So I have been visiting some tackle shops recently, looking at reels and rods after my somewhat disgrunted efforts at servicing my reels.
I caught sight of Brand Y reels that were going for a few hundred dollars, and was thinking to myself:"Why would i buy Brand Y when i can get a good Daiwa/Shimano reel at the same price?" If they were going to charge such prices, their reels had better be good.
So i went home and googled their brand and read this http://www.alanhawk.com/blog/rebdd.html (http://www.alanhawk.com/blog/rebdd.html).
In one of these pictures, I saw brand Y. I live in SEA and i was quite shocked that many of these brands i saw in the photos were very common in tackle shops. I have seen very high end tackle shops that bring in really costly Daiwa/Shimano that also sell Brand Y products. Many of these brands also publish ads in fishing mags that i used to read. They would always boast of cutting edge technology since it is an ad after all.
Does this happen for fishing rods also? Brands just order from the factories and print their name on the rod blank? To be honest i saw Brand Y fishing rods in a tackle shop.
Now i know that if you buy a obscure brand from a tackle shop, i am probably buying an OEM product that was rebranded....
Well to be fair.. an obscure brand probably doesnt have the money to design and manufacture their reels and rods in a their own factories like Daiwa/Shimano.
I wonder how many people that use brand Y to land fish think that they just bought a product from the next upcoming Daiwa/Shimano...
A lot of rods & reel models are the same just branded differently. Even then one can have better or cheaper gears than the other. It pays to know what your looking at.
In the long run more money for a quality reel that will see lots of use can become a bargain years later... Jeff