A Chinese student in the US started a fishing rod business in his garage, and it sold 500 million yuan worth of products in a year! Anker: I invested.

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Most Chinese manufacturers know that the path of OEM manufacturing for foreign trade is not sustainable, and they also know that they need to "expand their brands internationally," but how do they do it?

Today, let's take a look at how "KastKing" in the fishing tackle industry was established in the North American market and how it became the number one seller in the fishing tackle category in North America.

As early as 2019, authoritative reports indicated that 80% of the world's fishing tackle is produced in China, and Weihai, Shandong, is the world's largest fishing tackle production base, supplying nearly half of the world's fishing tackle.

Cui Tianshi, who hails from Weihai and is passionate about fishing, is unwilling to follow the Weihai OEM manufacturing model. He hopes to create a "world-class" fishing tackle brand belonging to China and have his own place in the international market.

In March 2013, at the age of 26, Cui Tianshi founded Eposeidon Outdoor Adventure, the parent company of the KastKing fishing tackle brand, in a garage with a roller shutter door in Wantah, New York.

I. KastKing's Original Brand Aspiration

The 2024 Special Report on Fishing in the United States reveals that there were approximately 57.7 million fishing enthusiasts in the United States in 2023, a 6% increase compared to 2022.

In the United States, fishing has become almost the second most popular sport after running, covering a wide age range, with women accounting for as much as 40% of enthusiasts. This shows that the fishing tackle market has a very broad prospect.

From 2018 to 2023, "KastKing" achieved rapid growth year after year, with sales exceeding 500 million RMB last year, making it the champion in online fishing tackle brand sales in North America.

KastKing's brand positioning is clearly defined as "making fishing more affordable for more people, allowing them to enjoy more fun with less money."

Based on this positioning, "KastKing" adopts a factory direct sales model, which effectively reduces the middlemen's markup, allowing consumers to purchase high-quality fishing gear at more affordable prices.

This model not only meets consumers' demand for high-quality, cost-effective products, but also gives brands an advantage in market competition.

While other brands offer fishing reels and rods priced between $500 and $1,000, KastKing provides equally high-quality products at prices under $200.

After 10 years of development, "KastKing" has successfully exceeded 500 million RMB in annual sales. This success is attributed to both leveraging China's strong supply chain and its commitment to independent innovation, enabling it to successfully enter the high-price segment of North American fishing tackle.

This development model not only fully leverages the strong advantages of China's manufacturing industry, but also enhances the added value of products and brand competitiveness through innovation, providing a successful example for Chinese brands expanding internationally.

KastKing's main sales channel has always been Amazon, which is why it was once labeled as an "Amazon brand".

However, founder Cui Tianshi believes that "KastKing" cannot be called a cross-border e-commerce company because the original intention of "KastKing" was to become a world-class fishing tackle brand.

When expanding into the North American market, he placed great emphasis on online brand promotion and offline product display: "When we first started promoting the brand, we paid close attention to almost every detail. The 'KastKing' brand website was built on this emphasis, and the official business website is the foundation for the brand's international expansion."

II. KastKing's business website layout

"KastKing" has made significant strides in developing its brand website.

Although its brand website traffic cannot compare with that of Japanese brands Shimano and Daiwa;

However, in terms of traffic volume and the proportion of social media search traffic, it has a more outstanding performance among brands in the same industry.

The "KastKing" brand website has received approximately 571,000 visits in the last three months.

Of these, 29.69% of users accessed the site via PC devices, and 70.31% accessed it via mobile devices.

As can be seen from the chart below, Japanese brands Shimano and Daiwa are undoubtedly giants in the industry, while the combined traffic of the next three brands is only slightly more than half that of Daiwa, the second-ranked brand.

Second-place Daiwa's traffic is less than a quarter of that of first-place Shimano.

This is the reality of the industry; it's like climbing to the sky for emerging brands to catch up with industry giants.

However, it's not without its highlights. "KastKing" ranks first in the industry in terms of direct traffic and social media traffic share, which indicates that the "KastKing" business website has a group of highly engaged and loyal users.

We can also see that "KastKing" accounted for 15.38% of paid search traffic, while Shimano and Daiwa accounted for less than 1%.

This illustrates the importance of brand building . Established brands can leverage their brand power to continuously obtain "free" organic traffic from the internet.

Therefore, companies may not need to focus on branding first, but they must have a strong brand awareness and a clear plan for each stage of brand development.

Next, let's take a look at the traffic situation of the "KastKing" brand website.

The overall traffic structure shows that the main traffic sources for "KastKing" in the past three months were direct traffic (40.64%) and organic search (22.23%), followed by paid search (16.73%) and social media (11.37%).

Direct traffic accounts for the largest proportion of all traffic sources. Direct traffic refers to accessing a website by directly entering its URL or through bookmarks.

This phenomenon indicates that "KastKing" enjoys a certain level of brand loyalty among its target audience.

In addition, "KastKing" also performs well in terms of user visits from channels such as organic search, paid search, and social traffic.

This traffic structure clearly reflects that "KastKing" uses a multi-channel traffic acquisition strategy, which is why its website shows a stable and diverse range of access sources.

In addition, "KastKing" pays special attention to localization details. When promoting the brand and showcasing products, they require "Zero-Chinglish" and resolutely eliminate any Chinglish, grammatical errors, or inappropriate word choice.

In this way, "KastKing" effectively avoided the low conversion rate that might be caused by cultural differences, and further strengthened the brand's professional image.

Epilogue: Little Creator Has Something to Say

YesWelder primarily sets up two lines for its B-end customers—the supermarket line and the distributor line. These two lines are largely leveraged by YesWelder's recognition and brand awareness among C-end customers.

According to Statista data, the global fishing tackle market generated $23 billion in revenue in 2023 and is projected to reach $31 billion by 2028, representing a compound annual growth rate of 6.15%.

In such a massive fishing tackle market, Chinese companies, leveraging their strong industrial advantages, occupy the vast majority of the supply share. However, they are trapped in the predicament of OEM manufacturing, helplessly relegated to the bottom of the value chain.

With its "factory direct sales + online direct sales" model, coupled with independent research and development and innovation, "KastKing" has successfully broken the foreign technology monopoly, adhered to the long-term brand philosophy, and finally competed with international brands such as Shimano and Daiwa, setting an example for international expansion brands.

In the future, we hope that more Chinese brands will be able to reach both ends of the smile curve and shine even more brightly.