Question for all of you that Tie & Sell your flies?

[Guest Tony P]

Where do buy your tying supplies & do you pay wholesale or retail?

 

Thanks,

Tony

[nick2011 0]

i buy from sportsmans warehouse most of the time, and unfortunatly i do pay retail..but i only sell once in a while when i have a bunch on hand.usually i tie for a hobby and a way to fill my own boxes

[flytire 0]

1. local fly shop

 

2. jstockard (site sponsor)

 

3. retail. i do not have a tax id number to buy wholesale

[SCOwens 0]

If you search the web you can find prices that are almost at wholesale or large discounts. JStockard has excellent prices. As to capes and stuff, you just have to suck up the price on those pricey guys.

 

I tie for fun although I have sold, even at wholesale its hard to make a profit on flies due to the time spent on the perfect fly (as that's all I would sell)

[tidewaterfly 0]

I tied commercially for about 15 years, and still have the tax numbers needed to buy wholesale, but most suppliers have a minimum order requirement, so unless you're tying a lot of flies, it's not always prudent to buy wholesale. Doesn't make good financial sense to spend $100 on each order if you're only selling $25 worth of flies, as you end up tying up a lot of funds with materials. Not that some of us don't do that anyway.

 

Also, some suppliers will only sell wholesale if you have a brick & mortar store, so if you're tying volume is small, it's again often better to pay retail & only buy what you need.

 

The biggest advantage to buying wholesale is for excise tax purposes, as suppliers will not charge the tax to those who have the properly documented tax numbers. Primarily hooks would be the main item that you would pay excise on, and if you buy in bulk, the 10% tax can add up. However, excise & sales tax paid on supplies are usually deductible as business expenses, provided it's documented & you operate as a legitimate business.

 

Of course tax laws & business deductions do change & probably will!

[Crackaig 0]

Sometimes retail, sometimes wholesale, and sometimes less!

 

Yes many materials are available for less than wholesale. If you know what they are they can be very cheap. Very little is made for fly tying, the market just isn't big enough to support that kind of R&D. Once you discover what a material really is then it is usually much less, and comes in much larger quantities, than it is sold in fly shops for. Various sizes of tungsten bead are used in windscreen wiper assemblies by at least one car maker. They are even counter bored et al. However you wouldn't want to have to buy them in lots of 10 000 or so at a time. If you do you can save a small fortune. Pay someone, even minimum wage, to put them in bags of 25 and you soon be charging what the shops do.

 

When you buy a spool of thread the most expensive part of what you buy is the spool, followed by the cost of loading it, I suspect the printed label on the spool may cost more than the actual thread. I've bought 15 000 meter spools of thread for around 8 UKP (about $12US) With a spool of UNI here costing 1.80 UKP for 50 meters that's a saving of 540 UKP for spooling it yourself! If you look at the price for a 50 meter spool of Uni compared to a 200 meter spool of the same thread you'll see what I mean. It's not even close to twice the price for 4 times the amount.

 

Of course the material suppliers are not going to give out this information (neither am I).

 

Most recently I discovered what a fly tying tool I use is. One from a fly tying shop is 5 UKP. 10 of them bought for their original purpose are 1.50 UKP. So that's 3.85UKP to the fly shop and 1 UKP to the government. How I wish there was a market for several thousand of these! Unfortunately there isn't. I doubt the shop sells 10 a year. I also doubt the shop knows what they are, so the profit is split several ways.

 

Happy hunting!

Cheers,

C.

[Al Beatty 0]

Where do buy your tying supplies & do you pay wholesale or retail?

 

Thanks,

Tony

 

Hi Tony P,

 

We buy all of our tying supplies wholesale or bulk. Often for a fly tier purchasing a product in a retail package is also a waste of dollars because you are paying for packaging you won't use. We often save an addition ? percent for purchasing bulk wholesale so the supplier doesn't have to package the product and we don't have to throw it away. You'll need a tax ID number from the IRS to purchase wholesale. Take care & ...

[Guest Tony P]

Where do buy your tying supplies & do you pay wholesale or retail?

 

Thanks,

Tony

 

Hi Tony P,

 

We buy all of our tying supplies wholesale or bulk. Often for a fly tier purchasing a product in a retail package is also a waste of dollars because you are paying for packaging you won't use. We often save an addition ? percent for purchasing bulk wholesale so the supplier doesn't have to package the product and we don't have to throw it away. You'll need a tax ID number from the IRS to purchase wholesale. Take care & ...

 

Who are some wholesalers that sell fly tying, rod building, & lure building supplies?

 

Thanks,

Tony

[riffleriversteelheadslayer 0]

Hareline, wapsi, danvilles, and mustad to start off with

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

All of the replies are valid but you may be going about this a bit backwards.... I've been tying commercialy for many years (but have cut back a bit in recent years to just one shop and a few guides...). I would never consider "tying flies to sell". Instead I take an order and fill it, keeping nothing in stock except for my own needs as a full time guide. I buy in bulk if at all possible (and from whatever source that has what I need). Hooks by the 1000 per size, feathers by the pound, deer or kiptails by the 100 if at all possible. Since I'm trying to generate an income I don't restrict myself to just fly tying - I also do bucktails jigs in quantity (but again, strictly to order). Hope this helps.

 

Tight lines

Bob LeMay

(954) 435-5666

[Kirk Dietrich 0]

Capt Bob said a wealth and reiterates what others above said; when buying wholesale, you have to buy in bulk. I recently inquired to Spirit River about wholesale and they said they have a program for commercial tiers but the initial order has to be $100 wholesale, which is close to $200 retail merchandise. However, like others said, you may get a cheap price by just shopping around.

Also, if you start off like I did tying for shops, the shop owner will usually give you a discount on single items.

Also, like Bob said, you may have to tie other than flies; I used to tie flis for a local "Sporting Goods" store that sold much more than fly fishing stuff. I used to tie bucktail and feather jigs on 3 ounce heads and even used to snell double hook leader rigs for offshore Marlin fishing.

Now, twenty five years later and for the past ten years and after guiding, I've developed a clientele where I only have to sell retail in order to make a few bucks. Its not a living - I have a regular job, but it helps me support my hobbies.

 

Kirk

[Lance Kekel 0]

Like most of the others have said, I tend to buy from a mix of wholesale and retail. It depends on what I'm doing. If it's a small order for an individual on stuff that I won't use that often I may run out and pick up an odd peice.

 

Rifleriver... Have you been able to buy direct from Wapsi? Last time I tried they told me they only sold direct to brick and mortar shops.

[Driftless 0]

I think JS is probably one of the best places to get material, if I'm back home I'll go to our local fly shop other than that I stick to JS...

[P.G. Beckett 0]

In most cases' I try to stick with my local fly shop which gives me a decent discount on most of my supplies and any other fly fishing needs, plus I like to pick my own material to eliminate waste. I also buy most of my natural chamois (which I use in a lot of my own patterns) at Walmart for the same reason - large selection an I get what I want: Afterall there is not a fly shop or wholesaler that knows how to pick or grade chamois for fly tying. Note: I personally do not like to tie other people's published patterns unless I have their permission or they have passed on.

[Flyter 12 0]

The other flytyers have covered all the bases when it comes to buying wholesale .I tie for a fly shop where the shop sells flytying materials and he gives me my materials wholesale prices it's just like getting a discount . i'm lucky to be able to get that . I buy materials from him to tie his flies and sell them back to him.