Lucky Rabbit

Captain Tore and I worked things out, wished each other well, and we are both moving forward. I explained to Captian Tore there was some serious problems going on behind the scenes regarding the Shark Spoons. Just when we figured we finally nailed all the problems and we were actually going to deliver the much anticipated Shark Spoons to market, we encountered a nasty surprise with the company producing them for us. As part of the legal agreement we entered into with the other party to settle this matter, I can't really say too much; like how they tried to screw us over.

In short, I called up my pal Dan Haude from our pro staff team Erie Adventure, besides being one of the top guys on our team, Dan happens to be a "kick ass lawyer", he is as good at lawyering as he is at competition fishing. I wanted his opinion about a letter that I wrote to the offending party stating what was really on my mind. I just wanted to make sure I didn't break any USA laws in the process of unloading on these blankety blanks. With my type A personality, sometimes that is a hard thing to do. Papa bear sticking up for junior bear. Dan thought there was a better way to approach the situation. While I was talking to him on the phone, he surprised me by drafting a super letter to these *&#@ etc. advising them we were not too happy with the situation. I guess that and the fact he put it on the firm's letterhead convinced these characters it would be a good idea to give us back our tooling and our CAD drawings for the Shark Spoons.

I guess they must have checked out Dan's credentials and decided they wanted no part of this beef. They agreed to return our tooling and the CAD drawings pronto. Thank you Captain Dan.

With my luck, it just so happened to be the Chinese New Year and the whole country was shutting down to enjoy the festivities. This actually gave us some valuable time to figure out what to do; ship the tooling back to Canada and attempt to stamp the spoons out over here, or try to find suitable company in China willing to work with us on this project.

I called up a friend at Export Development Canada that has been following our story for the past ten years, Elliot has always done whatever he could to help us; this time he went directly to the Canadian Trade Commisioner in China. Holy cow, or I guess Lucky Rabbit would be more appropriate (the year of the rabbit), it just so happens the biggest fishing show in the world was running in China this week. Our friends at the Trade Commission have lined up a few companies that just might be interested in doing some business with us.

There is much more than just stamping out this one spoon; we have a full range of downrigger products that we designed ourselves ready to go. We told them we want a company that can work with us to deliver these specialty niche market products; that we have a ready made market of up to thirty thousand guys that actually own Sharks, and probably a half a million guys that have used those Sharks on charter trips and family fishing adventures. From what we understand most of these folks love the product and would likely give our new products a try.

The theory being, our new products will work as well as the original Shark Cannonball. We already know the new products really rock, so all the new company has to do is make them to our specifications. That's where it stands right now, we will see if that lucky rabbit will be lucky for us.

You are probably wondering what that giant hot air balloon has to do with this story, I mentioned it in my profile. I used to fly giant hot air balloons for a living for many years; the similarity with downrigger fishing is both sports are weather dependant. That darned wind; there were many days when it was too windy and we definetly should not have gone out, but we did. But that is another story; for next week. I will keep you informed about what happens in Bejing at the fishing show; we have a lot of fishermen counting on us to finally get those spoons out.