Just watched the documentary, The Lost World of Mr. Hardy. It was really interesting they had 100 fly tiers at the factory, who started at age 14, tied for a year as an apprentice before any of their flies were not stripped back down to a bare hook. He said, “Everything changed when we went from being a manufacturing company to a marketing company and there was no going back.”
Rim praised some of their reels over the years, but they have largely become cheap fakes of what they once were, back when they were made by hand in England. They also haven’t had any good new innovations since then either. Much the same as happened to our Orvis over here. When Orvis went from being a manufacturing firm for the outdoorsman to a marketing company for stuff made in China, everything changed. It no longer has the passion, design and innovation which made it famous amongst outdoorsman. The same can be said of L.L. Bean, Eddie Bauer, and many of the formerly great American outdoor companies.
