090816

Spent the day yesterday on the water with someone that I dare say has become a friend. Fishing sucked, but a good time was had stripping streamers, talking crap, and exchanging some industry gossip. So much blah blah for such a small world sometimes.
The cold nights of late has everyone feeling pretty good right now around here. Solid fishing on the Yellowstone and Madison and we are even catching fish in the afternoons too. It was only a week ago now that the afternoon bite was dead. Looking forward to the change sin the weather ahead and the arrival of more bugs and more fall.
Moving forward with the story of how Simms royally screwed Fins & Feathers in 2015/2016. At last place, I was describing how we arrived to a point where Simms blew us off without ever telling us. Some kind of comment about "not even getting a reach around" comes to mind.
The sales manager told me he would get back to me in a couple of days to get this resolved, but he needed to discuss the situation the guys at the River Edge West and the Simms sales rep. Shock and Awe came to mind at the time as i was told that the sales rep was advocating for Fins & Feathers to be a dealer since early 2015…in fact he told me that. Plus, I had been told that the guys at the RE were aware of things and that they weren't happy about it. I don't recall the exact quote, but my impression was that they weren't thrilled with the idea of us becoming a Simms dealer, but that they were ok with it in the end.
One thing I wanted to avoid with all of this was upsetting that relationship…I like the guys at RE and I want them to do well. I have no interest in doing anything that is going to hurt their business and I wanted that to be clear at the time. Specifically, I told the rep, early on that this needed to be fleet out and if it was a big deal, we didn't need to push it. It was all supposedly ok, so yeah I was shocked when the sale manager told me that this was the first yea had heard about the deal and in awe that hew was telling me that he needed to talk to both the other parties. I was shocked that he would tell me that after I just finished telling him that we put an order in and that this stuff was all handled months ago. Awe because he did not hear a word that I said.
I was pretty ok with all of this at the times, for some reason I kind of saw it coming. Nothing is ever really done until it's done and this deal was not done, until the boxes were opened and stuff was on the shelves.
I was not ok with the sales manager not calling me back after he told me that he would. I called him back a month or so later and told him that I didn't appreciate him not calling me back after he said that would. I bitched about it to one of the RE guys and another executive at Simms in fact. I wanted to chalk it off to him being busy, working on the various issues, but it became apparent that he was just blowing us off. It was very disrespectful and it hurt my feelings, and those of everyone involved with Fins & Feathers to be honest.
It would have been one thing to just say no, but he didn't even get back to us to give us the courtesy of telling us he was working on it, he couldn't do it, or that we needed to circle back with things at a later date. He just communicated nothing with us.
That was the single, most disappointing thing in all of this.
When we did finally speak again, he apologized for not getting back to me and indicated that he and the sales team had come up with somethings that would help "Fins & Feather whole" with the Simms brand. Essentially, he was saying that he recognized that we had some inventory gaps and he had some creative ideas to help us along a little. We didn't get into details and kind of left that conversation with a plan of getting back together after the first of the year in 2016 and that we all needed to have a sit-down at that time to clear the lines of communication. I was game and felt like at least now we would get something resolved by early 2016.
More to come, honey.