Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
Tacky Fly Fishing started when its founders cut slits into a piece of silicone incubator gasket and pressed a hook into it. That silicone anchoring replaced foam. A Kickstarter campaign doubled its goal at roughly $15,000, paying for tooling and the first order of boxes, which shipped at the end of 2013.
Tim Jenkins and Ki Aston are university professors in urology who founded Tacky Fly Fishing and developed the silicone anchoring system its fly boxes are built around.
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What makes a Tacky fly box different from a foam fly box?
A Tacky fly box holds flies in slits cut into a silicone insert rather than pushing hooks into foam. The silicone has an inherent tackiness that grips the hook, and the idea came from a scrap of incubator gasket the founders sliced open with an X-Acto knife. The boxes also use magnetic closures instead of latches, a decision driven by winter fishing, when cold hands make latches slow.
How long did it take to develop the first Tacky fly box?
Development of the first Tacky fly box took years of prototyping alongside two full-time academic jobs. Rejected prototypes included a machined aluminum box with magnetic fly attachment that weighed close to three pounds and would have retailed for roughly $300 to $400, plus a wooden box that still exists somewhere in a shop. The founders landed on silicone around 2012 and released the finished product at the end of 2013, after concluding they had to build their own case rather than retrofit existing boxes.
How did Tacky Fly Fishing get funded?
Tacky Fly Fishing was funded by a Kickstarter campaign with a modest goal set against tooling quotes. The campaign doubled that goal and raised about $15,000, enough to build tools and place a first order of boxes. Beyond the money, the founders point to the backers themselves as the bigger return: early supporters became ambassadors they still talk to and still see at trade shows years later.
Why did Tacky resist building a waterproof fly box?
The founders refused to build a waterproof fly box for years because waterproof boxes are waterproof in both directions. Put one wet fly in a sealed box, close it, and the moisture stays trapped with everything else in there. One founder calls conventional waterproof boxes rust coffins, and Tacky would not release one until it had solved the drying problem.
How does a waterproof fly box keep flies from rusting?
Tacky's waterproof fly box uses a waterproof but breathable membrane, similar in principle to a rain-shell fabric, so water cannot get in while trapped moisture can escape. A wet fly put into the box dries instead of rusting out the rest of the flies. The box is also latchless, since latches are the first thing to fail on a sealed box, and the design was backed by evaporation-rate testing comparing open boxes against membrane boxes.
What does Tacky Fly Fishing make besides fly boxes?
Tacky Fly Fishing carries seven fly storage products, ranging from a small patch-style tube designed to hang on a lanyard up to a large predator box for saltwater and musky flies. The company has also moved into fly tying, building hardwood tying stations in maple or walnut that pair a silicone hook mat, roughly the size of a three-by-five card, with tool slots and small dishes for beads. The tying stations were introduced in December and are built in-house, with the founders picking the wood themselves.
What advice do the founders give someone starting a fly fishing brand?
Their advice is to avoid putting a new logo on a generic imported product and instead solve a specific problem that improves someone's day on the water. They recommend testing the idea on a crowdfunding platform before committing, since that is how Tacky validated demand cheaply. They also warn that founders are signing up to run a business, not to go fishing, and that one founder frames early prototype costs and mistakes as tuition.
Key takeaways
- Silicone slits hold hooks more securely than foam and let a fly be pulled straight out without tearing the insert.
- A sealed waterproof fly box will rust a whole load of flies if one wet fly goes in; a breathable membrane is what prevents it.
- Latches are the usual failure point on waterproof boxes, and magnetic or latchless closures also work better with cold hands.
- A crowdfunding campaign is cheap market research: doubling a modest goal to about $15,000 paid for tooling and the first production run.
- A machined aluminum fly box prototype weighed about three pounds and would have cost the buyer $300 to $400, which is why it never shipped.
- Shop employees, guides and industry pros can apply through the company's website for a pro program discount of around 40 percent.
