I really cant see any of us making floats for the big boys, most of the floats on the shelves in the shops are made in eastern europe and china. They come into the country at between 15p and 35p, if I sold floats for that I’d be working for well under minimum wage with no holidays or sickpay.
The way I see it is we have two major advantages over the mass producers, firstly is attention to detail like making sure we use quality glues for instance. I also, as do others, consistently look for ways on improving floats and if I find something I can put it into the next batch of floats so your not waiting for 6 months for the next slightly improved mass produced float to turn up on the boat.
The second is that we can turn around a new pattern in a day so if there’s a new idea about or a new method we can respond to the rapidly changing match scene. A few of my floats have come from anglers giving me a float that’s made up of a stem from this float, a body from that and a tip from the other, I go away and build it properly. You can’t do this with a float that’s being made abroad, you have to wait in line with all the other companies that are using the factory.
TF_leemurph.
