Brand Dead: Is private equity ruining fly fishing gear?

Fall is wader shopping season. Fly shops offer steep discounts on last year's models to clean out their inventory. Naturally. It's a time when anglers reappraise their wader situation. You noticed a leak. Or there's not as much room around the middle anymore. Or, that funk, that funk...is...just too funky.

Simms announces a Grateful Dead collab

Simms, the most storied and trusted brand in fly fishing waders, splashed out this fall. It's trying to bring a different kind of funk. Simms did a licensing deal with the Grateful Dead and launched the "Dead on the Water" collection of waders, shirts, and hats.

Simms' flagship wader model, the Grateful Dead G3 Guide Waders, will run you $1,000. They command a $250 premium over the standard G3, Simms' top-of-the-line guide wader. For that extra $250, here's what you get: "Grateful Dead pocket and trim elements" and "a Grateful Dead fly patch". The collection also includes T-shirts and hats.

When I first saw this, it broke my heart a little bit.

Not because I don't love The Dead. To me, the band's music is the ultimate soundtrack to a fly fishing mission. Some of my greatest fishing memories are tinged with Montana highway miles, rental car pumping the Dead on satellite radio.

And not because I don't appreciate a good collab. Fly fishing is having a crossover fashion moment with streetwear, and Drake and Nike put a swoosh on an Abel.

And not because I don't love Simms. For many years Simms was my first, my last, my everything, in the tender words of Barry White. A pair of hand-me-down Simms entry level waders was my first proper pair some 25 years ago. They still hold up great. Standard fix-it techniques work if I get leaks. My favorite fishing hat is an old Simms. The brand has a storied history, starting with Wyoming fishing guide Gary Simms in the 1980s. Its real breakthrough came from its third owner, K.C. Walsh, under whose leadership it began to use Gore-Tex to make waders breathable. This gave anglers freedom to roam in their waders for hours with a minimum of, uhh, "swamp ass" is, I believe, the technical term.

What is the fate of our favorite brands?

Ultimately I'm concerned because I've heard this jam before. Enough times for it to feel familiar, in an economic sense. For some outdoor brands, a Grateful Dead tie-in is a marketing effort that signals private equity is fully in control. It's an easy tune that's part of the unofficial PE songbook, to reach a mass of buyers who might not mind if the waders don't last. For a brand like Simms, I worry this means its vaunted product quality may be headed down the river for good.

Well this job I've got is just a little too hard,
Running out of money, lord, I need more pay.
Gonna wake up in the morning lord, gonna pack my bags,
I'm gonna beat it on down the line.

Private equity ruins everything

(Not just outdoor brands)

Sorry friends who work in PE, but you know it as well as I do. Private equity is making many facets of everyday American life worse: areas like healthcare consolidation, or single family home affordability, or veterinary care or skiing. It's no secret private equity ruins everything. Just ask Megan Greenwell, who wrote this year's Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream. Hell, let's use the magic of the Internet to hear it from her directly:

The PE playbook is simple

The playbook is pretty simple, with a few variations: A private equity firm buys a company it considers undervalued, cuts costs, gooses growth, and then sells it along to someone else, sometimes bundled up with similar assets, sometimes after stripping out the valuable parts and selling those off.

Private equity has already affected outdoor brands

Casey Shedd, President of the American Fishing Tackle Company, wrote an editorial in Fishing Tackle Retailer's July issue entitled "Private Equity Gutted Surf Brands — Is Fishing Next?"

Shedd details how surfing brands have gone through the initial stages of a PE investment cycle culminating in bankruptcies and job losses. "The recent bankruptcy of Liberated Brands, the discreet parent company formerly behind many of the most well-known surf brands, is just the latest chapter in an all too familiar story," Shedd writes. "Customer service lines at these brands are far too often silent, blown-out seam taping on wetsuits go unrepaired, and overall product quality has fallen. While new companies have stepped in to pick up the licenses for these brands, much of the damage is already done." It's a cycle that's been described as the bust-out scene in Goodfellas but legal, and more lucrative.

"Customer service lines at these brands are far too often silent, blown-out seam taping on wetsuits go unrepaired, and overall product quality has fallen." - Casey Shedd

Shedd detailed three phases of how brands, in this case in the fishing industry, are involved:

The Brand Journey In Three Phases

Phase 1: The Origin Story – Passion-fueled brands are built from sweat equity, fish stories, and wild ideas. Most great companies start here. Some manage to stay here.
Phase 2: Private Equity – Many brands opt for this for the reasons explained above. The fishing industry is currently deep into this cycle, nearing the date when the holding companies start to exit their positions.
Phase 3: Exit the Off Ramp or Crash – Some will leave the private equity phase to become part of larger businesses or venture out on their own as standalone publicly traded companies. However, many will fail. The question facing the fishing industry today is, what is the fate of our brands?

How does this happen?

The appeal of easy marketing wins

Here's my best guess: PE folks love the Grateful Dead, and can sign off on a licensing deal easily. There's a massive built-in audience of anglers, skiers, surfers, and others who love action sports and the Dead. It's a super-simple marketing play. The new head honcho, VP of brand at the acquiring firm, isn't as interested in the nuance of a core-focused marketing campaign.

Further, it's a tidy way to work. It's even structured like a PE deal. Get in touch with rights holder Warner Music Group / Rhino. Terms are pretty standard (a flat fee, plus a chunk of every unit sold). Get the deal papered, get the material created, and start the engines.

PE > GD > Collab boogie

Even among the hundreds of brands who license the Grateful Dead trademarks every year, it's easy to notice a pattern of outdoor brands that lines up pretty well with the "get big, get bought, get out" cycle. Between getting bought and getting out, do a Dead deal. Here's a table illustrating brands you might know who've been acquired by a private equity company and then done a licensing deal with the Grateful Dead. It all lines up pretty nicely.

For things like soft goods, if the quality's not there, it's not the end of the world. For waders, wetsuits and board shorts, though, these are items you expect to hold up.

Are Simms' ownership changes impacting quality?

If I were in the market for a new pair of waders, that's what I'd be wondering.

The ownership shuffle

Simms has now bounced around to two different ownership groups in the last five years. First, it was acquired by a group called Vista Outdoor in 2022 for $192.5m. Then, along with several other outdoor brands (Bell, Giro, CamelBak, and others) the "Revelyst" group was rolled up to Strategic Value Partners for $1.125b in a 2024 deal. (Which sounds like just the sort of high-brinksmanship showdown private equity folks love.) Whether you're sewing waders on the factory floor or presenting marketing ideas to the CMO, this means changes. Depending on your role, the acquiring firm, and its strategy, you may have a new boss. Or, a member of an "operating team" from the firm is undermining you.

Cost-cutting levers

Key cost levers can be used to create higher margin on goods sold:

• Swap premium materials and trade down
• Lower production complexity
• Speed up the unit quotas
• Reduce testing and quality control

These all help you sell more waders for a cheaper unit cost. Then, once they're out the door, you can reduce the number of people working to repair waders. And, you can reject more warranty claims straightaway. Warranty policies become cost centers to minimize.

The quality conversation isn't positive

Internet chatter about quality issues at Simms tends to take two directions:

a) New products are failing out of the box
b) The company is less responsive to warranty repairs

You don't have to look far on the web to hear stories of Simms waders lasting just a few trips, or anecdata about delayed or refused warranty claims or bad reviews disappearing from e-commerce sites (did you really think they showed those?)

Here are a few different discussions in which anglers detail quality issues they've had at Simms. One Portland-area fly shop even addressed the conversation directly, though delicately:

All these elements point to short-term financial metrics being prioritized over long-term brand reputation.

Routes Simms might have gone

What's especially interesting to me about the Dead on the Water campaign is the brand could have very easily built around other brand attributes. Simms' waders are manufactured off highway 85 in Four Corners outside Bozeman (for now). You'd think with Yellowstone fever still affecting new anglers, Made in Montana would be a perfectly viable strategy.

And, cost messaging (no tariffs here!) while not as sexy as a big brand marketing idea, would likely resonate with anglers who are still nervous to make the second-biggest fly fishing gear purchase, after a fly rod itself, not knowing what it might cost next year.

In the wader market, Simms is facing huge pressure from upstarts Skwala and Grundens. Grundens, branching out from supplying commercial anglers to the recreational market, can run forever on "commercial-grade protection." Skwala, meanwhile, sent me an email marketing blast three days ago with the subject line "How Are Skwala Boots Holding Up?" with the statement "Boots Get Measured in Seasons" and an influencer testimonial: An after-100-days review from the popular Troutbitten website. And Simms' answer? Put a Dancing Bear on it.

What does doing it right look like?

Not every outdoor brand runs on private equity fuel, and not every Dead collaboration feels like a phone-in. Although most of the recent ones do.

For years, Teton Gravity Research has incorporated the Grateful Dead into its ski and snowboard filmmaking, and honoring the artistry and creativity coming from the band by bringing in artists like Peter Forsythe. Pro skiier and filmmaker Chris Benchetler's Fire on the Mountain is an example of a creative relationship, rather than a transaction.

The O.G. fly fishing brand and GD collaboration is with Abel reels, which has been around for years. Coincidentally, Abel's Dead reel also had a big surcharge, $300 (and that's in 2013 money). Mayfly Outdoors, owner of Abel, is part of the B-corp certification process and is increasing its manufacturing standards and committing to higher quality.

Dude, who cares? It's just a marketing campaign.

Well, I care. Me and maybe a couple dozen other people. If you've read this far, you probably care in some way or another too.

For the most part, folks barely let this sort of thing register. As Greenwell posits in the video above, private equity has become so powerful in American life in part by being boring and nondescript. How the fly fishing industry sausage is made is low on folks' list of concerns. But I think it merits this whole article for two reasons:

1. I care about helping everyday anglers see the bigger picture
2. Other fly fishing media outlets won't or can't talk about it

Why other outlets won't cover this

Let's dig into the second one. Simms is a major player in the world of fly fishing. It has hundreds of angler influencers, guides, fly fishing publications, and fly shop owners as marketing partners. I don't expect those folks to be able to talk about stuff like this. At least not publicly. They're selling Simms product in their shops, selling Simms advertising in their magazine or on their websites, they're getting hooked up with a box of product every season, they're getting invited to the annual guide rendezvous. They can't jeopardize those relationships.

I don't have those relationships. And if I did, I wouldn't have them on terms that would prevent me from being straight-up with my opinions.

And, look, I care about helping folks take a deeper look at the machinery here. So your favorite T-shirt brand gets rolled up in a PE deal and switches to cheaper fabrics and shoddier manufacturing. OK, no big deal. It's a T-shirt. But functional items need to work every time. They need to stay out of a landfill. Quality really matters. Like with wetsuits, as Shedd mentions in the surf industry. Or specialized, technical products like waders. Or even a buy-it-for-life pair of Birdwell board shorts: those need to last.

What can you do about it?

When it comes to fishing gear and choosing waders that won't leak after one season or rods that won't break on your first big fish, there's a lot you can do to make sure you're getting the highest-quality product you can.

Do your research

Check out warranty information, terms and conditions, and how long a brand expects to hold onto items for repair. Look for a clear commitment to repair, like Patagonia's wader repair tour, where they'd repair any manufacturer's waders, free of charge.

And follow word of mouth. Ask fellow anglers and fly shop owners directly. Don't trust online reviews on the brand's ecom site for quality descriptions, they're heavily edited.

Spread the word

Second, when you've got something that you feel like has held up to abuse, let everybody know. Praise quality where you see it. Help other people feel comfortable trying new brands. "Buy once, cry once" is a great philosophy when you know it's a buy-it-for-life item.

Take care of your gear

Last, they don't make 'em like they used to hits even harder when you don't follow proper care instructions, so treat your gear as gently as possible. With waders, that can be tough: they need to be durable, because we're often in rugged terrain. But that doesn't mean you don't need to air them out, and occasionally rinse them down.

Have you seen big changes in the quality of gear you've gotten over the years you've been fly fishing? What have been your biggest pleasant surprises, and biggest let-downs? Do I need to take off my private equity tinfoil hat?

Let me know in the comments! Dead puns are also welcome.

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