Sellers get look at stock

RALEIGH -- Cary Bever, a member of Lucky Craft Lures pro staff, was sensitive to the frustrations of a tackle shop owner.

"Are you prepared to hear about the new stuff?" he asked the owner of The Tackle Box, a fishing tackle shop in Fuquay-Varina.

"They're already asking about it," Chris White said, nodding as Bever pointed to one of the high-end fishing lures hanging from a peg at Lucky Craft's booth at the Big Rock Sports East Dealer Show, held at the Raleigh Convention Center this past Thursday through Sunday.

"The good thing is they're only available in six colors," Bever said, alluding to the trouble of rearranging displays.

Newport-based Big Rock Sports is one of the largest wholesalers of outdoors products in the nation. It holds two shows a year - one in the eastern United States and another out west. Raleigh will host the show for two more years.

The event took up 150,000 square feet of show floor, where 1,100 companies were represented at more than 800 booths, ranging from Acme Tackle Co. to Zoom baits.

"There you can see something first hand instead of buying something out of a catalog," said Brandon Gray, a manager at Bobcat's Bait and Tackle on the Virginia side of Kerr Lake. "It helps, because there's so many options."

Big Rock's fishing catalog alone has 60,000 items in it.

In a lot of ways, this show, which isn't open to the public, is very similar to any number of fishing and hunting expos held across the country during winter months, such as the Raleigh Bass & Saltwater Expo that was happening at the State Fairgrounds at the same time.

But here, the cash flows in a different direction - at least for now.

Only independent retailers with accounts with the wholesaler are invited, and they don't pay admission fees.

The meals for the four-day show were on the house. And there were cash incentives to place orders at some booths. Many of the booths had a large, green dollar sign on them, signaling an instant cash rebate in which dealers would get percentages of their orders, due later this year, in cash at the show.

The wholesaler gets a volume discount and passes some of it on. While the merchandise arrives early in the year, the bills don't come due until later, giving retailers time to move merchandise.

"This is the most important weekend of the year for us," Steve Fifer, Big Rock's director of sales, said. "It gives factories an immediate read on what the independent retailers think the business will be for the year."

In this economy, fishing and hunting sales could be worse.

Sales-trend statistics are generated every five years for the American Sportfishing Association, and the most recent data is from 2006, but Rob Southwick, president of Florida-based Southwick Associates, which generates the data, said sales are both up and down.

Up are smaller, disposable items, such as fishing hooks, lures, ammunition and hunting accessories.

Down are the more expensive items: high-end fishing reels, firearms and boats.

"When the economy slips, people go back to fishing," Southwick, reached by phone, said. "If you hunt, you hunt."

That just puts more importance on careful retailing.

"You can't give away a $300 fishing rod. Everyone is moving to the $50 to $70 rods," Gray said.

For White, it's a weekend of tough decisions. He has been going to the show since he opened his store in 2003.It takes White the entire four days to make his decisions. He doesn't write many orders until the last day.

"There is a lot to put your hands on," White said.

Aside from special, show-only buys, the show allows dealers to lock in lower prices, enabling them to compete with the likes of high-volume retailers such as Cabela's.

Last year, White spent twice as much as he had planned, but even his wife, Elizabeth, couldn't argue after the inventory turned a profit.

"What can you say?" she said. "You can't say a whole lot. The business is holding its own."

Gray said he doubled his order this year, after he could have sold more than last year's profitable order.

"People are going to fish," Gray said.

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