Total Fishing Tackle was founded in 2005 by Andy Gilbert, a keen angler, who decided to set up his own fishing shop after becoming frustrated at never being able to find the fishing products he needed. At first, Gilbert started selling hooks in a container while also managing the local fishery. Because he always had stock, his customer base flourished, and to meet the growing demand he opened a brick-and-mortar shop at the local Bird’s Green fishery.

Soon after Gilbert hired James Bigmore, the now company director who started as a Saturday helper, and they launched a website and eBay store. The business continued to bloom, eventually moving from Bird’s Green to the larger Berner’s Hall fishery.

Today, Total Fishing Tackle (TFT) is the UK’s biggest independent fishing tackle store, selling everything from hooks and line to rods, reels, bivvies and ‘Bedchairs’. Employing more than 35 people, the TFT team consists of warehouse staff, buyers, a website manager, customer support and marketing staff, and an eBay manager.

Throughout their growth, TFT have always maintained a sure sense of who they are and what they offer – great products, exceptional service, and an active community who are all connected by a love of fishing.

Exceptional service and support

Emily Pummell started as a customer service assistant at Total Fishing Tackle four years ago, and since then has risen up the ranks to become head of customer service and social media. Like Bigmore and the community of customers who love what they do, every day she feels like a valuexd part of TFT’s extended family.

“We still have our onsite shop so even customers that knew us when we first started can come and see us which is great,” Pummell explains. “But we have expanded across Europe and now have big customers all over the continent. There’s no one-size-fits-all customer for us – they all find us in different ways.”

“The younger customers usually find us through social media but then others know us by reputation or because of the level of service we provide. We don’t just offer products, we also help to guide people. We often get shoppers contacting us about individual fishing trips and asking what we would recommend to use. That’s a great way to build trust and a relationship with a customer.”

One element that’s key to being able to offer that expertise is Total Fishing Tackle’s team, which is made up of genuine fishing enthusiasts. “We try to hire people who are anglers and who love fishing,” explains Pummell, “that makes it easy for the customers to relate to our staff. And our team can really help teach people things they might not know.”

Creating an active community

For TFT, creating a community of engaged fishing enthusiasts and hobbyists is key to attracting new customers and developing a long-term, trusted relationship with them. One key component of that is their social media channels. In fact, TFT have built up their 50,000-follower strong social media audience almost exclusively organically.

“Almost all of our social media followers are anglers – with a fish in their hands in their profile pictures,” explains Pummell. “I think they come to us because we try to offer unique content and tips that you won’t find anywhere else, and we’re also very active and constantly engage with customers. I make sure that every facebook message and instagram comment is replied to every morning and evening.”

Always looking for opportunities to drive growth, the TFT team also use their growing social media community to drive visitors to their sites – and sales – by using Meta’s Product tags feature. “We tag the product on Facebook which directs browsers onto our website, which can be really useful,” explains Pummell. “We also have a dedicated customer service agent on Whatsapp, responding to messages from customers and shoppers from 8am-5pm.”

Using Magento to drive growth

One of the biggest trust drivers in ecommerce is showing proof that your existing customers love what you do. This is something that the TFT team knows only too well. In fact, they focus on making sure they’re garnering positive reviews across multiple platforms, including Feefo, Trustpilot, and Google.

TFT use Magento to pull customer information and process refunds. “Magento offers everything we need,” explains Pummell. “It’s always efficient and we never experience outages. The team love it because it makes all our lives easier and saves time.”

One example of this is the way it lets them automate reviews via Feefo. “We use the Magento and Feefo integration to automate review requests to our website customers, and customer outreach to ask for reviews on Google and Trustpilot,” explains Pummell. “Every morning we look at every review, especially the ones where there has been an issue. We want to make sure we’re looking after everyone.”

You can’t fake customer feedback, and the TFT team do everything in their power to make sure customers are happy and motivated to repurchase from them.

“Anglers are so passionate about what they do and so patient when they’re out fishing,” explains Pummell. “But that passion also means they’re so keen to get their new gear and try it out. That means we need to deliver their goods as soon as possible to keep them happy – and have what they need in stock when they need it. We do our best to always deliver that.”

Effortless payments

“You can see the best thing about Mollie by going to our Feefo page, because now every review says ‘great website’, or ‘easy to use’ and ‘great payment’. That’s definitely due to Mollie.

“Working with Mollie has massively improved the customer journey and we haven’t had one payment rejection message since starting with them. We’ve also done more direct sales and payment requests since switching.”

Another way that Mollie is helping TFT drive sales is through the payment requests feature, which allows the team to generate a payment link and send it directly to customers so they can easily pay via their preferred channel. TFT and all Mollie customers can create, manage, and automate payment requests from the Mollie Dashboard and even integrate them using APIs.

“Using payment requests is so simple,” explains Pummell, “we get a Facebook message from a shopper who wants to buy something, send them the payment link, and then they pay. In just a few messages we’ve completed a sale worth a couple of hundred pounds. It makes things so much quicker and easier for us and our customers.”

Exclusive product collaborations

Finally, a core part of TFT’s business is offering customers exclusive products that they make in collaboration with some of the world’s biggest fishing brands. When it comes to concepting how these partnerships happen the team at TFT like to keep it simple.

“We’ve been doing it for more than five years now,” Pummell says. “We identify a gap in the market where we can do something simple, working out where the demand is that other manufacturers haven’t thought about – such as creating an exclusive chair in a simple shade of green. As we’re so close to our audience we can identify the gaps in the market more easily.”

Like Current Body, another Mollie customer, having an ‘owned’ range is a smart way of differentiating from competitors, staying fresh and avoiding a situation where all products are vulnerable to price-matching.

When it comes to TFT’s ‘what next?’ Pummell says that the world is TFT’s oyster (or maybe cod would be more appropriate?). They’re growing throughout Europe and aren’t setting any limits on where their journey takes them next. But one thing that’s for certain is that they’ll continue to offer the close-knit community feeling and support that’s been key to their success so far. Their fishing family might just need to get that bit bigger.

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