Where Flies are Made
- This topic has 24 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated Jul 28, 2008 at 9:50 am by
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While I certainly am not a proponent of “sweat shops”…as long as they are being treated and paid well I think it is sort of cool that those nice, fine ladies get to ties flies for a living.
Looks like a nice setup they have there!
Yeah Zach…I could see that expose being one of, if not the, last article you write for the industry.
Having lived overseas for many years in the USAF, workers participating in cottage industries like fly tying are not being exploited within their society, although many in our society might feel they are.
Zach, I would think that an article addressing the entire fly tying–production, materials and such industry would be extremely interesting. I doesn’t need to be nor should it be an expose. It would be really cool to see how that #16 Royal Coachman and all its raw materials, manufacturing, ordering and delivery were handled. Essentially an article on the entire fly tying supply chain would show the whole process from wire becoming hooks to a finished fly being tied on a tippet.
Agree that it would make for an interesting three part series for a magazine.
It would be really cool to see how that #16 Royal Coachman and all its raw materials, manufacturing, ordering and delivery were handled. Essentially an article on the entire fly tying supply chain would show the whole process from wire becoming hooks to a finished fly being tied on a tippet.
Agree…but lets just pick a fly that someone ACTUALLY fishes with.
Zach, Mexico is also becoming a source of flies. I know one small east coast tackle company which has their flies tied there, and a friend recently showed me some egg patterns and woolly buggers his pastor had picked up from a ministry group trying to support a local community (may have been an orphanage, but I cannot remember for sure) with work. A lot closer than Africa
Agree…but lets just pick a fly that someone ACTUALLY fishes with.
Hahahahaha!
I think this would be a very interesting article.
Agree…but lets just pick a fly that someone ACTUALLY fishes with.
I kinda figured what ever fly I picked to make my point had a 1 in 1 million chance of pleasing everybody. There are really only 4 flies of any use anyway–The Woolly Bugger, The Clouser, foam sandwichs and the soft hackle.
I think an article on this sort of thing would be step in a good direction. Especially if you did expose something. If fly companies or fly shops were buying flies from places that paid their workers horribly and had horrible working conditions than it needs to be exposed. I’m pretty sure that the idea of “sweat shop” isn’t necessarily comparing Western standards to “others.” It’s more that people are basically paid nothing and given horrible standards than anything else, even in their economy. If the fly fishing industry is standing up for that, than we should definitely expose it, if they are helping the people in those countries than that should be shown as well and applauded.
Which is exactly why Zach’s proposals to this point have not been accepted.
There was also a discussion on production fly tying over at flyfishingarkansas.
http://flyfishingarkansasandmissouri.yuku.com/topic/3872?page=-1
Depends on whether it was an expose or not. I honestly don’t think the fly fishing companies have anything to hide.
Zach
Zach, It depends which companies and factories. I have been an Umpqua Signature Tier for ten years and 16 years ago I visited their tying factory in Chiang Mai Thailand to over see the production of the first series of New Zealand they put onto our market.
At the time the whole shebang was owned by Dennis Black the Umpqua Founder. He has since sold Umpqua in the US but still owns the factories of which there are several in Thailand and Sri Lanka.
The staff are treated amazingly… the factories are air conditioned, they have regular breaks and are treated well with health care and education plans as well as even in house financing on vehicles such as the motor scooters so popular in Asia. Their wages are roughly double that of the average labouring wage in the same city. Having a family member getting a job in one of Dennis’s Factories is like winning the lottery for many of these people. He also flies in the some of the world’s leading tiers to oversee production of their flies and to teach the tiers how to produce these patterns faithfully.
However, the African factories are not always so generous. The flies out of Africa tend to be of much lower quality, the working conditions much worse due to the low cost of the flies (Sometimes sold out to the tune of $2.00 – $3.00 per dozen… by the time taxes, profits and materials are paid you can imagine what the tier gets if the owner is making his money and we know he is…. I have been spammed by the African factories before and purchased some samples. Some of these factories even claimed to be involved with Umpqua in their e-mails (Something i knew was BS at the time but I wanted to see their product). While the flies were nicely tied they were not tied for durability and I had several of the hooks (Claimed to be Tiemco, clearly not, and actually impossible for them to be at the price, also Tiemco struggles to keep Umpqua in hooks, I doubt the Kenyan factories are seeing any of their hooks at all.) straighten out on our big NZ fish.
Like any industry world wide there are rat bags in this game. In Thailand these days there are several companies that tie gorgeous flies such as Umpqua, Kingdom Flies (Owned by Dennis’s son Craig) and others who supply some of the big names and more reputable outfitters… then there are the rat bags tying on crap with crap materials, treating staff like sweat shop labour and still making money… anglers should think about the “service” they are doing the next time they buy their 12 flies for $10.00 deal on the net… harsh to say but the truth is… they are part of the problem too and the fastest way to stopping the exploitation of these people is to stop buying the flies that are sold at prices which are clearly ridiculous. At the time you press hte
You can judge a man by the size of things which annoy him.
Tim –
The #1 factor in why no one has done an outsourcing article yet is cost. The magazines’ travel budget was never much and nowadays is pretty much nil. That means (assuming I wrote it for AA), we’d have to have a sponsor to get us to the factories, and since the sponsor would be a manufacturer, that would raise a potential conflict of interest. Plus, what manufacturer would be served enough to pay a writer thousands of dollars (the cost of a ticket to SE Asia plus lodging) to come out and maybe just confirm what the manufacturer has been saying all along? I mean, I see that as a big positive for the manufacturer but I am not sure they would.
Zach
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