Jeff Mancini and Dan Sladkus have an outdoors product they know will sell. Their 6-year-old Westchester company, Future of Fishing Inc., has reeled in “millions of dollars,” at $19.95 per kit, with the number-one-selling fishing lure on direct response television, both domestically and internationally, they tell us.
Right now they”™re on a get-out-the-vote campaign. They want to play in the major leagues of retail. They want to step into the Big Box. They want our votes.
“The Eastern European market has been just tremendous to us,” Sladkus says. We”™re in a shared conference room in the Spring Street building where he and Mancini and a third business partner, John Briccetti, lease an office in downtown Ossining.
Poland is a new DRTV conquest for the partners and their made-for-TV, 100-piece product, Mighty Bite Fishing Lure System. Fishermen, or DRTV-watching people who seasonally buy gifts for fishermen, have caught on to Mighty Bite in Ukraine. And next door in Russia ”“ well, President Vladimir Putin is a fisherman, Sladkus reminds us. Posing for the world last month with a Mother Russia-sized pike he”™d allegedly hooked, Putin attracted more lampooning doubters online than lure connoisseurs.
“Outdoors and sports are very popular in Russia,” says Sladkus. And some Russians like Putin have discretionary income to spend on fishing, he notes.
“We”™re very encouraged about Australia,” where Mighty Bite also swims ”“ with adjustable, detachable fins ”“ in DRTV advertising waters. With its predator-luring scent stick that smells like a wounded baitfish, its weighted rattle chamber and wounded-ribs red spot that larger fish want to sink their teeth into, it has reached South Africa and Japan, too.
On the conference room television, the partners play some of the 30-minute fishing show, starring Mighty Bite and a cast of fishing experts with predominantly Southern accents; that is their primary advertising vehicle in the U.S. Shot on Lake Mahopac, it”™s targeted for a Southern male audience.
“Advertising, media costs, is our primary expense,” says Sladkus. It”™s “in the seven figures.”
At Future of Fishing, Sladkus is the partner who”™s not into fishing. But he has made a professional career in video and direct response television production. He is co-president with Briccetti of DEG Productions Inc., a producer of educational and corporate videos and DRTV infomercials.
“We came to this with an understanding of how TV worked,” he says. “The genesis of this (Mighty Bite product) was, what can we build and how do we adapt it to give it the best chance of selling to a TV audience?”
“We”™ve grown every year even in a down economy,” says Jeff Mancini, the company”™s CEO and majority shareholder.
The public face and inventor of Mighty Bite, Mancini is a professional fly fisherman from New Rochelle, where he also runs East Coast Fisherman Productions Inc. Marketing a line of East Coast Fisherman rods and equipment and fishing shirts, Mancini was familiar with the two manufacturers in China that make and package the Mighty Bite kit.
“Our next phase is penetrate into the retail market,” Sladkus says.
“But when you go to retailers,” says Mancini, “if you don”™t fit into the mold or you”™re a company with one product,” it”™s difficult to get picked up by a retail distributor and put on the shelves.
“Our next level to grow the business is big box and major chains,” says Sladkus, “and that”™s a challenge.”
Then there”™s that old market prejudice Mancini has heard: “”˜It”™s one of those crappy TV products.”™ That”™s a hurdle we have to overcome,” he says.
Now they”™re casting for a spot on Wal-Mart”™s online shelves. The merchants of Mighty Bite this month were among 300 contestants chosen from a crowded field of 7,000 applicants to advance to a second round in Wal-Mart”™s second annual Get on the Shelf contest. Last year”™s contest drew more than 1 million voters.
Consumers can go to the contest website at getontheshelf.walmart.com and cast a vote in support of a product. Persons can vote once daily through Sept. 2.
Mighty Bite could be among the 20 products chosen as finalists and featured in a Wal-Mart web series this fall.
Voters then will select two winners to go on sale on walmart.com. Sladkus says the winners eventually could be given a spot on Walmart Supercenter shelves.
That would be a mighty leap up the retail chain for Mighty Bite.
