Falcon Expert series

Started by loomisguy, October 13, 2018, 06:32:12 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 3 Guests are viewing this topic.

loomisguy

I'm looking forward to the re release of the Expert. It was always a great rod, maybe a bit pricey for it's time and Cara took over as the top of the line.
The Cara is one of my all time favorites and I keep a half dozen or so in the boat , just a great rod.
  It's my understanding the Expert will be made off shore and that production of the Lowrider will also be moved and will have a price reduction.
There will be a stickbait ,or as some call them jerkbaits rod in the series. When it comes to stickbaits Falcon just gets it, the actions of those rods are perfect. The weightless worm rod has always been popular as a stickbait rod here in the Ozarks.


FloridaFishinFool

Offshore? As in China where Falcon has already moved about half of their line.

I am one of those Americans who loves American made Falcon rods, but I will not support the Chinese side of Falcon.

They lost me there. The Cara and now discontinued Bucoo micro are the only American made rods now. So I'm now actively buying and collecting only these American made rods.

I've had too many problems and failures from Chinese rods over the last 40 years to turn back now.
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

loomisguy

I'm not sure the Bucoo blank was made in the U.S. Possibly, but I believe they were assembled at Ark Rod in Harrison Arkansas.

FloridaFishinFool

#3
According to Falcon the Bucoo micro series were all American made. It is the regular Bucoo SR rods I understand were made in China.

Falcon puts a U.S. flag on American made rods and leaves it off the Chinese rods.
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

loomisguy

Interesting. I have 3 Cara's and 2 Lowriders in the corner of my man cave at the moment and none of them have a flag decal. But now that I think about it I believe I have seen some with it..
I'll have to check the ones in the boat.

Ted

I have a Cara XH purchased in 2009, an old Lowrider spinning rod from the mid 90's, 3 Lowrider 20 casting rods, and a Bucoo micro. All say made in USA, can't find a flag on any of them.

loomisguy

None of the Cara's in my rod lockers have the decal either. Maybe it was Kistler I was thinking of .

FloridaFishinFool

On another Falcon rod thread I posted the email response I got from Falcon when I asked them which of their rods were American and which ones are Chinese. When I get on a computer I can bring it here.

I am trying to attach an image of the Falcon flag. The "imported" products I thought would be the guides, reel seat, and/or grip. I thought the rods were made in USA and assembled here.

(I can't attach image because the file size allowed is too low)
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

Ted

My Kistler rods have a flag.  ~flag

FloridaFishinFool

You know guys what falcon rods is doing should be a wake up call for us.

Simply put they are trying to change from American made to Chinese made while keeping prices artificially inflated bringing them a much bigger profit margin if they can get away with it.

Imagine if General Motors moved all corvette manufacturing and production to China.

Would any of you want to pay the same $$$$$ for a Chinese made vet? I wouldn't. But this is precisely what is happening.

And falcon is not alone in doing this to us all in the name of $$$$$ profit. Others are way overcharging us.

Wal-Mart sells mostly Chinese made products. Berkley lightning shock rod is only $40. Everyone is making money at that price. So why are other Chinese made rods of similar quality priced over $100 and even $200?

We are buying sales hype more than anything else.

The new Chinese made falcon rods can now be sold at Wal-Mart for $40 and like Berkley, everyone still makes money. But falcon is banking on cashing in on their past reputation by selling us cheaper rods at artificially inflated prices.

It is a shame falcon as a company is willing to sellout this country like this and put Americans out of work just so falcon can quietly increase their profit margin at all of our expense.

This is why I won't buy Chinese made falcon rods. I now suspect and believe to some degree cheaper manufacturing and production produces a cheaper end result.

It will be interesting to see if falcon can keep the reputation their American made rods earned them.



Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

loomisguy

Falcon moved the production of lowrider and lowered the price. They never made a secret of it or where the new Expert would be made.
I have no idea  of what the profit margin was or Is now. But I'm sure they wanted a rod that was competitive in the price range .
There is a difference in the quality of blanks regardless of where they are made.
You can always buy more Cara's



FloridaFishinFool

You're right. The Cara is all that is left for me today. I am however still finding older American made Falcon rods in the used market. I never pass up older Falcons.

And even with the small price drop the rods are still over priced. The bottom fell out of their production, so their profit margin has probably more than doubled or tripled and they are laughing all the way to the bank.

And since Falcon is now down to what? One rod series left- the Cara- is still made in USA and is Falcon's now top of the line rod... How much longer until we hear all Falcon production is going to China? Bye bye American jobs- again. It shouldn't be too long at the rate Falcon is transferring production now.
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

loomisguy

So.. The bottom fell out but the profit margin tripled ?   Where's that info come from ?

FloridaFishinFool

#13
My assumption based on what they did. The only reason they would do this is to increase profits all the way around.

And to switch their production over to China bit by bit rod by rod tells me there is significant monetary gain to do so.

So I am assuming a significant jump in profits since production costs have gone way down by this move to China.

A company would not do this for a small profit margin gain. By keeping their prices artificially inflated and rock bottom production costs tells me there is a very significant profit gain which I guessed at.

ADDED ----------------

I just did some fuzzy math...

Take an American made bucoo rod retails at $159.00. If it cost as a guess $30.00 to make, that leaves $129.00 in profit give or take other expenses. 129 divided by $30 shows an arbitrary profit margin of 4.3.

Take this same rod and now make all of it in China for say $7 to $10 and import the rod into USA and sell it for a discount of $30 to say $129.00.

$10.00 may be a bit high, but I'll go with it for the fuzziness...

129 minus 10 leaves $119 in profit. 119 divided by cost of 10 gives a profit margin now of 11.9 times the profit in ratio to cost. If $7.00 then profit margin would be an even 17 times cost.

So theoretically transferring production to China gives Falcon a much higher profit margin than I assumed.

At $10 and 11.9 divided by American made profit margin of 4.3 comes to an increase of 2.77 times the profit of made in America.

If the rod costs $7 from China then Falcon would see profits now 3.95 times higher than American made.

Like I said earlier if Falcon put one of their Chinese made rods into Wal-Mart at $40.00 per rod everyone would still make money.

Falcon is not the only company doing this...

Keep in mind my numbers could be way off. American made costs continue to climb and is part of the reason to outsource production sooner... But what if Falcon can negotiate an even better China made price than my arbitrary pricing? Profit margin could be even higher.
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

loomisguy

#14
Maybe ,might be, could be.. It's all a guess unless you know for sure what it cost to make a lowrider here and what it will cost to make them overseas. No one is in business to lose money and the rod market is  super competitive.
I'd rather they were all made in America but unfortunately it's not going to happen. Heck even some of the high end JDM stuff is made in China. Daiwa, Megabass ect.
The leaves us with Loomis, upper end St.Croix The Kistlers with the NFC blanks , The Cara and some smaller companies like Hydra (ALX )
And Cashion.
I'm kinda surprised we haven't seen a imported boat yet.. As crazy as those prices have gotten it could happen.

FloridaFishinFool

Don't forget about North Fork rods made in America by Gary Loomis. Great rods! Some of the best made today.

I low balled the American made cost at $30. What if costs are closer to $40 or more for American made. This would greatly increase the profit margin I was very conservative on.

Another issue is volume pricing. Falcon started making one or 2 rod series in China and has steadily moved more rod series production to China. In other words as Falcon increases the volume of rods made in China their cost of production will go down. And yet their U.S. prices remain consistent further driving up profit margin for Falcon.

As for Chinese boats it is already happening especially in the aluminum boat market. A lot of our government, Coast Guard, police, military and others have been buying custom boats from China for years.

Several years ago I looked into it myself. For a minimum order of $10k to $25k I can order custom aluminum boats made any way I want it made from China.

They'll ship to USA my hulls stacked one inside the other. Once I get the hulls I can outfit however I want to.

The Chinese don't know how to say no. They will make a boat out of whatever metal or grade of aluminum I choose. I can order stainless steel hulls if I wanted it. The Chinese will make hull thickness to order.

I asked a couple of American aluminum boat companies if they could modify or make boats to order. They all said no. The Chinese say yes. And if I spend $10k or $15k to China I can buy a half dozen or more hulls. I could then become like Falcon and run the price up on hulls I don't need and sell them off which would make my 2 hulls virtually free and I might even make a few bucks too.

Point is Chinese boats are coming to America right now. And they are even designing and making standard U.S. type of fishing boats. Give it time...
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

loomisguy

#16
I mentioned NFC. If you want a rod built on a NFC blank I would go with Kistler. The Edge rods, (Loomis) have been spotty on delivery times and I've heard some not so great stories about customer service.
I live close to Lews headquarters and spend a lot of time in the tackle shop there which is a great place.
As you know they import rods and reels , Heck even when Lew Childre was alive the reels were made by Shimano and Ryobi and maybe a third. The spinning reels were a rebadged Abu cardinal.
Still that huge new building and museum was made by American workers and they employ local folks.
I don't own a Lews product at the moment but I can't be mad at them for helping the local economy.
Falcon will be fine. But if it upsets you there are other options. I will wait for the Experts to come in and then see how they fish, I've heard the new Lowrider crankbait rods are going to be really good.



njpaulc

The Cara series is no longer listed on Falcon's website.  The only rods made in US are the Jason Christie series.

loomisguy

The Cara is still there.. Just go the rods dropdown on the left.

njpaulc

Found the Caras.  They really don't make it easy, it's like they don't want to sell them. 

loomisguy

#20
I'm sure it will get fixed.. You can see them at TW also.

3crows

I am pretty much ant-ChiCom. Sure, I am typing on a Mac Book which I hope gets a heck of a tariff slapped on it. I gladly pay more for USA and failing that Europe, Mexico, Canada and any non-communist country that at least pays lip service to human dignity.

I have a number of USA Falcons and love them. I might get a SR or two for rough kayak duty but I am very disappointed the USA Lowrider is gone. Not singling Falcon out but they could have kept their offshoring to Mexico, at least we share a continent, and increasingly a culture. I may switch back to St Croix, the Mojo is at least Mexico and they still have US higher end rods.
Swim, Bike, Run, Fish