S2, Ep 78: Brad Befus of Scientific Anglers

Marvin Cash (00:04): Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode I'm joined by Brad Befus, president of Scientific Anglers. Brad shares his lifelong journey in our sport from Front Range Anglers to SA headquarters and everything in between. I think you're really going to enjoy this interview, but before we move on to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items.

If you like the podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. And a shout out to this episode's sponsor. This episode's brought to you by our friends at Ascent Fly Fishing. Peter and his team are passionate about our fly fishing community, whether it's helping you be more productive on the water or making sure their team members can meet their daily needs. Let the folks at Ascent use the best science to put together a box of affordable, high-quality flies for your next outing. Visit them online today at www.ascentflyfishing.com and use the code ARTICULATE10, all caps, all one word, the number 10, to get 10% off your order. Now, on to our interview.

Well, Brad, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

Brad Befus (01:13): Thank you. Glad to be here.

Marvin Cash (01:14): Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our conversation, and we have a tradition at The Articulate Fly. I always ask all of our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

Brad Befus (01:24): You know, I know a couple come to mind and I know that both of them were pre-kindergarten. And I'd say it's probably four years old. And we used to, I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, on the Front Range of Colorado. And we would do family vacations pretty frequently to Gunnison, Colorado, up in the Gunnison Valley.

And at that time, when I was young like that, I remember my dad and my brothers and I and my mom and even my grandparents fishing at Blue Mesa Reservoir. And fishing with a baitcaster, a spinning rod and dunking worms and salmon eggs and catching browns and rainbows out of the lake.

And I can remember that the one that comes to mind specifically, I had got my both sets of my grandparents on both sides of the family were farm and ranch people on the eastern plains in the front range of Colorado. And my one grandfather had gotten me some knee high rubber boots and can remember standing on the bank, pulling on a fish and having my older brother hold on to my shirt because I was just small. It wasn't that it was a giant fish, but I was sliding in that mud towards the lake shore when I was fighting fish. It's something that my mom still jokes about today when she thinks about some of those trips that we made as a family up to Gunnison.

Marvin Cash (02:56): Yeah, that's really neat. When did you get pulled into the dark side of fly fishing?

Brad Befus (03:00): Fly fishing, you know, I had kind of an interesting introduction. My dad fly fished a little bit when he was younger, and that was kind of the, he did it in the 50s and 60s. And that entailed swinging wet flies, fishing wet flies, sometimes putting a bait hook on a leader on a flyline and drifting a worm.

And he had a fly rod at the house that was a Phillipson bamboo rod. And I played with that a little bit, never really knew much about it, kind of did it, but didn't really know what I was doing. And I got a fly tying kit for my eighth birthday and actually started tying flies before I started actually fly fishing.

And it was pretty shortly after that, probably later that summer, about six months later, that I got a little, my parents had gotten me a little starter kit, fly rod. And I kind of learned on my dad's bamboo rod, but it was an old line. It was a really rough shape. It just, it was difficult. Looking back on it, it was like, it was a major struggle to try and enter into the sport with that long before internet and YouTube videos where there was instruction everywhere.

So really self-taught myself to cast. And ironically, one of my first flylines was a Scientific Anglers Air Cell line. And that's what really got me going that. And then I think it might've been a Cortland outfit rod of some type at that time that my parents had gotten me. I'm not even really sure what all happened with that rod. If one of my brothers has it, or if we'd sold it to yard sale as I gathered more gear.

But so probably just before my ninth birthday was when I actually started casting a fly rod and getting a little more serious about it. And I still continued to avid angler my whole childhood growing up. And we had a lake close to the house I grew up in that had panfish and bass and carp. And it was just a couple of blocks away. I could walk down there, ride my bike down and fish for about anything I'd want to there.

And didn't really do a lot of fly fishing until I got into junior high and first couple of years of high school. And I took an outdoor ed class at my high school. And half of that semester of that course was fly tying and a little bit of fly fishing. So I did that my freshman year in high school, took the class, got a credit for it. It was a PE credit.

And the next two and a half years of high school, I was a teaching assistant for that teacher. Just I was started tying flies commercially and I could demonstrate a fly to the class. And then I could basically sit in class for two hours a day and tie flies for orders. So I was getting paid to go to school for at least for that two hour block of time and doing something that I was really passionate about.

And that's really, I would say high school was when it really started to blossom for me. And my dad had some pretty significant health issues and couldn't do a lot of fishing at that point in my life. But my parents were great making time for those summer vacations, taking me up to Idaho and Montana and Wyoming and all over Colorado to fish a lot of different water and explore a lot of different places. And that's when my growth in the sport really started to develop and accelerate.

Marvin Cash (06:38): Yeah, very, very neat. And I know you joined Front Range Anglers when you were in high school. I mean, what drew you into the industry? It's one thing to be a passionate fisherman, but it's another thing to be drawn into the industry at such a young age?

Brad Befus (06:51): It was, I really, I feel extremely lucky to have had that opportunity when I did. I was mowing lawns to make money in the summertime, and that's what was supporting my fly tying materials and scraping together money to buy tackle and waders and that kind of stuff. And bought the majority of my materials in Front Range Anglers that it opened in 1982 and I was in there as a customer from the very early days.

And they offered me the opportunity to, they nurtured and helped me along with my fly tying. And they offered me the opportunity to teach some fly tying classes and then come in, do some limited hours and start stocking shelves when product would come in and got to do a couple Saturday morning tying demos during the winter in there.

And it just, the owner at the time, Dick Reeves was the gentleman, was a great mentor from a retail customer service level standpoint and just very patient and willing to share his knowledge about fly fishing with me. And just developed a really good community of anglers that were customers, got involved in Trout Unlimited in high school with the Boulder Fly Casters and had a more expanded network of anglers.

It was great because I had a lot of those customers when I was in 9th, 10th grade, didn't have a driver's license, and customers were inviting to take me fishing. So I got to spend a lot of time in Cheesman Canyon on the South Platte and along some of the smaller front range streams just as a tag along with customers and a couple of the people that worked in the store at the time.

Marvin Cash (08:43): Yeah, that's really neat. And I know you ultimately became a co-owner and spent 15 years at Front Range Anglers. Can you tell us a little bit about that time and kind of what you learned while you were there?

Brad Befus (08:54): Yeah, I think it was a great time in our industry because when I got into the sport and kind of working in the industry in the early 80s like that, it was before the, I'll use air quotes, the movie came out. And it was very, a small, tight-knit group of industry people that there were, relative to general fishing or maybe the hunting industry, a very small kind of cottage industry.

And I was always drawn to the fly tying. I loved the artistic and the creative side of that. And it was a way for me to be able to make some money to be able to fish and travel and do some of that stuff. But I think that then we kind of went through the business grew at Front Range Anglers.

We didn't have a guide service in those early days or do any trip hosting. It was all just retail and education. And as the store grew and we moved into a different space in the same shopping mall in South Boulder, and I worked into a management position and then later ownership, I had some great people that worked for me that have now gone on to do other things in the industry as well, work for other brands or their sales reps or have their own outfitting and guiding businesses, etc.

So it was cool to see that and to see how you can, even not really knowing at the time, how mentoring and pulling out their enthusiasm for the sport by what we were able to do with our little team at Front Range Anglers was really cool for me to look back on now and see the success and the enjoyment they've had out of working in the industry. And again, wasn't really even thinking I was so young at the time, I wasn't even really thinking about that type of stuff. But that's what was happening within our little culture in the business.

And it was certainly the movie and the boom, the movie A River Runs Through It, and the new flux of people that it brought into the sport. The sport started to grow at a much more rapid rate. A lot of new participants coming into it. It was a great time to be in retail.

And we were fortunate in Boulder because we had a very outdoor oriented community with paddle sports and hiking and camping and backpacking and golfers, et cetera. And with the university there. And they had a pretty active fly fishing group at the university and club. And just the culture that surrounded that was really cool.

So I feel fortunate because we were a little insulated maybe from some of the other destination type shops. As economy would ebb and flow, our business always remained really strong because we had that outdoor community, if you will, as a customer base.

And about the time that I was entertaining getting out of that, I got married, started with family. My son, Tyler, had just been born. And with a partner in the fly shop, I knew that I wouldn't be able to support a family and do the things that I wanted to do with two of us drawing an income out of the business.

And the Internet was starting to become a bigger presence. We never did catalog. We never did a web store in my time there. But that was all starting to really morph and change. And the world of retail was changing. So I knew I wanted to stay in the industry.

I started looking around and my sales rep at the time for Ross Reels was the national sales manager at Ross. He lived on the front range and worked remotely from the Montrose facility. And as I kind of started putting feelers out, he said, hey, we've got a inside sales and customer service manager position that's going to be opening up. Would love to talk to you about it.

And it just, the opportunity. I poked around, looked at some other avenues, talked to some other brands, didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. It was a little bit of a scary time. But I think it's one of those things I kind of learned in retail that you've got to take some risks to reap some of the rewards. And that starts to open new doors that you maybe didn't see.

So for me personally, that's always been a really good looking back on some of those experiences, a really good leadership learning opportunity of, it's okay to take some risk. It's okay to fail because sometimes the doors that that opens provides even greater opportunities.

So that was a great transition. The shop allowed me to, in my time there, we did the last probably eight years or so that I was at the store. We did a lot of destination travel. So we were hosting trips to Canada for pike, for Alaska, for the normal species there. A lot of saltwater destinations, Belize, Mexico, Bahamas, Florida, etc.

That again, allowed me an opportunity to travel, see a lot of the world, experience a lot of fisheries, gain a lot of knowledge about fisheries and the needs of quality tackle in some of those environments, much different than catching six inch brook trout in a small Colorado mountain stream versus somewhere in the tropics pulling on a 150 pound tarpon, the gear requirements that just to kind of put those pieces together, if you will.

So I think those were some of the biggest highlights for me in terms of the time at Front Range Anglers. Certainly I miss the customers still do to this day and miss the staff. I think that was the coolest part for me is I always tried to keep a younger presence with our employees.

So we worked with a lot of the college students and I had a couple of part time high school students for me. But most of my full-time staff, myself and my partner, and then we would utilize that resource of having the university there. So we had young guys and gals that were super excited to get outdoors, super enthusiastic about the sport, and what they maybe lacked in terms of experience in the industry.

That enthusiasm just allowed us to do some great things on the customer service side. And that's one thing if I was going to say I was most proud of, it would be the staff that we had assembled there over about a 10-year, 12-year period that was just fantastic. I think set a very high bar for the service level that should be expected from an independent fly shop.

Marvin Cash (15:38): Yeah, and it's interesting you say that because my experience with fly shops always is it's kind of that core of those younger anglers that are working in the store, and they're usually the ones that are out on the water the most. So whenever I go in a fly shop, those are the people that I generally try to talk to because they're spending literally every waking moment that they're not working in the shop fishing.

Brad Befus (15:59): Yeah, exactly. And I always knew I had a good one when they were late showing up to work the next morning because they'd been out all night fishing and not out partying at their friends. I was like, that was the type of culture that we wanted. It was just extremely fishy, which made it exciting and made it fun.

Marvin Cash (16:16): Yeah, absolutely. And so, trying to support a new family moved you to Ross. And then through a series of kind of acquisitions and sales, if we kind of get in our time machine and jump forward, I guess about seven years ago, you land in Midland, Michigan, where you are now, and you were the director of wholesale for Scientific Anglers.

And one of the interesting things, we were talking about this a little bit before the call, was you've got this great outdoor environment that you grew up in and you worked in in the Front Range of Colorado. I mean, I've traveled a fair amount and I don't think I've ever found anywhere in the United States where people love being outdoors more than they do in that particular part of the world. What was it like, Brad, as an outdoorsman to move from that environment in Colorado to Michigan?

Brad Befus (17:01): I kind of joke about this when people talk to me about Michigan and man, don't you miss Colorado. And honestly, I think the hardest adjustment was where we're at here in Midland. It's a very flat part of the state. I mean, flat. So having gone from spending so much time in the mountains and the West holds a very special place in my heart. It took me a little bit to adjust to the topography here.

And the rivers are wider, slower moving, a lot of trees, not those open, big, arid western valleys and stuff that I was used to. So that was probably one of the tougher transitions for me.

I've always been a warm water guy at heart as well. I mean, I like fishing for everything, but I love bass. I love panfish. I love pike and musky. I love all the bass species, et cetera. So for me, Michigan was, where I didn't have a ton of that right in Montrose like I had living on the front range of Colorado. It literally it's everywhere. It's right in my backyard here.

And literally from my home or from the Scientific Anglers headquarters, in five minutes, I can be on some of our local rivers and have the opportunity to catch some really quality smallmouth and walleye, flowage. There's phenomenal trout fishing here, different trout fisheries.

I think that was certainly kind of a transition. Some of our trophy trout fisheries here in Michigan, if you will, the Blue Ribbon streams and the really quality rivers have a lot of browns. They're smart. There's a lot of wood and a lot of cover. Many of the rivers, at least kind of up through the central belt of the state into the northern part of the lower peninsula are sand bottomed, a lot of undercut banks.

And as I mentioned, wood and wood structure in the river. So they can be difficult at times. Those bigger fish don't like to come out and play a whole lot during the middle of the day if it's bright and sunny. You can move a few on streamers, but it's been fun experiencing the brown drake hatches, the hex hatches and doing mousing at night.

Month of June, if you're a pretty hardcore trout angler here in Michigan, you're probably more nocturnal than you are out and about during the day fishing, which is fun. It's exciting to me. It's different and something I certainly wasn't accustomed to, but it's been fun to transition and learn more about that.

I'm also an avid upland bird hunter and didn't have a lot of that around Montrose, kind of grew up with it in junior high, high school, college years, and waterfowl hunting on the eastern plains of Colorado. And it's been great to get back to a place where I've got a lot of that close by.

So it's truly very much for true seasons here. And again, there's a lot of public land here in Michigan. There's a lot of access. There's a lot of management of the fisheries and the upland and the waterfowl stuff, the things I'm really interested in. A lot of deer hunters here. So, again, there's a very strong voice for outdoor recreation in Michigan, similar to what is there in Colorado.

But again, for me, it was I had no idea the diversity of what that outdoor recreation could look like here. This being part of that, what we would refer to in the industry sometimes as the flyover zone. And it's been so great to see areas like the driftless trout streams over in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa getting more press, getting more awareness about that fishery and the quality of that fishery.

We've got some shops and some anglers that regionally here in the Midwest are, really have put smallmouth angling on the map. As long as the industry has tried to promote and get more people into warmwater angling, because it's more vast in terms of the number of states and the availability is just easier as an entry.

If it's panfish or bass, carp, white bass, wipers, you name it, there's so many other opportunities that you can do on fly tackle. And I think that's one of the things, the upper Midwest here has been the epicenter of really creating that market. And now it's so great to see that it's so much more widely accepted isn't the right word, but it's seen as a good resource and people are actively going out and pursuing that as some of their primary fisheries, it's not all based on just saltwater trout and steelhead.

So there's all these, these other species, alternative species, if you will, that people have started to pursue with fly rod. And the world's much more traveled and much easier to travel and experience those things. But I think it's the upper Midwest and Michigan specifically from a diversity of fisheries standpoint and the opportunity to be able to learn about a lot of different fisheries and fly fishing or conventional fishing for different species. This is a great spot to be.

Honestly, I can't think of many other places that offer the quality of the diversity of species that Michigan does.

Marvin Cash (23:02): Yeah, I think we were talking before the call. I mean, I've been up there and I was just blown away by exactly the same thing. And to be an avid angler and outdoors person, to have all of that so close is just unbelievable.

If we fast forward a little bit, Brad, I guess about three years ago, you were named the president of Scientific Anglers. And I was really interested to kind of, I think historically, once you left front range, you were in sales roles. What was it like shifting from the sales focus to focusing on production and overall management of the business?

Brad Befus (23:34): It really, I mean, it continues to be a very exciting transition for me. Because I had a taste of manufacturing when I was at Ross. It was interesting there because as I sold Ross reels at retail and I was told, well, it starts as a solid piece of bar stock and it's machined and it's anodized and this is the finished good. And I guess in my mind, I kind of have this preconceived notion that, okay, you put this aluminum in this machine and it kind of just spits out a finished fly reel.

So to see that process and see the number of touch points that went into building each reel and starting to understand manufacturing certainly helped me a lot in coming into my leadership role at SA.

Again, I would say kind of what I mentioned earlier about my staff and my team at the fly shop, the team that I have at Scientific Anglers that's leadership over manufacturing, leadership over finance, merch ops on the inventory and supply chain side, my sales leadership, my marketing leadership, our customer service group. I am so proud and honored to be working with such a knowledgeable, talented group of people that honestly, it does make my job much easier because they're very committed to the company and the brand and the growth of the brand in their respective areas.

We're a small team, certainly, and that keeps us pretty close. And we've got a great culture internally that puts our customer first, whether that's our wholesale customer, our dealers and distributors globally, or our end user consumers.

And we, as a group, approach that as being problem solvers when it comes to our programs for our dealers to our marketing, trying to improve people's experience of one, either doing business as a retailer with Scientific Anglers or as an in-consumer that's a purchaser and user of our product in the field to help provide them with an enhanced or the best possible experience we can through something as what seems as simple as a flyline.

So I think that also understanding the retail side and having had those years of consumer interaction, as well as firsthand knowing the struggles that fly shops go through and you only have so much open to buy dollars in your budget to put inventory in your store and you've got to partner with the right brands that do truly partner with you and collectively you help build each other's businesses. I think that's helped me.

It certainly helped me through my sales role, but it helps me now managing when I talk to our sales and marketing leadership and our customer service group that's engaging with consumers every day, one-on-one through phone and email. I can relate to a lot of those things just from the practical experience that I've had.

And I think certainly much more so than that hands-on experience and having lived through those different roles. I just, I can't imagine that that's something that I ever got or would have gotten through more time in the classroom. It was just kind of like digging in and living that stuff out helps build that skill set. So I think it makes it easier for me because I can kind of relate at those different levels and understand each point of view and what the needs and wants are of those different groups to help manage our business.

And it's certainly the manufacturing side. While I have a much broader grasp of that and understanding of it, we just underwent a pretty significant changeover in our manufacturing process and converted everything over to lean manufacturing. And so we're eliminating touch points, more QC further upstream, shorter lead times once we get everything fully functioning the way that we want it to.

So from work order to inventory in our warehouse, much shorter lead time. And certainly that's been a great challenge. We took some risks there, obviously. We looked at our process and worked closely with my production leadership, my manufacturing leadership, and our inventory and supply chain leadership.

And we, along with our R&D person that understands our process and the makeup of flylines extremely well, was involved in helping design some of that custom fixturing and tooling that we needed to make that happen. So we just went live with that in early January and felt like we had most of the bugs worked out and we're rolling pretty good. And then along came the COVID-19 crisis and we put the brakes on for about eight weeks. And now we're starting to reemerge on the other side of that.

Marvin Cash (29:10): Yeah, absolutely. And I don't think I've ever spoken to or read anything about a senior executive where it wasn't really clear that they had a vision about what they wanted to accomplish while they were at the helm of their company. What's your vision for what you want to do at SA during your tenure?

Brad Befus (29:29): For this brand, we're celebrating our 75th anniversary in 2020. And the brand has done a number of different things in terms of products and different product categories in fly fishing and when it was under its previous ownership before Orvis had acquired us in 2013.

The brand over the years have done everything from flylines, leader, tippet, with some acquisitions when it was owned by 3M, JW Outfitters, they did pontoon boats and bags, rod outfits, rod cases, fly tying tools, flies at one time.

One of my visions for Scientific Anglers, our core and what we do is we build flylines and we push technology. We design through innovation, science, and technology that's available and always looking, again, to improve durability, performance, solving problems to make the experience better for the angler.

So one of the things that we've done over the last three years, four years, I was involved with it when I was still leading sales, is pulling back to our core. So you see that we don't play in as many product categories anymore. And ultimately, the goal is we want to be the best possible that we can be within leaders, flyline, tippet, and backing. Everything that connects the angler to the fish short of the fly.

So as I sometimes joke, everything that's string that connects us as anglers to the fish. And ultimately, that's my goal. We want to stay in our lane. It's what we do. It's what we're good at. It's where technology's at. And our entire team is focused on that. So we don't look too far outside the guardrails.

There might be an opportunity for some other terminal related products, but I don't see that scope varying real wide. So at a time when many brands, not just in fishing or fly fishing, but just everywhere, a lot of brands diversifying in their portfolio of products and maybe getting a little too wide to where their messaging is confusing. We want it to be known that Scientific Anglers, I want it to be known that we are the best at what we do. And that is flylines, leader, tippet, backing.

Marvin Cash (32:05): Now, that makes a lot of sense. And you just mentioned, and some folks may not have realized this, but Orvis purchased Scientific Anglers. What's it like being under the Orvis umbrella? How does that kind of change the way things work at SA?

Brad Befus (32:20): It's been a fantastic relationship there and being under the bigger portfolio of the Orvis brand. We're set up that we are a completely separate entity. And we operate off of our own leadership team and all facets of the business.

We kind of have what I refer to as our umbilical cord at a high level to the finance team at Orvis where we report our P&L to and where we do our goal setting and whatnot with. But they've been great to be there for support on the IT and the systems and the infrastructure components of the business.

But we operate very much in parallel with Orvis. And they've given the brand, given me, given my predecessor that came in right after the acquisition, Jim LePage, the breathing room to take the brand down its own course. We're a manufacturer and we're wholesale only. We don't sell direct to consumer. That's not something that's on the horizon for us anytime soon, if ever.

And we are here to service the independent fly shops, our regional multi-door our partners, our national brand partners here in the U.S. and Canada, as well as a broad globally. So, and all the guides and outfitters that support and use our products.

So, Orvis is much more complex. They're omni-channel with having been a catalog company first. And then they have a wholesale component, they have retail stores, they have web and catalog. So it's a much broader, more complicated entity. And we see very little of that complexity within SA.

I mean, they've allowed us to stay in our lane again. And I think that formula is one of the things that's allowed the brand to grow and really excel since the time of acquisition, which was back in 2013.

Marvin Cash (34:30): Sure. And what was the problem that Orvis was trying to solve by acquiring SA?

Brad Befus (34:38): Orvis had been an OEM or a private label customer of Scientific Anglers for many years when it was owned by the 3M Corporation. And Orvis was one of the brands or people that looked at Scientific Anglers when 3M decided to get out of their non-core businesses. And the fishing business was one that they chose to sell.

And I think there was some efficiency for the Orvis flyline products to own that manufacturing, just like Orvis does with their rod manufacturing and that they've had from very early on in their existence with the rod shop that's based in Vermont. So control of the manufacturing, control of better control of their products for under the Orvis brand name. And it was a profitable business. So there was certainly a bottom line gain in that.

And I think they saw the opportunity. 3M was I worked for them for a short time for this brand when they acquired Ross Reels. And I think they were great on the technology side. 3M's an amazing large corporation. And it was another good experience for me to have gone through my work career.

I think that their focus on the business had wavered a little bit for the last eight to 10 years that they owned it, that there wasn't a strong fly fishing background in terms of the management of the business and had kind of taken their eye off the ball in the marketing and the needs of products to stay competitive like they should have been within the market space.

So I think Orvis realized and saw the vision of what that opportunity could look like if the brand had what it needed and could start to implement and execute on some of those areas, which is exactly what they've allowed us to do.

Marvin Cash (36:47): Yeah, that's really great. And I know my listeners would get upset with me if we didn't shift at some point to talk about product. And it's interesting, I think, because for any of us that have fly fished for a longer period of time, maybe 15, 20 years or more, I can remember where there were basically about four flavors of flyline ice cream, right? You had a double taper or a weight forward, and you maybe had some variations of sinking lines.

And I mean, we've just seen an absolute explosion in terms of different types of flylines. And I was really curious to get your thoughts about what's been driving that innovation, whether it was, we're fly fishing for more species. There have been radical improvements in technology. Scale production costs are lower. So I was really very curious to get your thoughts on that.

Brad Befus (37:35): I think there's a number of things. And you're exactly right. I mean, when I got into it, you had, you fished floating or sinking or maybe a sink tip. And then you had a choice in a floating line, weight forward or double taper. And maybe if you're really lucky, you had a choice for color as a consumer, if you wanted a bright line or a dull line.

And I think that as technology has improved in rod design and development, I think as the normal everyday angler has expanded their horizons in terms of what they're fishing for and the areas that they're fishing in, whether it be trout, warm water, saltwater, whatever, that the demand for different types of lines to to perform better or to be able to deliver a fly more accurately or with more power in the wind or you look at some of the flies that are being tied and fished for muskies and that's like a small chicken on a hook.

Certainly rod plays a part of that but man so the the line and the leader play a big part in that as well. So I think you're spot on when you say people fishing for more species. And as that has blown up, that has created a lot of additional demand for other types of flylines.

And if I just look at our core and coating options, if we look at a trout line, we use a braided multifilament nylon core, which is our most supple core, and we use a coating on those lines that is a little bit softer, a little bit more supple. So it has a wider temperature range in the moderate temperatures into the much colder temperatures that you'd typically be fishing trout in.

Does that coating necessarily work in a bass line for Texas or somewhere down along the Gulf Coast for redfish? No, not at all. It's limp, it's sticky, It's not going to perform. We're not, again, thinking in that, how do we improve the experience for the consumer? We need something different there to fit that environment, that temperature range, the types of flies being used, the types of leaders being used, and then develop a taper and a product or a raw material makeup, a materials package for that line that's going to cater to that type of market.

We go round and round in our conference room. There's the dilemma of do you have species specific lines or do you have general purpose lines that are more based on temperature and salt versus freshwater? And it's a tough one because there's so many people that they're going to do their first bone fishing trip. They've picked a place or a location. Maybe it's a lodge that they're going to go to and it's going to be bone fish. is their first trip, or maybe they're going down to Louisiana to catch a redfish for the first time.

And for that consumer, the easiest decision may just be, it's a redfish taper. Okay, the manufacturer designed it for this. It's what they've put on the box that this has been built for. That's the line I should buy. It makes the purchase decision easy. But it also starts to, again, it adds up in terms of the number of lines that are out there that can be pretty daunting.

So we're very careful in terms of what we add. And we really have to, again, those are the tough conversations. They don't seem like they would be that tough because it's always easy to add product, but to look at it and say, is there really truly a need for a line in this environment? What does the size of that market look like? Is there something else we're doing, even though it might, It's hard to tell a bass angler living in Texas or in the south where it's hot and it's humid that the musky line that we built, and this is just making an example of the musky line that we use in a floating line in northern Michigan or northern Wisconsin is a great choice for a floating bass line.

Just because it says musky and it's hard for them to sometimes comprehend. Well, wait a minute, it says musky, how can that be a bass line? So it's an interesting conversation and it's one we have a lot. It's one I have with our dealers and our consumers.

One of the things we're trying to do more of, and now that we're kind of in that post-acquisition, And we were really in about a three to three and a half year transition phase to make significant changes in the business, really get it on a firm foundation after Orvis had acquired. Then we really focused heavily on our product and our technology and our packaging.

We had packaging that was several generations. We didn't merchandise well on the wall. At retail, we needed to clean that up, really define our brand identity so that people recognized us as Scientific Anglers and had consistency across leader tippet and flylines and our accessories, the few that we have.

And now it's about education. So, we're doing a lot more within our catalog and on our website, trying to provide more detail, more information on each of the lines to help the consumer and our retailers, honestly. Because if you're a retailer and you sell three brands of flylines trying to keep tabs of everybody's technologies, the length of the heads, the grain weights, etc., it's a lot on top of all the other products they're trying to keep track of to be able to educate and sell to their consumers.

So education is high on our focus right now. And that's, we're doing more with web assets, with video in our print catalogs on the technical information that we're putting out on our website. And plan on seeing more and more of that coming from us because that's been our highest consumer asked question as well as our retailers.

Marvin Cash (43:59): Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense, too, because I think I suspect some of that friction where it's like, well, I saw a muskie on the box, I can't use it to fish for bass is kind of moving from kind of being told what to buy to understanding how the lines actually work. Yeah. Right.

And so, as I kind of think about it, I think about, there's taper, there's texture, and then there are material improvements. Where do you think the next big breakthrough is going to be in flylines and kind of what are the flyline problems that SA is trying to solve right now?

Brad Befus (44:33): I think that, I mean, we feel very good about where we've gotten with slickness and durability from just the lifespan of the line and the slickness in terms of generating line speed easier through the guides. I think flotation is certainly an area that there's absolutely room to grow and change.

In our process where we use micro balloons in our coating, and then that's coated and cured over the core, when you look at certain taper profiles, like some of the longer front tapers with a thinner profile, lighter line sizes, 4-weights, 3-weights, 2-weights, 1-weights, those tip diameters start to get very small. And when you have other materials that have a higher specific gravity, we rely on those micro balloons to float the line.

And there's a balance there. If you put too many things into your coating material, there's less of the actual base coating material and more of the additives, things like dye pigments and the micro balloons and slickness additives and that type of stuff to where you do start to compromise on durability.

So flotation is an area that we continue to look at and look at different technologies. It's an exciting time because in terms of polymers and whatnot that can be used for flyline coatings, there's a lot of new development and technology change going on in that world. And we've seen that for a number of years now. So we're constantly exploring new materials.

We also want to be very cognizant of if we have a wholesale change, and a new family aligns or something away from what we know and have used for many years as our base material package, we want to put it through the ample field testing with our pros and our field test staff before ever considering going to market with that.

Because we feel like there's got to be an improvement in flotation and durability and slickness as we go forward with any new product launches. So we're constantly looking at that, looking at different methods of manufacturing to build flylines.

I think core materials are an interesting component. There's, going back even in the early years of no stretch lines when it was Sue Burgess Company in the UK, which is now Airflo, was the first, to my knowledge, of they did a Kevlar cord line. And I saw those bubble up a little bit in my time at retail. There's been a trend towards some low stretch and no stretch type cores.

There's definitely some advantages there. There's definitely some disadvantages there. We've stuck pretty true to our standard multifilament and our braided monofilament and our single monofilament cores. From a durability standpoint with a flyline, the coatings are always going to â€" they're more pliable in some cases than the core, so there's going to be some stretch there.

So we look for coating to core combinations that complement one another so that you don't have delamination of the coating from the core, which causes some pretty significant durability issues, can cause twist, et cetera, premature cracking of the coating.

So it's, I mean, I always kind of joke about this and people say, well, what do you do? And I say, well, we manufacture, kind of expensive plastic coated string to put it in a nutshell. And we're not necessarily the sexiest product in a fly shop because we're in a box. We usually hang behind the counter and we're just that, we're a flyline.

But there is a tremendous amount of science and engineering and technology that goes into getting that right combination of all those materials to optimize performance. So while, yes, there is technology gains going on out there in materials that we're looking at, it's getting the right blend of all those technologies to further enhance flotation. Maybe it's thinner diameter cores with better strength. There's a multitude of different things we can look at.

But I think flylines are still probably one of the most overlooked pieces of gear. And for a couple of reasons. I think it's, again, it is just that. It's like a plastic coil of line on a spool. There's not a lot of feedback. With reels, I noticed at Ross in my sales time there, You put a reel in somebody's hand, they turn the drag knob, it clicks, it moves. There's color aesthetics of the machining, the feel, how smooth the handle turns, what the clicker sounds like when it goes out. There's communication that the product has back with the individual when it's in their hand.

A rod does the same thing. You can put a rod in your hand, you can feel how it weighs, you can feel how the grip feels in your hand. You can shake it, you can put a line on it and cast it. There's feedback that it gives the consumer.

Really, a line is no different if you have the ability to be able to try different lines. And it's an exercise we do with our selling team. We'll take the same, as an example, 9-foot, 5-weight rod, same model, same reel, and we'll put all of our 5-weight tapers that we make on those reels on those same rods. not label what they are, just number them and let our sales reps go down the line and cast each of them at, 20 foot increment, 30 foot, 40, 60 foot.

And then you really start to realize the difference in tapers and being, a half line weight heavy versus a full line weight heavy, or maybe even two line weights heavy at 30 feet from the standard. What that starts to do and how it impacts the cast and the delivery of the fly.

And again, that's one of the hardest things because it's impossible for a fly shop to have that many demo reels set up to allow their customers to go out and cast with them. So most of them are doing a good job of putting some different tapers in their core rod sizes for their markets and letting consumers try rods with some different tapers.

And I think that's a big part of the education to help the consumers understand that there is much more value in the flyline. It's really the line working in conjunction with the rod to generate line speed, to load the rod, to develop the cast. And the angler and the movements of that, the fundamentals of casting still has to be there and perform correctly.

But you can take the perceived best, most expensive rods on the market. And if you mismatch the wrong line or taper to it, you may not be happy with the performance of that rod. On the flip side, you can take a moderately priced rod, spend more and get the right on the line, get the right line match to it and get optimum performance out of that rod to where you're surprised at what it does.

So I think that, flylines, well, they're often overlooked. And I think anglers are coming around to that. I mean, I love the conversations we're starting to have at the consumer shows and some of the emails. And when I listen to the phone dialogues our customer service reps have in the office, it's great to hear people digging in deeper on those questions and starting to understand how the difference of taper or the length of the head can start to impact their fishing on the water.

So, I don't know if that kind of addresses the question, but I think that's why I mentioned education, as kind of one of our goals. We want to help the angler understand the importance of the line and then what each of these different lines that we make can add to your experience on the water.

Marvin Cash (53:04): Yeah, it's interesting you say that because, in terms of, whether it's work I've done with Project Healing Waters or with other groups, I think that kind of line and tippet space is probably one of the greatest places kind of in your entire setup to optimize and get a good return on your investment. Because if you start it, how expensive the trip is, how expensive the rod and all the other gear is, if you took $100 away from all those other pieces and optimized your line and tippet, you could have a remarkably better experience on the water.

Brad Befus (53:36): Could not agree more.

Marvin Cash (53:39): Yeah, it's interesting. And shifting gears a little bit, we touched on this a little bit earlier in the interview when we talked about COVID kind of putting things on hold in the factory in Midland. But how has the COVID pandemic kind of impacted SA's kind of day-to-day operations, but also, is it impacting your product development cycle and when you're going to release new products to the market?

Brad Befus (54:05): So, yeah, like I mentioned earlier, we, with our state order here in Michigan, we were shut down for approximately eight weeks from March 24th until May 18th, I guess. So we had a very small team working from home to keep the wheels churning and stay in communication with our customers and our dealers.

As we've started to reopen and re-engage with our manufacturing and shipping teams in the building, our associate safety is paramount, first and foremost. So, getting a solid plan and training around that following CDC guidelines for how to do business in the, coming out of COVID and all the shutdowns and stay at home orders has certainly been where a lot of our time and efforts been placed in the past weeks.

It's been embraced by our associates and we're learning how to operate in that environment. I think also from the sales, marketing, meetings, you don't have those face-to-face break room conversations, the hallway conversations. It's been interesting because I've noticed that our web meetings and our conference calls and stuff have been much more intentional during this time.

And I think we've all learned a lot and utilized the technology tools that are available for, the work from home environment, working remote environment that we've been doing now for the better part of 10 weeks for largely most of our leadership teams.

So, we're going to slow track getting everybody back into the building at some point. And just right now, our focus is keeping our manufacturing help and our shipping help healthy and safe. And that, for right now just means we keep more of our associates out of the building that can and continue to work from home.

Retailers are dealing with the same struggles. How do they start to reopen and re-engage, getting customers back in their store for that in-store experience, that face-to-face communication, being able to put product in their hands to try a rod and a line and turn the handle on a reel or try a pair of waders on in their store?

And this kind of goes back to being a part of Orvis. One of the things that Orvis did with their wholesale customers, their dealers, they took the plan documents and their roadmap of how they were going to reopen their retail stores from health safety and following CDC guidelines, customer safety, and shared that with the independent retailers.

And many of those are mom and pop operations and they're, some of the more destination shops are much more seasonal. And I thought that was a, a fantastic resource that Orvis could provide out to their dealers to help them with that. If there was things they hadn't thought of or they were struggling with how they were going to re-engage in their retail world.

Fortunately from an industry standpoint, and I think we've seen that in our sales, as I've talked to some of my peers with other brands in the industry, that no better way to social distance than outdoor recreation and fly fishing being being a great option for that. And we've seen a good amount of pent-up demand as retail, online was strong throughout a lot of the closures and the shutdowns for the fly shops that were focused there.

But I really think that and see that the angling population as a whole is engaged on wanting to get out and fish. You read some of the articles and see some of the data on some of the state's fishing line sales, and they are on the increase over last year, two years, three years ago. So that's encouraging to see that there's more participation, more people buying licenses in some states.

And I haven't looked at it in depth for all the states, but I know that there's definitely been some really strong, bright spots with that. So I think people want to engage. They want to get outdoors. In my 36, 37 years now working in this industry, that's been a theme that I've seen when there's been economic downturn or struggles.

Outdoor recreation is a way for people to kind of recharge the batteries, check out on other stuff. For many people, it's their happy place. So it does allow them to step away from that and go do something close to home for personal enjoyment. It doesn't mean you have to get on a plane and travel halfway around the world.

While that will start to open back up as well here, I feel confident in that, that there's so many fly fishing opportunities in most people's backyard or, within 30 minutes, an hour of where they live or where they work, that fly fishing will, While there's going to be an impact, absolutely. I think every facet of the economy is impacted.

But the fly fishing, sport fishing community as a whole and that industry has been pretty resilient during those times. And sometimes it definitely, we see new participation and people wanting to get into the sport for those very reasons.

Marvin Cash (59:47): Yeah, that's interesting. And I know, IFTD has been canceled for October and, the kind of the later consumer shows that were kind of in March were obviously postponed. Do you think that kind of the industry in general is going to kind of stay on pace with the products they intended to release this year and in early 2021? Or do you think they're going to say, well, since, the demand is there for what we're selling now, let's do that. but let's maybe stretch our new product introduction cycle out a little bit because it's harder for us to come together in the ways that we have in the past to learn about the new products, to be able to sell them to the shops and sell them to the end consumer?

Brad Befus (01:00:26): I'm sure that there will be some that will extend that timeline out. Our focus, we had a couple of products that we were planning on doing, a mid-year, meaning kind of late March, early April launch, periodically we will do that. And we just decided that the time wasn't right. There was too much else going on in the world and on people's minds. It just wasn't appropriate to launch then.

And we're going to sit on those and make those part of our fall launch for our 21 season. Certainly our independent reps that travel the territories and go visit each of the dealers and show the new products and our sell programs, et cetera, to book business for spring 21 selling cycle. We're going to stay on track with that, kind of with our normal timeline of introduction.

It'll be, sales meetings will be done remotely via WebEx and a lot more video content and tools. So we're focused more on building tools for our sales reps, knowing that road travel for them may not be what they're normally used to and expect to do. And we want to, again, keep them as safe as possible, as well as our dealers.

And with some of the dealers where they've got limited capacity to how many people they can have in their store at any given time, we know that, that makes it difficult for a rep to schedule a time during business hours to be in there to go in and show the new product and talk about bringing that product in.

So we're working to give our reps the tools and the dealers to, one, learn about the products and be able to have as normal, the new normal of selling cycle as we possibly can.

Marvin Cash (01:02:16): It makes a lot of sense. Is there anything that you can share with us that we should be on the lookout for in the next, say, six to eight months from SA?

Brad Befus (01:02:26): There's a couple of good things coming. We've got, there's always stuff in the works on flylines, and we've got a couple of exciting flyline products coming that I think will fit nicely into a few markets or a few fisheries. And we've also, we had a pretty significant leader and tippet, an entire category launch of our absolute leader and tippet that we showcased at IFTD last October and started shipping then and had been shipping through the spring months.

A lot of our marketing focus has been on that. It's a category that as we've gotten flylines to a good foundation right now, and we've had some pretty significant product launches the last three, four, five years within flylines, it was time to really refocus on leader and tippet at the same level we do flylines.

And stay tuned there because there's definitely some more exciting stuff coming within that absolute family and some accessory items around the leader and tippet category as well that our consumers will start to see some of that through our social media. And our dealers will be getting information on that in July, kind of on our normal time frame.

Marvin Cash (01:03:40): Well, that's really good to hear. And can you let folks know kind of the best way to kind of keep up with everything that's going on at Scientific Anglers?

Brad Befus (01:03:47): Absolutely. Our website as new product comes available at the scientificanglers.com is kind of the best home base for all things product related. We are proactive on our social media platforms with Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. If we've got new products and video assets there, those are run across those three channels.

And if we have specific product call outs, we don't do a lot of that because most of our social media is more lifestyle driven. And we feature a lot of our ambassadors and pros and our consumers on there. But from time to time, we will spotlight some products there. And that's certainly a vehicle around new product launches in the fall when our reps are out selling that and the dealers know about it, that we start to push that out to the consumer base.

So I'd say mid-August to 1st of September is when most of those new items will start to show up. I'm sure some of the magazines and other media outlets as we get press releases out, you may see a little bit of that coming beforehand. But the website's always the best place to go for the most current product assortments.

Marvin Cash (01:05:03): Very neat. Well, listen, Brad, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me this afternoon.

Brad Befus (01:05:08): Absolutely, Marvin. It was a pleasure and thank you very much for having me.

Marvin Cash (01:05:11): You bet. Well folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, if you like the podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review in the podcatcher of your choice. It will really help us out. And don't forget our sponsor, our friends at Ascent Fly Fishing. Go to www.ascentflyfishing.com today and if you use the code ARTICULATE10, all caps, all one word, the number 10, you'll get 10% off your order. Tight lines everybody.