lot that could have been done, but my suggestions whenever I made them were always rebutted or countered with a “You don’t know….” kind of argument. Their attitude when a customer brought back a broken item was unbelievable at times, which is why I sent a landing net handle back to the manufacturer rather than deal with Mick (and I got a more expensive replacement for it into the bargain). What they failed to realise is that customers are, by and large, mostly honest and genuine.

If you ever do want to run your own tackle shop, THINK TWICE! In fact think more times and even then have many doubts. It is a hard world in which to make a living and the manufacturers are not there to help the starters, the entrepreneurs! If you do want a shop, want it because you love retailing, not simply that you just like fishing and think this is a handy way to get hold of cheap tackle because it certainly isn’t.

Be organised and knowledgeable about modern selling and promotional techniques, displays and how to make small premises look much larger than they are! Also, install a modern theft prevention and security system. Roy used to have one years ago, which we all joked was a ‘fiver’ detection system and if you still had a £ 5 note in your wallet when leaving, he’d have it off you!

This shop is out of town with free parking, but no passing trade. If he moved into town his rates would be much higher, parking would be costly and difficult at times for customers, but he would have passing trade. He told me that just before Christmas he had been in town where it was madness and yet there was just the usual one or two anglers coming into the tackle shop for a bit of bait etc, no Christmas presents.

I have felt for a while that the writing was on the wall for this shop and frankly I wished at times that I had the money to buy it (£ 350,000 was the figure he mentioned to me). It was too big to be a small tackle shop and too small to be in the big league with other mail order companies, if you see what I mean. That is when you call in experts to help you sort out the layout, the type of business and how you develop it. It isn’t easy finding new methods of selling, arranging and rearranging the shop to improve sales or even just to make it look fresher!

Even though I feel partly responsible for its closure (Mick and Roy will both say I am) I can’t help but feel a certain sadness at seeing it close. I wonder if there is an opportunity here or am I now too old to start afresh? The first problem would be to find suitable premises that are cheap enough yet still in an area where there is nearby parking and you can rely on passing trade. Even then I have to ask, is angling on the way up, or on the way out?

For the time being, local anglers will have to find another source for their bait and moan, as they usually do, that there isn’t another shop for miles.