"Frank Reid" wrote in message
...
And they don't only do it to manufacturers. A few weeks ago the ****ers
refused to take my MasterCard......said that MC charges them too much.

I had the same damn thing happen to me. Walmart got Visa to lower its
rate
to them, MasterCharge wouldn't follow suit so they banned 'em.
Here's an elitist question. Its already been brought up here, in that
many
of Orvis' customers wouldn't know where a Walmart is. Walmart does the
FLW
tour for bass fishermen. Bass fishermen also go in to get parts for their
boats. There's two hooks for the bass fishermen. Where's the hook to
bring
in a fly fisherman?

Orvis and Wal-Mart are betting that Orvis is that hook.

We go to the fly shops to get that detailed knowledge. Its a whole
different market than fly fishing. I equate it to the quilters market
that
Wally World tried to get into. There are a few folks who will make a
quilt
out of the 99 cent a yard fabrics that WM sells, but from the get-go, its
going to be an inferior product. Same amount of work as a quilt made with
10 dollar a yard fabric, but the colors fade, the fabric dyes break down
the
fabric, the texture is not the same. Walmart lost out on that one. I
think
this will be the same. Yes, it will bring in some people who've never fly
fished before, but they'll spend the money, not get the expert advice and
end up with a fly rod in the back of the closet or a spinning reel on the
thing for crappie.
Right now, I think they just want to associate themselves with a
"high-class" name, aka KMart's work with Martha Stewart. Luckily, Orvis
won't have its namesake going to prison.

Point taken, but it's stretched a bit. In fact, a lot of the fabrics sold
by Wal-Mart are identical to those found in dedicated quilt shops......same
manufacturers, same product codes and, frequently enough, same dye lots.
Sometimes it takes a bit of sleuthing, but generally it's easy enough to
figure out.....all the information is typically on the bolt ends.
Um......yeah, I checked.

I suspect that, as has been said here often enough, it's much the same with
fly fishing gear insofar as one will find identical products in both high
and low end shops. The difference is that a lot of this stuff is sold under
a variety of different labels, making identification of the manufacturers
and products specifications more difficult. Whereas one can usually trace a
bit of fabric back to it's manufacturer (and even to the date of
manufacture.....if you know what bolt it came from), doing the same with
fishing gear is virtually impossible for the average consumer without access
to specialized knowledge of the byzantine relationships between
manufacturers and their various clients. For example, the printed design on
a piece of fabric is generally proprietary....if you find out who owns the
copyright, you know who made it, or can find out easily. Conversely, most
fly rods have no distinctive features that readily identify them as being
made by a particular manufacturer. The distinctive natures of the two
industries are such that while the labels on the goods of one tell you a
lot, those on the products of the other may or may not tell you anything at
all.

Wolfgang