Hardy & Greys sold to Pure Fishing Inc
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It appears Hardy & Greys are now part of Pure Fishing Inc. who are “….Pure Fishing, Inc. is a leading global provider of fishing tackle, lures, rods and reels with a portfolio of brands that includes Abu Garcia®, All Star®, Berkley®, Fenwick®, Gulp!®, Mitchell®, Penn®, Pflueger®, Sebile®, SevenStrand®, Shakespeare®, SpiderWire®, Stren®, Trilene® and Ugly Stik®.”
“With operations in 19 countries and a dedicated workforce conversant in 28 languages, Pure Fishing, Inc. is part of Jarden Outdoor Solutions, a leader in outdoor and recreational lifestyle products and a subsidiary of Jarden Corporation.”
I’m not sure if this a good or bad thing. Their current brand names are not synonymous with fly fishing and other than Penn are aimed at the lower/mid market. Will Hardy’s rod & reel development continue? Will the works at Alnwick continue with their small scale production?
Time will tell!
Hey Gerard –
Thanks for posting this; I was going to link to Midcurrent yesterday but ran out of time.
The ‘inside story’ on this sale is that Pure Fishing wasn’t even really targeting Hardy per se, but actually wanted to buy Chub, which is Hardy’s much more profitable coarse-fishing lineup in Europe. Hardy came along in the deal sort of like Ross Reels did when Orvis bought Scientific Anglers.
So on the whole this is probably a bad thing for Hardy, sadly. Over the years there have been many ‘legendary’ brands absorbed by other companies or morphed totally out of recognition. The #1 fly tackle company in the 1920s in the United States was… Abercrombie & Fitch. Yep, that Abercrombie & Fitch. You can still find Hardy reels badged with their (importer’s) logo from that period (which incidentally I would pay good money for if anyone finds one).
Fenwick, Lamiglas, Payne and Leonard are all companies which once occupied the niche of a Sage or Scott or R.L. Winston today. Sage rose like a phoenix from the ashes of Lamiglas after a sale similar to what has happened to Hardy. Of course those were better times and Sage was manufacturing everything in the U.S. in their own facilities, whereas Hardy has become a de facto offshore rebadger in recent years.
The problem Hardy has today is the same one the all-American manufacturers like Scott face, only worse. English labor costs are even higher than American-domestic costs. Consequently to keep making things in England, Hardy would have to raise its prices into the stratosphere. You can see that reality reflected in their occasional ‘English made’ releases of special edition Perfects and the like – those reels generally cost over $1000US. Hardy gave up making rods in the UK years ago (all recent Hardy rods are Korean, just like TFO, except they use JS Corp like we’ve discussed here before as a source, whereas TFO has a standalone factory). If you’re going to buy a Korean-made rod, TFO is the clear winner from a cost/benefit analysis standpoint. Their rods perform just as well on the actual water as any rod anywhere and their build quality is comparable to all other Korean-made rods. So why pay for a European label?
That unfortunately is the conclusion that it looks like too many anglers reached. If you take a birds’-eye view here, Hardy was the victim of long-term increases in European production costs. Going overseas first with rods then with reels was a stopgap measure to eke out a few more years as a semi-independent company, but ultimately the market figured out that the overseas-made equipment wasn’t significantly different from that which can be had for much less cost from the same original equipment manufacturer (JS Corp). Hardy thus was left with its (seriously excellent) “classic” designs, the most significant of which are over a hundred years old and widely available on the aftermarket, with more appeal to serious collectors because of manufacturing practices which are now illegal (such as making the exteriors out of lead paint).
Meanwhile, their sales of ‘new’ product designs I don’t think were ever especially good, and in very recent years their lineup had split into two philosophies which never really sat on good terms with each other. On the one hand they had the popular old designs from the early 20th century like the Perfect, Bougle, Cascapedia and Lightweight reels (all of which I personally adore, even in their Korean embodiments), and then they had the much more fashion-forward, Ari Hart-esque modern lineup of the “performance reels,” most of which you’ve never heard of because they came and went so fast (Fortuna, Angel, Zane, etc.) Their rods almost uniformly fell into the latter category–and that European, modern-art look has never been all that popular in the U.S., which fly fishes with great nostalgia, thus cutting Hardy out of the richest market going.
Best case scenario Hardy benefits from the deeper pockets of their new owners and they’re able to somehow recapture the essence of English Hardy. It could be that a great designer could give them that edge. Or it may be that the new owner is willing to front the cost of getting the English manufacturing back online at an initial loss so as to rebuild the brand and ultimately make up the losses on higher volume sales.
More likely is Hardy becomes more like Fenwick, Lamiglas or the others named above as a brand you’ve heard of, but which had its heyday long ago. I don’t think Hardy will ever devolve into anything less than a ‘quality’ brand name, but it will remain a brand only, applied to Far East-built equipment.
That’s my read on it.
Zach
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