Back in South Africa and taking stock of the trip, it was clear that some serious decisions had to be made. At six cents per tied treble — the rate we were getting from R3 Baits — it just wasn’t feasible to keep taking orders from Ron Rigger. We weren’t a sweatshop in Haiti. Okay, sure, we weren’t exactly paying doctor’s salaries to our fly-tyers, but we were paying them well enough that it was considered prestigious among the local Lydenburg population to work in our little fly-tying factory. And I wanted to keep it that way.
We had a local industry and a local market, and it was doing well. We were up against a competitor called Hairy Fairy Flies — inferior quality, made somewhere down in the Eastern Cape, if I remember right — and they had quite aggressive reps on the road. But we were making inroads. We had a pugnacious, independent rep called Rose Bowen — a force of nature in her own right — who was pushing hard for us. Things were ticking along nicely, and we’d also picked up a couple of small agencies for other tackle lines.
The HM rods had arrived, beautifully finished with our Fishy Pete’s gold lettering on them, and they looked fantastic. But it was time to make a serious call about the quote I’d promised Rapala. I knew quoting Rapala would mean the end of any possible business with R3 Baits — Ron Rigger would take it as a personal insult, which, in fairness, it was.
So I sat down with Niels and Pete Immelman and we thrashed it out. They were paying us six cents per treble. I’d done the numbers. I said, “Let’s quote them twelve. If they accept we’ll make good money, and so will the fly-tyers.”
Niels and Pete were skeptical. “That’s doubling the price!”
“Sure,” I replied, “but we have no idea what Ron’s been charging them. For all we know, he’s been billing them sixteen.”
So I put together a proper-looking quote, made it as professional as I could, and faxed it off to Finland. Less than 24 hours later, a purchase order started stuttering through the fax machine — 100,000 trebles at 12 US cents each. At the time, the exchange rate was around 3.5 rand to the dollar, so that came out to about 45 cents per treble. It was massive order for us.
Now we had to deliver.
And that brought a challenge I hadn’t anticipated. All of our fly-tyers were paid per unit — pure piecework. Some were faster than others, sure. One lady in particular, Angelina, was absolutely unbelievable. She could tie a treble with two colours of calf hair in under a minute. Finished. Done.
But here was the problem: once our fly-tyers reached a certain daily output and had earned what they considered a good day’s pay, they’d just hand in their work and go home. They weren’t salaried, so I couldn’t tell them to stay. And yet we had deadlines — and now, serious pressure to deliver.
So I had to come up with an incentive system. What I devised was a set of four colour-coded cardboard cards — green, yellow, orange, and red — each marked with a grid in front of their tying station. As they produced tied trebles, they’d place them into the grid boxes on these cards. The first card (green) was standard pay. By the time they filled the second and third, the rate began to climb. If they made it to the red card, they were earning double the original rate.
It worked like a charm. The same principle you see today in gig economy apps like Uber or Wolt — incentives to push during peak demand. And we were in peak demand. We had to get those hundred thousand trebles packed and shipped off to Rapala, and I wanted them to be impressed. I suspected — though I didn’t know for sure — that this was a test order. It just made sense. They’d cut out Ron and come directly to us. Now they were seeing whether we could deliver.
Interestingly, the tied trebles weren’t ending up on Rapala lures themselves. They were destined for Vibrax spinners made by Blue Fox Tackle, which Rapala owned.
I know this story might sound a bit dry — maybe too technical to be entertaining — but it’s important. It lays the groundwork, because Rapala was going to become a major factor in Fishy Pete’s going forward.
And for the record, if there was one big takeaway from that 1995 Denver trip, it was this: don’t fuck with American law enforcement. And definitely don’t do 95 in a 70 zone — unless you want Sheriff McCoy on your case. And that’s just not fun.