"This is the most reasonable and accurate post that you have made in this thread.
If this would have been the your reply to the OP we would have probably avoided much of the flaming rhetoric.
You see BR in the first comment you castigasted fly shop owners because they could not make a sale to visitors to the shop that had no intention of buying something. You put all of the blame on the sales team assuming they did nothing to easn the sale, yet did not acknowledge that some folks are just inclined to not buy in brick and morter environments, Then you went on the lump all fly shop owners in a group that needed to learn to close the deal. Most fly shops don't have a little room where they take potential buyers and then bring in the professional closer to make the sale. This is not a car dealership. Most of us fly shop owners know that sometimes it takes a guy two or three visits (and permission from a spouse) before they drop a grand for a rod, reel line etc. Having a goal of trying to get a sale before the customer leaves the shop is good but the real goal for our shop is to give everyone an experience that makes them want to come back, because we can't make money and keep the doors open if people are not going to walk in the door.
Your insight that not all fly fishers make good business owners is correct although not revolutionary. When my son and I began the process of of opening a fly shop we had years of small business experince in our background. Then we enlisted the help of additional small business owners to counsel us. We have a CPA, a banker, a former fly shop owner, a couple of regional manufacturer reps and a an MBA in marketing as a part of our overall management. In addition we have two very supportive and hardworkoing spouses.
Will this guarentee success? No, it will however give us a better chance, the rest is up to market conditions, weather, river flows, the Euro crises and the price of Starbuck coffee.
What pissed me off BR is your arrogant attitude that we shop owners were, as a group, just a bunch of guys who stumbled into the business expecting that the fly fishing world owed us a living.
I hope that in your consulting business that you adopt the approach in the post above rather than your first few posts, I am sure that it will be more palatable to your prospective clients.
The fly shop business is no different than any other retail service business, there are good ones and bad ones the good ones generally succeed and the bad ones do not.
jesse"
To borrow a line from My Cousin Vinny, "dead on balls accurate"! Well said, Jesse.
I have long been a believer in the save our fly shops movement. There once was a great fly shop/tobacco and pipe store right down the road from Orvis in Manchester, VT. I bought 2 great rods there and got some great free instruction in the lot out back from an aging hippie clenching a pipe between his teeth. Awesome..., but he ain't there any more. And then, we lost the Morning Hatch here in Tacoma. After 25 years! And the list goes on. About a month ago, I found out that Brooks Sanford shuttered his Clark Fork Trout and Tackle in St Regis. (He is still running his guide business) Just this week, I was lining up a trip to see my family in Florida and got on the website of the local (and great) shop for reports, etc--they are closing this month. Damn! And one common thread running through these? I'm putting my money on guys going in and trying a rod or trying on waders and getting on line and ordering them. And in the case of a lot of products like Simms, Sage, etc, for the same price just to save sales tax that the shop has no control over.