Calico Jacks. How are they making any money?
I received my Calico Jacks from Amazon. I bought a few from walmart and every one came broken in half so I didn't get to check them out. The ones I received from Amazon are very impressive rods for the $40 I paid for them. I knew they had cork handles, Fuji guides and Fuji hoods but the ones I received have full Fuji seats and hoods and the same alconite guides as on my Penn Legion. I have to wonder how they make money on these things? I understand IM7 isn't the latest and greatest but its better than pretty much every other rod in its price range plus it comes with Fuji stuff.
Did I mistakenly get newer ones and are supposed to cost more or is this the standard hardware for them? If it is I may sell all the rest of my inshore rods and buy these.
Did I mistakenly get newer ones and are supposed to cost more or is this the standard hardware for them? If it is I may sell all the rest of my inshore rods and buy these.
Replies
depending on the length of the rod and the number and sizes of the guides, the guides alone could easily be $20 if they are indeed alconites. big companies can buy in bulk and get tier pricing. that's how they get profit.
in the rod building industry, when you can order 100 blanks instead of 10, the price of each blank goes down by about $15-20 each, now imagine if you can order 1000 blanks in bulk, that's alot. i'm too lazy to find my merrick book to give you an exact figure, merrick has bulk tier pricing and if you order direct from rod blank manufacturers because of the volume you are ordering, it would even be cheaper than merrick.
an example:
united composite gusa 90xf is $122 from merrick, if you get direct from UC, it is $103. now if you order 1000 of these blanks, imgaine the price difference.