Anglers Only: now also available on Amazon
Hey folks, Rory here. Just a quick update to let you know that as of right now, you can also shop for Anglers Only products on Amazon.
You won't find our entire catalogue on there just yet though. The process of getting products listed on Amazon isn't quite as straightforward or speedy as you'd imagine, so it'll take a while to get everything we want listed on there.
A few select products (small-batch runs of caps and one-offs, for example) will still only be available on our website too.
So why have we done this? Quite a few reasons actually.
1. Getting back into Europe
When I started Anglers Only in 2017, we were still part of Europe and sending packages abroad was a cinch. That was pretty handy for us; as you can imagine, we've got friends and customers in places like the Netherlands, France, Spain and of course Ireland.
Everything changed with Brexit though. The process of sending stuff to Europe became a real headache - endless paperwork, massively delayed and missing parcels, people getting charged when duties had already been paid. It's now easier for us to send parcels to Australia than it is to send them to France.
The amount of time and money spent/wasted on dealing with this stuff is mind-boggling. It's fine for big businesses, not so for smaller ones like Anglers Only. When the new rules came in, things got so chaotic that at one point a third of our parcels were getting lost in the post between the UK and European destinations. In the end, we reluctantly stopped shipping to Europe altogether.
I've been trying to think of a way to get our stuff flowing back into Europe. Hopefully by using the muscle of Amazon we can do that. Of course, we have to pay the Bezos tax to do so, but I'm happy to absorb the cost if it means people in Europe are still able to get their hands on our gear.
2. Because, well... Amazon
Pretty obvious, this one, isn't it? Amazon is massive, everyone shops there. It makes sense to be where your people are. And Amazon have distribution capabilities that (amazing as this is to comprehend) Anglers Only cannot match.
Until now we've relied exclusively on Royal Mail for our shipping. Once a customer orders and we hand off their package to RM, we're reliant on them to get the job done in their stated timeframe. For the most part they're great, sometimes they're not.
Using Amazon as another means of distribution means that anyone who absolutely needs their order the very next day can do the whole Prime thing and be assured of a speedy delivery.
3. Reaching new people
I won't lie, I'm intrigued to see if there's an opportunity for Anglers Only that we've been missing up until now. If you run a small business like Anglers Only, there's always a part of you wondering whether you're reaching all the people you could, or whether there are loads of potential fans that you're not connecting with. I didn't start Anglers Only to get rich, but I definitely want it to reach its potential.
4. Holiday cover
Anglers Only is a family business. That means when the family goes on holiday for more than a couple of days we have to close the website. It's frustrating for us and our customers. With the option of ordering from Amazon, this will (hopefully) no longer be a problem!
That's pretty much it. Hopefully the half dozen people reading this will agree that it's worth doing. If it turns out to be a waste of time, we'll just stop doing it. Simple really.
Anyway, tight lines and fist bumps all round.
Rory