# Who actually buys fishing tackle in the US

> We pulled 19 businesses from a keyword search for US lure retailers. Half were not tackle shops - and the other half show why order sizes differ so much.

Source: https://luressource.com/opportunities/who-actually-buys-fishing-tackle-in-the-us/

Direct answer. A keyword search for lure retailers in one US metro corridor returned 19 businesses, of which roughly nine were fishing businesses and the rest were marinas, campgrounds, a military recreation programme, general outdoor retail and unrelated trade. The finding matters because the channel a buyer sits in determines the order size they can absorb, and a supplier who quotes every US enquiry at the same MOQ is quoting most of them wrong. Key facts. 1) We ran one keyword search for lure retail in the Washington-Baltimore corridor and reviewed all 19 results by hand. 2) About nine of the 19 were fishing businesses: tackle shops, a bait and tackle store, a pier, a marina, guide services and a fishing lodge. 3) The remainder included a national sportswear brand, a seafood restaurant, a bar, a convenience store and two military base recreation programmes. 4) Two businesses appeared twice in the results, so the effective sample is smaller than 19. 5) The channel a buyer sits in sets the order size they can carry, and those sizes differ by an order of magnitude across the list. Frequently asked questions. Q: How was this list built? A: One keyword search for lure retail, restricted to a single US metro corridor. Nineteen results, every one reviewed by hand. It is a snapshot, not a market study. Q: Why does channel matter more than product? A: Because a marina that sells tackle as a sideline and a dedicated tackle shop are buying for entirely different purposes. One wants a few SKUs that move without staff attention; the other can work a category properly. The same quotation does not fit both. Q: What is the practical difference in order size? A: A guide service buys what its own clients will use. A tackle shop buys to fill a wall. A military recreation programme buys against a procurement process. Only the middle one can absorb a first order in the hundreds. Q: Does this mean US buyers cannot meet a 100-piece MOQ? A: No, and it is worth being precise. Several channels on the list can, but the ones that cannot will not say so - they will simply stop replying. That silence is what a supplier usually misreads as disinterest. Q: What should a supplier do with this? A: Ask what the buyer does with the product before quoting an MOQ. The answer sorts them into a channel, and the channel tells you which quantity is worth offering. Sources (5). 1) Our own prospect review, 19 businesses, Washington-Baltimore corridor — internal record 2) How a first US order should be structured — /opportunities/what-a-first-us-order-should-carry/ 3) MOQ floors by sub-type — /price-benchmark/ 4) UN Comtrade — China export statistics under HS 9507, 2023-2024 (retrieved from the official API) — https://comtradeplus.un.org/ 5) Harmonized System heading 9507 (rods, hooks, reels, lures) — US HTS lookup — https://hts.usitc.gov/ The list was supposed to be simple. Search for lure retailers in one American metro corridor, collect the names, start emailing. Nineteen results came back and I read every one of them, and by the end of it I had stopped thinking about the outreach list. Because ten of the nineteen were not tackle shops. They were marinas and campgrounds and a convenience store near a launch ramp, and one of them was a seafood restaurant. And every single one of them buys fishing tackle. What the nineteen turned out to be About nine were fishing businesses. A bait and tackle store, a tackle shop, a fishing pier, a marina, a couple of guide services, a fishing lodge. The other ten were not: A national sportswear brand A seafood restaurant A bar A convenience store Two military base recreation programmes A campground A few entries I could not identify from the listing Two businesses appeared twice in the results, so the real sample is smaller than nineteen. And every one of the nineteen sits inside a single corridor - Washington to Baltimore. This is a snapshot of one search, not a study of the US market, and I am not going to present it as one. Why the noise is the interesting part The instinct is to call the non-fishing results junk. They are not. They are the same list a supplier would get, and they answer a question suppliers ask constantly: who in America buys this stuff? The answer, at least here, is that tackle is not sold through tackle shops. It is sold through whatever the customer is already standing in. A marina sells tackle because people arrive by boat and forgot something. A campground sells tackle because people arrive by car and forgot something. A military recreation programme stocks tackle because it runs family fishing days. A convenience store near a launch ramp stocks tackle because that is where the ramp traffic stops. None of those are tackle retailers. All of them buy tackle. And the quantity each one buys has almost nothing in common with the others. Four channels, four order sizes Read the list again and the nineteen sort into roughly four groups, and the groups are separated by what the buyer does with the product after it arrives. The dedicated tackle shop. Fills a wall. Wants depth in a category and can work a proper range. This is the buyer who can carry a first order in the hundreds and reorder against what sells. The service business. Guide services, charter captains, the lodge. They buy what their own clients will use. Order sizes track the number of trips, not the size of a shop, and they care about durability under repeat use far more than they care about packaging. The sideline seller. The marina, the campground, the convenience store near the ramp. Tackle is one line among many. They want a small number of SKUs that sell without a member of staff knowing anything about fishing. An order of a hundred pieces of one lure is not useful to them; an assortment of forty across four SKUs might be. The institution. The military recreation programme and the campground with a procurement process. They buy on a cycle, against a specification, and often through a purchasing department rather than an owner. The first conversation is paperwork. The same quotation does not fit any two of those. A hundred-piece MOQ is trivially small for the tackle shop, workable for the service business, wrong-shaped for the sideline seller, and irrelevant to the institution until the paperwork clears. What usually goes wrong A supplier gets an enquiry from a marina in Maryland and quotes it the way they quote a tackle shop. The marina goes quiet. The supplier reads that silence as no interest. What actually happened is that the buyer looked at a hundred-piece minimum for a single SKU, worked out they would still be selling that SKU in three years, and stopped replying. It is not a price problem. It is that the quantity was quoted for the wrong channel. The fix costs one question, and it comes before any number: What do you do with the product once it arrives? The answer sorts the buyer. A wall to fill, trips to run, a shelf to keep stocked, or a purchase order to raise. Once you know which, the quantity you offer is obvious, and the buyer stops being a mystery. What this sample does and does not support It supports one claim: within a single US corridor, tackle reaches customers through at least four structurally different channels, and they do not buy alike. It does not support anything about market size, growth, or what sells nationally. Nineteen businesses in one corridor cannot tell you that, and I would rather say so than dress it up. If you are quoting US enquiries at one MOQ, this list is enough to show the problem. It is not enough to tell you the answer - that comes from asking, buyer by buyer. Related reading US vs Europe: How Fishing Tackle Buyers Should Build Different Lure Assortments Hollow Body Frogs in the US Market