Costs generally have gone up quite considerably over the past year. Some manufacturers have pushed up their prices to compensate, and some have tried to keep it the same, knowing the trade, as a whole, is having a bad time.
The whole industry is in an over-supply situation currently, with many wholesalers/manufacturers over-buying after covid, thinking the good run would carry on. It didn't. At the end of the day, out of x amount of new anglers, how many are actually going to go and buy more rods? Not many. You've only got a small percentage of anglers that continually buy a new shiny rod. The vast majority keep rods for 5+ years (often longer).
Most pricing will be going up again soon, in September for some companies and April for others, depending on when they release their new ranges. Sea fishing has actually been shielded from it to a certain extent, as those of us in sea fishing know pricing is far keener in that discipline than it is in, say, carp fishing. There have been at least four price rises by one prominent carp fishing brand in the past year and a half.
Fishing is still a cottage industry, and the profit margins are very low for most of the manufacturers you buy from. Some tackle companies you use and love are only worthwhile businesses because they do other things away from fishing. When you take into account that most manufacturers and wholesalers employ less than 10 people, it shows how small these businesses are. Most are small, family-run affairs that struggle to turn a profit most of the time. Fishing is no different to any other business, and it is affected by what happens on a global scale regardless of where the final product is made.
