THE VIEW FROM OVER HERE
Whatever happened to innovation?
David Hall believes that nobody succeeds in business by simply being optimistic. There has to be some innovation, some real talent and a large slice of courage.
I
’ve been very lucky in my career to have observed and become friends with some of the great tackle innovators of the post-war years – Dick
Walker, Peter Drennan, Cliff Fox, Kevin Nash, Danny Fairbrass and a whole host of other bright, young men. Dick Walker was an
inspiration, despite the fact that he thought my fi rst publishing venture, Coarse Fisherman magazine, would fail. He nevertheless supported
and encouraged me and was the fi rst to hold his hands up when it became apparent that the magazine was going to be a success. I have never spoken to Peter
Drennan about his relationship with Dick but I know they were close when Peter was just starting out and I’m sure his experience was not dissimilar to mine.
Great minds… T e thing I have always
enjoyed about innovators is that they are not like anybody else. T is is not only in fi shing, but in all walks of life. T e Beatles, the Rolling Stones
and the Beach Boys were not like anybody else. Mohammed Ali was not like anybody else, nor Lester Piggott. Likewise, Peter Drennan,
Cliff Fox, Kevin Nash et al were not like anybody else. In the beginning Peter made better fl oats, Kevin made better luggage, while Cliff made all manner of innovative products. T is was at a time when
angling really was a cottage industry, dominated by wholesalers who had no interest
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in innovation. T ey bought branded goods like Mitchell reels, Bayer Perlon monofi lament and sold it on to the tackle shops. Nothing much changed. We all used Mitchell or ABU reels and we all fi shed with fi breglass rods. It was Peter Drennan who laid
down the blueprint for others to follow. It was amazing really because, in those early days, he only made fl oats; hardly a must- stock product line, plus every wholesaler in the country had a range of fl oats in their catalogue.
Not to be outdone, Peter
introduced his own specialist brand, ESP. Interestingly, and I don’t think
anybody could have anticipated this, in the 1980s and 1990s carp fi shing began to take off , not only in the UK but throughout Europe. And who made the best carp fi shing tackle? Our four musketeers of course. T e rest, as they say, is history.
Back to basics So where are today’s
When travelling around
Europe in the 1990s, British products dominated.
But Peter made the best
fl oats. Not only that but every shop in the country paid the same price; he never did deals. T e real breakthrough came when he introduced quivertips, swimfeeders and square bait boxes. T e fl oodgates opened and more and more innovative products followed. T e company became known,
incorrectly in my opinion, as a match brand. T is always struck me as ironic because Peter was a self-confessed specimen hunter and that was the emerging market. Enter Kevin Nash and Cliff
Fox. Both carp anglers, Kevin and Cliff would come to dominate that specialist market from the mid-1980s onwards, being joined later by Danny Fairbrass with his Korda range.
innovators? I’m sure they are still out there, although not in great numbers; there never were great numbers of them. T e problem is that it is almost impossible for a young person to start a business today unless he/she is of independent means. Peter began in his mum’s
garage, Kevin started making carp sacks in his kitchen, and I started in an upstairs bedroom. But the UK was booming in
the 1970s, banks wanted to lend money, anglers had money in their pockets and most of the tackle we see in the tackle shops today was yet to be invented. Items such as swimfeeders,
quivertip rods, carp rods, metalware, bivvies, electronic bite alarms, bedchairs, chemically sharpened hooks, baitrunner reels, carbon-fi bre rods and poles,
boilies, bait fl avourings, hair rigs, braid… the list goes on. T is was a golden age for
British tackle makers and Europe could not get enough of its products. When travelling around Europe in the 1990s, British products dominated every tackle shop I visited. For those established
companies the story remains the same today, with continued growth for most. But I regret that I do not see any new innovation. Maybe the innovators are out
there but the current fi nancial situation makes it impossible for the next Peter Drennan to get his products to market. T ere are no new emerging methods. Much of what I see is ‘me too’ product: longer rods, shorter rods, diff erently shaped leads. Maybe Peter, Cliff , Kevin and Danny had the best of it – the golden years – maybe new products will be a tweak here and a tweak there, but I hope not. Angling has a habit of
reinventing itself. When I was young we fi shed mainly on rivers for roach, chub and bream with stick fl oats and wagglers. T en the cormorants came, so
we invented commercial coarse fi sheries and with them a whole new bunch of products. T en carp fi shing really took off and that off ered the industry a whole new opportunity, not only in the UK but throughout Europe. We’ve reinvented ourselves so
many times since Peter Drennan put the fi rst commercially made peacock waggler into the shops all those years ago that I wonder who the next great innovator and what the next great innovation might be.
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