I've been going through some of my old fishing catalogs and fishing digests and annuals from the 1970's and have come to realize that for a long time in the 1960's and 1970's the Garcia Corp. was a very prominent supplier to the recreational fishing industry. The breadth of their rod and reel lines with their partnerships with Mitchell and ABU and ownership of Conolon rods are quite remarkable. Their marketing was pervasive and it appears they had significant distribution strength. Does any member of the forum know the story of where they went wrong and why they ended up in bankruptcy in the late 1970's? I believe ABU bought Garcia in 1980 and continued some of the product lines, but ABU themselves ended up being owned by a succession of holding companies in the 1980's until they were bought by Pure Fishing. Some of my best performing salt water and fly fishing gear came from the original Garcia Fishing Tackle company and I've often wondered why they faltered financially.

I wouldn't say they went wrong, would just say Japanese quality and falling manufacturing costs overtook their market share in the 1980s. Even in the '70s, Daiwa was coming on strong. Today, most people buy Shimano reels.
Garcia really didn't manufacture as much as they bought manufacturers to plug into their distribution network.
For fly fishing, they got left out of the pro shop network that sprung up in the 1980s, but they also didn't offer the benchmade tackle sold in pro shops - same as Pflueger (Martin hung in there for awhile, mostly because of supplying entry level reels to Orvis).
Abu Garcia is still here - they're just all offshore manufacturing like most others.
(exceptions, St. Croix, Lamiglas - I picked two brands currenly offering US-made glass rods - though both probably make more money on the part of their business they import).

Abu Revo is the predominant low-profile baitcaster among pro bass fishermen.
http://www.abugarcia.com/
yes, no fly tackle, but they're still doing what they always did, excepting of course they're not making Conolon blanks in California, Abu reels in Sweden, Mitchell reels in France, nor importing JW Young fly reels.

Conolon was a pioneer in glass rods and part of the postwar entertainment marketing boom. Mitchell quietly began the CAP reel before the war, but really took off with the postwar entertainment boom. Garcia doesn't really have a claim, other than buying the companies and moving their products to stores. Discount stores like Gibson's sold their bread and butter, and Oshman's flew their prestige flag.

Browning did something similar when they bought Silaflex to increase their market share. There were some good reels marked Browning, and Browning didn't make any of them. All through the 70s, the Browning mark raised the Silaflex image and reputation until the two words became synonymous to fishermen. And they did have some really classy product brochures. They were never sold at Gibson's, only Oshman's.

Sometime in the 80s, exactly coinciding with graphite, Sage took their place in the fly fishing food chain, while bait and spin fishing rods were taken over by a mix of Japanese (Daiwa) and US cottage industry (Falcon, e.g.). One thing that has always helped rod makers to remain domestic is the shipping cost of importing rods and blanks. Domestic rod makers also have a support advantage - warranty and customer relations.

Today and already for most of a generation, the fly fishing pro shops met their own demise, have been replaced by the giant box stores, and especially by the internet.
I know people somehow see Cabelas as having been abused by BPS, but for a generation now have been one in the same, far from their roots as marketing economy dictated - they both make more money marking up a floor full of crap than they make on fishing tackle. Orvis makes their money selling home decorations to women and prestige luggage to men - they've chosen to lose money selling fly tackle to retain their roots. Part of the reason for this is that fishing tackle fits a durable goods model - we buy a limited number of rods and reels, don't use them as often as we'd like to, fish them our whole lives and they often continue on after us, as forums like this one show.

who was in fact a Conolon employee - Andy was a Diamondglass rodmaker.
but again, that's not really Garcia, it's Narmco/Conolon, which was eventually bought by Garcia.
Here's an archive list of all the threads Richard OP'd, though he'll also have many responses to people's questions about early glass, especially west coast.
search.php?keywords=&terms=all&author=flyfishing4goldentrout&sc=1&sf=titleonly&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

Another really good French spinning reel that went by the way was Luxor - the last version from the 70s was Crack reels.
The design that took off, though, and is represented in most modern spinning reels was the Abu Cardinal.
Likewise, Abu was the benchmark baitcaster until the Japanese took off with improvements on that design.

The Garcia Conolon spinning rods were among the best glass rods made. (Phillipson were also right up there, arguably even better)
I still have a really good Browning graphite inshore rod bought in the mid-80s (it's heavy) and the Shimano-built Browning-Lew's I matched it with, though I keep both out of the salt these days in favor of newer tackle. In addition to samsonite-size jacks, the Browning rod landed bull reds in the surf.
Before that, I fished through my first Mitchell (still have the reel), and also a Daiwa Millionaire (don't have) that wore through the worm gear, with parts no longer supported by Daiwa 5 years after I bought it. But the Japanese reels that followed really outshine it.

In bass fishing at least, Fenwick and Lew's were really strong competitors, and designed better rods for the niche. I've mentioned on Spin page, Lew's Shimano-built baitcast reel was the clean sheet of paper that overtook Abu's postwar spot.
In rods, again, I think Browning took the prestige market away.
Fenwick also took most of the fly fishing early graphite market, and those rods are still pretty great today - HMGs have fresh discussion on the Fishing page.
When Powell began offshore manufacturing, they also saturated Oshman's inventory.

Garcia Conolon spinning rods were lighter-weight and faster tapers than most other glass rods being made.
But most other Garcia products distributed were acquired with early postwar technology.
The Japanese reels blasted away from them, and US-hand-laid graphite blanks were exceptional quality and next-level price to go with it (Fisher).
Japan reel patents continue today - https://patents.justia.com/assignee/pur ... pan-co-ltd
Even Mitchell's benchmade one-offs like 810 and 910 were still old technology slicked up.


I think the rush in the 80s was to fill discount stores with cheaply manufactured tackle to sell cheap. It took benchmade tackle or design innovation to get the respect of sportsmen with deep pockets.
Once the cost of Japanese imports dropped, their manufacturing quality overtook all except, again, benchmade tackle for deep pockets.

(what makes this benchmade reel special is 100% sealed)

I set up the Graphite and Boron facility for the Conolon Corp. Designed a slew of rods for them.
I left Comolon in June of 1978 and went to set up the Kunnan fishing rod company. As I remember, Howard Ashby, the president of Conolon told me in either late 1977 or early 1978 that things will be going down the sink in the near future and if an opportunity arises go for it. I think in 1982 or around then, a representative from Garcia came to my office and asked me if I could assist him in liquidating some of the machinery. I had a prototype machine shop and engineering consulting business at the time. A lot of manufacturers would come and we go to lunch and discuss the machinery. I think they were all just looky-loos. I don't recall any of the machinery that was there when I got involved ever was sold. Some days later Howard Ashby contacted me to see what was left and the price. As I recalled Ashby and Garcia really did not like each other much. I then talked to the Garcia Representative who just wanted the factory cleared out. I was able to get all that was left for free to Ashby without his name ever being mentioned.He then, with other Conolon employees started Prorod blanks and rods for a number of firms including Penn reel company. Penn finally bought them out.
Conolon made quite a few private label rods also.
I have no idea why they went down the tubes but it was one of the greatest places to work.