opening a fishing tackle shop...

im thinking about opening a fishing tackle shop as there isn't one in a radius of 20miles and there is a lot of anglers and lakes around where i live, i have ideas on how i am gonna advertise the shops its just the other side i need help with..

i know a lot about eBay and how it runs and i m thinking about selling tackle by a eBay shop aswell as having a shop for customers to come in and buy,

i need help/advice on opening a shop...

how do i go about getting stock?
how do stockist go about there business?
anyone out there who owns a tackle shop and sells other things as not many people go fishing in the winter or customers will be low?

any help appreciated

DON'T. Unless you can't think of a quicker way to get rid of your money.

Good luck with it mate, hope its a success.

nathan fisher fisher said:

im thinking about opening a fishing tackle shop as there isn't one in a radius of 20miles and there is a lot of anglers and lakes around where i live, i have ideas on how i am gonna advertise the shops its just the other side i need help with..

i know a lot about eBay and how it runs and i m thinking about selling tackle by a eBay shop aswell as having a shop for customers to come in and buy,

i need help/advice on opening a shop...

how do i go about getting stock?
how do stockist go about there business?
anyone out there who owns a tackle shop and sells other things as not many people go fishing in the winter or customers will be low?

any help appreciated

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I f you,re thinking of opening a fishing tackle shop i would of thought you would have more of a clue than to just ask for advice on a forum

There's a thread running here where a tackle shop owner is willing to help:

tackle shop - Coarse Fishing - Fishing Forums from Anglers' Net

Back in the 1970's there were thousands of miners and steel workers given £20 - £30 K redundancy money and many of them went into business for themselves. Quite a few new fishing shops were opened by people with no idea of how to run a business and more importantly not enough money to stock one properly. £20 K might sound like a lot of money, especially in 1975, but look around your local tackle shop and mentally add up how much it would cost to buy everything on display.

The other consideration is that tackle shops are closing down almost as quick as pubs are. Ebay sales might sound like a good idea and many shops are managing to keep their heads above water by combining an eBay shop with the high street one. There is one major drawback with eBay selling - price. If you ain't the cheapest on any particular product you might as well not sell it. Look at the competition and the fees and you'll see that it would be hard to break into this market and make a profit.

In short, I would think that you would be mad to consider it.

Theres a lot of hidden costs with ebay selling too - paypal costs if you are paid by paypal, listing fees, sellers premium etc etc - and as it has become bigger and bigger the ebay site has got more and more expensive for traders.

If you do open a tackle shop sell pet food as well, there is a bit of a cross over there, dog biscuits, cat food , plus plenty of people coming to buy food for their pets , some will be anglers and add a packet of hooks, some one and small items to there pet food buying

Just bear in mind , all the tackle shops are struggling, as are the suppliers

If your open on sundays it might give you an advantage.

Is it a tough environment out there for many businesses. Because tackle shops rely on peoples disposable income (as opposed to being a necessity) it will be extra tough.

Though I do accept that for many people on this forum fishing is a necessity.

beerweasel said:

If your open on sundays it might give you an advantage.

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Especially if you open the other 6 days as well...................

beerweasel said:

If your open on sundays it might give you an advantage.

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That's just brought back a memory from, I think, around the early nineties when the Sunday trading laws were all changing and a bit open to interpretation.

A tackle dealer was told he couldn't sell maggots to anglers on a Sunday due to some sort of red tape and classification of product so he instead sold apples or something at (let's say) £3 each with two pints of maggots thrown in for free.

I can't remember exactly where it was but seem to think it was somewhere around Stourport-on-Severn... Mal Storey rings a bell but I could be completely wrong?

I'd be interested to hear if anyone remembers and what the exact story was?

And... I think he still got prosecuted

Just because you have lakes near to you, does not mean the anglers will visit your shop, they probably won't unless they live nearby or get caught short and know you are there.

As far as getting stock, contact the manufacturers with your intentions, they will then discuss this with you and decide if they will supply you or not, they will probably want a minimum spend for the initial order, then you will have to take into account the minimum spend per order and how much it is to get to get carriage free or make it worth ordering small amounts.

Think of how much it will cost to buy all of your initial stock, look around other tackle shops and roughly add up how much stock they have on display to get a rough idea.

Take a long hard look before you go ahead, it is coming on for winter now so you have plenty of time to plan, I would suggest you do the business plan first to get some realistic idea on how much you will need to sell each week to stay open, for instance:

say some goes in to your shop and buys 1 packet of hooks, 2 floats, ½ pint of maggots and a bag of pellets £8.00? how many people do you need [this will be your most usual sale] to keep open? You will have higher value individual sales, but they are few a far between; think of them as bonus sales, not bread and butter.

I am trying to put you off the idea, please take a long hard look; as said above tackle shops are closing all over.

Maybe build up an e-shop first: lower overheads and smaller outlay i.e. just get a few things and build up slowly, it will be hard and a lot of work, but I wish you well if you go ahead.

Don't go into it thinking you will enjoy it or be any good because you are a fisherman.

I had an old school friend back in the day who was a mad keen and very successful match fisherman. Not many could beat him on his day. After we all left sixth form and I went off elsewhere he got what he thought was his dream job in a local fishing tackle shop.

Six months later and the dream was over. OK, he knew about and understood the tackle and what he was selling, that gave him a head start, but at the end of the day he wasn't fishing.

He was working in a shop.

Five and a half days a week (remember half day Wednesdays ?). When he would much rather be out and about fishing, not stacking shelves, straightening stock, counting said stock and being polite to a lot of patronising idiot customers he knew he could fish the pants off.

Good luck with your enterprise if that is what you want to do, not trying to throw cold water on ambition, but it's a market that's pretty full and I can't think there are many shop front niches crying out for an angling shop to open right now.

Oh, and the suggestion that you combine it with an animal feed stuffs store is a very very good one. It can work, indeed, we had a shop with exactly that arrangement just a mile up the road from here until about three or four years ago. When the shop stopped selling angling materials, sold the stock (which sale and purchase was the basis of the opening stock of the newly opened Apollo Angling shop at Marsh Farm*) and decided to stick to pet food entirely, as much much more profitable and less hassle.

* Come to think of it, Apollo is one of the very very few newly opened and manifestly substantially successful recent angling shop ventures I am aware of. It's big advantage is not only the quality of its stock and staff (which certainly contribute) but its venue on site next to a highly successful and well known fishery. If I were looking to set up a fishing tackle shop myself I'd certainly try and pinch their business model. That said any canny venue of sufficient size to support a shop will probably want to set up their own anyway. Catch 22 and all that.

iannate said:

say some goes in to your shop and buys 1 packet of hooks, 2 floats, ½ pint of maggots and a bag of pellets £8.00? how many people do you need [this will be your most usual sale] to keep open? You will have higher value individual sales, but they are few a far between; think of them as bonus sales, not bread and butter.

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This is excellent advice.

How many 'run rate' transactions as noted above would need to be completed to generate the profit (not revenue) to simply pay for the rent and electricity, never mind taking a wage or growing the busness?

You really need to speak to someone who is still trading as they can give you personal advice on a practical business model and all the pitfalls of rental, overheads, turnover, staffing, stocking, cash flow, mail order, diversification etc.
I think the major consideration is location, my local shop has moved to new, bigger premises on a nearby industrial estate and seems to be doing more than just keeping his head above water, there are also a few more smaller shops within a 5 mile radius of me doing okay and more within a 15 mile radius so it ain't all doom and gloom, mind you, the areas they cover have a reasonable percentage of retirees within their catchments.

You really need to know what your monthly bills are liable to be, especially business rates and electricity for power/heating/fridges etc. A mate of mine opened one but only kept it running for approx 3yrs, closing back in 2002. At the time he had to pay nearly £500 for rates and bills every month before he even put a penny in his wallet. AND, that's from the profits of sales - so you really need to sell a lot. Just do your homework and enjoy it if you can and I wish you all the best.

Further to what I first posted. You can guess by the majority of negative replies that people are only being cruel to be kind!!!
If big concerns like Bennets and Mullarkeys cannot continue and small tackle shops are going down like flies you can bet it is not a good idea. mg:

I would use maggots as bait if I didn't have to drive for half an hour to get to the shop and half an hour back, remember its not distance its the time spent getting there that is usually the problem.

As it is I never use maggots, rear my own worms and buy all my other bait in the supermarket and freeze it.

My nearest tackle shop has two staff, one of which is constantly on the laptop checking the online prices and marking the shops equivalent down to match.

The only tackle that seems to sell regularly in almost all the shops I go in (and I never pass one without a looksee) is carpie gear, boilies, pellets, etc,

For a genuine coarse angling shop I take my Lady shopping to Ringwood or Christchurch and spend a few hours in their proper tackle shops.....places that do not smell like a sweet factory!

Good luck anyways, I think you will need it.

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