A brand new five-part video collection from G. Loomis goals to point out the corporate’s loyal prospects the way it crafts its fishing rods and the way the method is worthy of the Loomis tagline, “Handcrafted in Woodland, Washington.” The collection, which launched earlier this month, provides viewers a behind-the-scenes take a look at the G. Loomis model and the intricate work that goes into making a number of the most respected fly rods within the trade. The concept, says, G. Loomis Artistic Director Pink Kulper, is to assist the legacy rodmaker’s prospects “really feel linked” to the rods they use after they hit the water.
“This collection is a tribute to the artisans and engineers who pour their coronary heart and soul into each rod we produce,” mentioned Kulper says. “The ‘Really feel Linked’ collection is an invite to see and really feel the connection between our craftsmen’s ardour and the distinctive merchandise we ship.”
In a nod to ever-more-competitive fly-rod manufacturing trade — it appears that evidently fly rods that includes the latest-and-greatest tech are launched on month-to-month foundation — G. Loomis produced the video collection that doesn’t say it provides technological advances in its merchandise. Via the video collection, it exhibits that tech at work.
“There’s a whole lot of ardour on the manufacturing unit,” explains Chris Cogbur, G. Loomis’ course of engineering supervisor within the first episode of the collection. “The workforce and the manufacturing unit are very devoted to the efficiency and the innovation of the product. We don’t have a whole lot of time to waste. It’s a really aggressive trade, and we now have to innovate and we now have to work exhausting to enhance.
“Time isn’t going to attend for us.”
Photograph: Darcy Bacha.
Cogburn and his fellow G. Loomis rod designers are cognisant of the high-end fly rod market’s tendency to boast about new tech, new supplies, new tapers and so forth. G. Loomis has at all times been a good rod producer, however the overt effort to display that its engineering and craftsmanship stays at a excessive stage is however a commentary on the trade as an entire.
At the moment’s premium fly rods are four-figure marvels, they usually value what they value due to the analysis and growth that goes right into a product’s design and manufacture solely to be offered to a market that’s however a sliver of the general sportfishing buyer base.
Certainly, fly fishers pay extra for great things — it’s one of many obligatory evils that trade tries to elucidate away each time one other $1,200 fly rod hits the market. However that’s the important thing. There’s a marketplace for high quality fly rods — anglers are prepared to pay prime value for rods that carry out. In the event that they weren’t, we wouldn’t proceed to see a rocket-paced improve in retail costs for premium tools.
Via its video collection, G. Loomis does its half to justify the tip end result — the transaction on the fly store money register as soon as a rod hits the market.
To its credit score, the corporate does, certainly, deliver viewers into the heart of the G. Loomis manufacturing unit, the place it rightfully boasts the corporate’s lengthy historical past of using and protecting fly-rod builders. However issues change over time. Staff retire. New blood comes aboard. It’s a problem, says Grant Wilkerson, a G. Loomis product supervisor, to foster a piece surroundings that conjures up staff to fulfill the requirements that G. Loomis has at all times maintained.
“Once I first began working right here, the typical work expertise was 15 years,” Wilkerson says. “Lots of people had 30, 25 years of expertise. So there was a really household really feel after I first began working right here. I’ve tried to keep up that as individuals have left. We’re nonetheless attempting to maintain that household really feel by speaking to staff daily and taking their households into consideration.”
It’s possible that the corporate’s lengthy historical past of creating high quality rods does, certainly, come right down to the individuals on the manufacturing unit ground. That’s the place the problem of sustaining and even enhancing requirements comes into play. However, like most high-end rodmakers, with progress comes extra challenges.
“Constructing one rod is straightforward,” Cogburn says, “however constructing 500 rods, similar, that’s the trick.”
Via the “Really feel Linked” video collection, G. Loomis hopes to tug again the curtain on the corporate’s manufacturing course of, and permit its prospects — previous and new — to get a glimpse of the corporate’s tradition.
“All of us look out for one another. Each particular person has an opportunity to affect the course of the enterprise. It’s a strong recipe for each enterprise and private success,” Cogburn says.
And, in fact, the tip end result, if all the pieces goes as deliberate, is a superb fly rod ending up within the palms of an appreciative buyer.
“‘Handcrafted in Washington’ means our rods are designed, developed and constructed within the Pacific Northwest by the palms of anglers for anglers,” says Manufacturing Supervisor Matt Wirkkala.
G. Loomis has been constructing fishing rods since 1982.
