Found this pic on the Google machine....
What would you do?
After a year of tinkering with the Alabama Rig, Andy and Tammy Poss of Muscle Shoals, Ala. – which, to quote Ronnie Van Zant, “has got the swampers” and “they’ve been known to pick a song or two” – decided at possibly the height of its popularity to hand over the reins…sort of.
According to one news report, the Posses “recently announced they had reached an agreement which designates Mann’s Bait Co. as the sole and exclusive licensee for the manufacture, marketing and sale of the Alabama Rig to the fishing tackle trade. ‘It’s going be a good thing,’ said [Andy] Poss. ‘They can make them a whole lot faster than we can. We’ve been working long hours since this thing took off and we can’t keep up.’
So what would you do? Would you staff up to meet the demand and keep control over your baby, or would you license the rights (and presumably some profits) to a nationally known company with better distribution to try to meet the demand thataway?
Before you answer, bear in mind the following, from the same article:
> Hoping to grab a share of the pie, several other bait companies have begun manufacturing their own versions of the A-rig and distributing them to tackle shops and websites for sale. Poss said he intends to take legal action these companies for patent infringement. “They’ll be getting a letter from our attorney,†he said.
> There is currently a petition circulating asking major tournament organizations to ban the use of the Alabama rig because it “compromises the integrity of professional bass fishing and creates many other possible negative issues for the sport down the road.â€
So:
> The knockoff folks have already reared their ugly heads, so that affects demand for the real – and I’m betting higher-priced – deal.
> If tourney organizations ban the Alabama rig, there may only be a limited time window to get these things sold.
Don’t know, man, that’s a tough one. I think I’d try to keep ahold of it, but who knows what kind of deal the Posses got. Congrats to them either way.
More
> Mann’s has zero about this on their website or FB page. Doh!
4 Comments
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Jared
November 29, 2011 at 1:09 pm
i mean really, ive been scouring mann’s website since i heard it was sold to them but nothing!…WTH!? and it was sold to them because they could market it…lol
they have it on tackle sites but not their own – jeeze, i could market better than that. i would be singing it from the hill tops like recola. Alabaaaama RIGGGGGG!!! lol
so jay, have you fished with one yet – and reconsidered your stance on the rig and its use in derbies etc?
jim kelley
November 29, 2011 at 4:09 pm
Well, I think its a good move on the Posses part. First, because yes other companies are making a copy of the original design, so now you have all these other copies flooding that market, that in turn over a period of time would lessen the demand for their original A-rig, think Sweet Beaver, or the Megabass vision 110, just about every plastic or hard bait company has a copy or a color likeness of those two baits. Like the author said, they’re getting it while the getting is/was good. Secondly. I think it will eventually be banned, and even though I own a few myself, I agree it should be limited even more, statewide regulations are gonna take control on the multi-hook deal, but still I’ve read some blogs and emails of several pros, quite a lot of them are not happy with its success. Of course guys are gonna say, well “they should learn how to fish offshore better, or just learn for that matter” but my theory on it is, that yes offshore or suspended fishing takes a good set of skills, and a lot time to be successful at it, but so does flipping docks, or really any other technique. But the whole thing is you have 3-5 lures in the water all at once, you can sack a limit up pretty fast if you’re on the right school of fish. I think that is what makes it awesome. But think of the guy that spent 4 days fishing a jig and he had to really work for the fish he caught by hitting 100 or more spots in a day, seems like he worked a lot harder doesn’t it versus the other competitor who fished only 5 different ledges all 4 days, but had a “magic” lure that outfished the other guys measly single hooked Jig kinda makes it unfair in that sense, thats just my take.
Chad Keogh
November 29, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Andy did the right thing. Sell the rights when demand is at it’s highest so you get more money, and then let Mann’s lawyers slug it out with immitators. Any profit Andy would have made with his slower production methods and a lack of a good sales network would have been sucked up by his lawyer(s) in the first few months.
Rich Arnold
November 30, 2011 at 8:13 am
As much fun as it would be to own a tackle company, I think that I would have done exactly what the Posses did. I find it interesting that Paul Elias was the guy who put the spotlight on the lure and then it was Mann’s that made the deal. I just wonder about that whole deal there. Anyways, it works out great for Andy. He makes the money and lets someone else deal with the headaches.