Significant ABU Friends

Jim Allen

The Compleat Angler, Melbourne Australia

ABU in Australia

When I first joined the fishing tackle trade in 1967 the ABU agency was with a company called Donaldson CIA headed up by a great bloke who loved having a good lunch called Phil Trengrove. Soon after Bob Wallace-Mitchell and his company R.Wallace-Mitchell & Co took over the agency. The sales manager there was Albie Donovan. He was more business like and took ABU forward to a point where the sales justified the ABU export manager of the day, CO Ericson to come to Australia from Sweden every year.

These were the times in Australia before the mass merchandisers and the big names in fishing tackle retailing were the city sports stores like Melbourne Sports Depot or, Hartleys and the department stores like Myer. In Sydney it was Mick Simmons Sports Store and one or two others.

The specialist tackle stores were few and far between and in Melbourne there was only Turvilles, Bill and Max Carter’s Pastime Sports and a couple more, and  in Sydney the famous tackle store was Southams and Brisbane had Len Mossops.

However by the mid 1970’s a huge boom in sportfishing and associated tackle had developed worldwide and at the same time the beginnings of the mass merchandisers in Australia arrived, the first being K Mart. Today there are many surviving specialist tackle stores giving personal service against the discount chain stores with their self service displays and “check-out chicks”. Both have profitably slotted into the modern day fishing tackle trade.

ABU from Sweden in the 1970’s was revolutionary with promotional material including superb posters for tackle stores and their now very collectable catalogues. With their International Ambassadeur Club, their pins and badges they made ABU users loyal to the brand in a unique way.

In the early 1970’s the Compleat Angler sold over 70% of every item ABU exported to Australia. That was with only three or four stores. Our secret was the ABU rod program and ABU terminal tackle. We decked our stores out with ABU posters around the walls and did out special lure displays. It was five years before the rest of the tackle trade “cottoned on” to what we were up to. Today, over forty years later, I suspect the nearly forty in number Compleat Angler stores throughout Australia might only retail a tiny percentage of ABU branded product, most of which is now no longer made in Sweden anyway.

Back then our senior staff visited the factory in Sweden and were hosted to conferences there on the banks of the legendary Salmon water, the Morrum River at Svangsta. ABU led the world in modern day retailing as a manufacturer of world leading angling products for specialist stores.

I travelled to many parts of the world with CO Ericson both before his retirement and afterwards, including many of the Nordic countries, Iceland, Chile, Paraguay and of course entertaining him down in the highland lakes of Tasmania. CO always had a new rod or reel to test or new lures etc. We exchange correspondence to this day, although he is now over 90 years of age.

As Banjo Patterson, a century ago penned “for chances come and changes ring, I scarcely think ‘till always be….” The fishing tackle trade is very different today. The ABU age of Swedish excellence has passed as we race to the basement in lowering quality, discounting and pricing and looking for the lowest common competitive denominator……….I look back at those heady ABU days with great pleasure. Wonderful people in a tackle trade that seem to have more time to develop relationships, more time to give personalised service and more time to have a trade lunch or dinner or meeting. The tackle trade in those heady days of the new era of sport-fishing was a lot of FUN!!!

 

Jim Allen

Tavistock House, Melbourne

Favourite Ambassadeurs

 

 

 

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If you are a person that has significantly had an effect on design/development/testing of ABU equipment over the years please contact me  wayne@realsreels.com  if you wish your contribution documented for posterity and the immediate interest of the ABU fans worldwide!