Penn is Now Part of Shakespeare

[Makaira]

What an interesting development. Ugly Stik anyone??

Shakespeare/K2 buys Penn - 360Tuna.com Forums

[stickbom!]

Funny you should ask... I just saw a neat looking overhead/aussie style Ugly Stick at Changi Pro Tackle a few days back and was considering buying it!

[Tunanorth]

Technically, the new owner is K2 Inc, a San Diego company just minutes from the beach and 25 miles from the world's largest sportfishing landing.
K2 also owns numerous other sporting goods brand, including K2 and Volkl skis, Marker bindings, Rawlings baseball and many more.
They offer both "premium" and "mass-market" products within their brands, and make plenty of extremely high-end products, producing them in the US and Europe.
As for the "mass-market" product, it is what it is, and there are no inexpensive reels made in the US, Europe or Japan any more by anybody.
The capitalization provided by K2 will help Penn bring out the new US-made product like Torques and VSX's much more quickly.

[Makaira]

Originally Posted by Tunanorth

Technically, the new owner is K2 Inc, a San Diego company just minutes from the beach and 25 miles from the world's largest sportfishing landing.
K2 also owns numerous other sporting goods brand, including K2 and Volkl skis, Marker bindings, Rawlings baseball and many more.
They offer both "premium" and "mass-market" products within their brands, and make plenty of extremely high-end products, producing them in the US and Europe.
As for the "mass-market" product, it is what it is, and there are no inexpensive reels made in the US, Europe or Japan any more by anybody.
The capitalization provided by K2 will help Penn bring out the new US-made product like Torques and VSX's much more quickly.

Hi Tunanorth,

Thanks for the information. We certainly wish the best for the future of Penn. There is certainly a pretty loyal user base for Penn in Singapore and South East Asia in general; albeit not that large in numbers relative to the main Japanese brands. Perhaps they can ramp up their distribution & more importantly their level of customer service / parts availability to get a better foothold in this part of the world.

I guess it's a "chicken or egg first" kind of thing happening here. Penn will say there is no market here so why invest in customer service / parts availability or wider distribution. However, how can they build a market to begin with if they do not make the initial investments. I remember way back when I first took up offshore fishing in the 80's, Penn was the "holy grail" of game reels, so to speak. Hopefully, they can regain their former glory in the no-too-distant future with better designed products, both functionally & aesthetically, because looking at the overwhelming success of Stella, Saltiga, Jigger (Trinidad in your part of the world), Accurate, Van Staal, etc, affordability / price is no longer a barrier for anglers in this part of the world. And design aesthetics matter as much as functionality these days. Perhaps, that is a trait unique to the Asian market, but if you want to succeed, you got to give to the market what they want.

Best regards,
Makaira