Selling rods is quite easy but supporting your customers is what ultimately sets your business apart from the others. All problems are personally dealt with by me… broken tips, accidental damage, refurbishment. And just like any rod manufacturer we occasionally make mistakes, that need to be resolved quickly and to everyone’s satisfaction. Going the extra mile is something that I very much believe in and as a consumer on the Internet myself, I know the difference between good and bad service.
For me, I always try to see an opportunity when something goes wrong and I’m very much aware that our long term success in manufacturing fly rods is built upon happy, returning customers!
In this particular case we had an HT10 go out to Australia which developed some cracks around one of the female ferrules. We had the rod returned and the problem ferrule was repaired and strengthened. Since then the problem has reoccurred.
So that we don’t waste any more of our customers time, I’m having a new HT10 built – this is it! And I’ll have Chris ship the original rod over to me in Malaysia, where I’ll use it as my goto Snakehead fishing rod – that way I can monitor the ferrules and get a better understanding as to what has happened here. I’m also keen to fish the rod to destruction to see how long this takes given the problem at hand.
See? Every problem has a silver lining!