Wednesday, August 14, 2013

New Kid in Town - Tenkara Rod Co.

As you might have noticed, there are more and more places that offer their own tenkara rods, lines, flies, accessories and other tenkara gear. It sure looks like tenkara is becoming more popular and maybe even mainstream (no pun intended).

One new company has caught my attention, mainly by their marketing approach and their presentation of their products through the crowdfunding project site "Kickstarter.com". Basically, it is a way to find "backers" of a project or business venture. In the case of the Tenkara Rod Co, the project is tenkara and the goal is to get funding for the production of their tenkara rods.

On their Kickstarter project site, they present their project, objective, goal etc. They have posted details about the two rods they are currently producing - the 12' 5:5 Sawtooth and the 12' 6:4 Teton. Both rods are according to their website 3.4oz and both look very nice and attractively designed.
The Teton
the Sawtooth
As of this writing, they already have surpassed their fund raising goal of $3000 with a total pledge of over $9000 and 89 backers, further evidencing that their concept seems to appeal to a good number of folks. You can see more details about this Kickstarter project here. They also posted a video that just made me smile on several levels:



Looks like they already got off to a great start. Lets see what how their story continues.