A behind the scenes
look inside Tackle Warehouse (continued)
A
Backstage pass:
When given the opportunity
to visit Tackle Warehouse and take a behinds the scene tour of the operation
Zander and JIP were both quick to volunteer to return to their college town and
see what really made the company tick. San Luis Obispo is a three hour drive
from TackleTour’s Bay Area headquarters, which is actually closer than the trek
to one of our favorite testing grounds, Clear Lake.
Joey Reggio is one of the
company's buyers and responsible for line, terminal tackle, eyewear, and apparel
When we arrived at Tackle
Warehouse we were greeted by the company’s friendly staff of buyers, operations,
customer service, and retail store employees. At the front of the office is a
retail store where locals can actually walk right in and purchase anything that
Tackle Warehouse lists on the site.
Tackle Warehouse prefers to use
their own images to provide customers a better look at products and all new
products are photographed here
Meet the core team:
The company currently employs just under 30 employees, many of which are Cal
Poly students, and all of which are anglers. Every employee at Tackle Warehouse
is a fisherman, and Rich makes sure that there is plenty of new product training
and events to keep everyone on top of all the latest offerings. At the center of
the organization is the core buying and sales team headed up by Rich. Corey
Schmidt has been with Rich since the beginning and is Tackle Warehouse’s Sales
Manager and is in charge of positioning on the site, Jeff is the lead buyer for
hardbaits and softbaits, Joey Reggio is in charge of line, terminal tackle, and
eyewear, and Rich handles reels and rods personally.
Rich shows us
the inventory racks that hold reels
We asked Rich how the buyers
actually decide what to bring into the store, and he explained that his team of
buyers are always on the lookout for new products and stay apprised on the Elite
and FLW tour to see what baits and techniques are making waves. Like most stores
the company has seen a huge surge in the sales of swimbaits and related tackle.
The team also fields requests from customers and whenever possible will consider
adding new products, but only if they are truly available. Rich doesn’t believe
in putting up products that are always on shortage, and instead prefers to carry
products that will ship to anglers as soon as they are ordered.
Because there
are so many skus the most popular products are put in the center zone on each
rack to make picking easier and quicker
An efficient system:
One of the things that customers like best about Tackle Warehouse is how fast
the company is able to ship the product out. For customers in Southern
California order only take one day to arrive and for customers in Northern
California orders can arrive in two days. This means that Tackle Warehouse must
keep a good inventory of all items, and Rich makes it a point to let customers
know what items are backordered and in many cases the actual quantity of items
that are in stock.
Rich shows us
the rolling rack that is used for picking plastics, each bin represents a single
customer order
Next Section: Getting orders out to customers
