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TheAnglingReport
07-20-2015, 11:32 AM
Let us know if you have any thoughts. The full article is below.

Understanding Orvis’ Endorsed Lodge/Guide Program
If you travel to fish, you’ve seen those Orvis stickers indicating a lodge or guide has been endorsed by the Orvis Corporation in Manchester, Vermont. But what does the term “endorsed” mean in this context? Cynics have long said it means only that an individual or establishment has enough money to throw a bunch of it in Orvis’s direction. Supporters of the program say the opposite, that it is the key to their whole trip-booking strategy. All they have to do is decide what species and what part of the world they want to fish and then go to the Orvis Adventures page (www.orvis.com/adventures) and find an endorsed guide or lodge that will help them in that particular area seek out that particular species.
In my view, the truth falls somewhere between these extremes. I say this having attended the company’s annual Guide Rendezvous in Missoula, Montana, this spring and having fished fairly recently at several Orvis-endorsed lodges, as well as with two endorsed guides. Let’s start with the calumny that Orvis sells its endorsement to the highest bidder and with profit in mind.
It is a fact: endorsement by Orvis costs lodges and guides a significant sum of money. And it is equally true that Orvis endorses a lot of guides and lodges, not just fishing lodges and guides but also fishing outfitters, wing shooting lodges and guides, even dog breeders and small cruise ship operators. The total number of individuals and entities the company endorses is in the many hundreds, and the total revenue has to reach into the millions.
On the other side of the ledger, Orvis spends a lot of money on the endorsed program, starting with the hosting of several hundred guides at its annual Guide Rendezvous and continuing with the fact that it has a large staff devoted to vetting lodges and guides and then promoting them to anglers and others. The company’s annual Guide to Adventure alone, a slick-paper, four-color magazine that is very widely distributed has to cost the company several hundred thousand dollars. I am not privy to Orvis’s accounting files, but it appears to me that profit is not the primary driver of this corporate activity. It would not surprise me to learn that the endorsed program does not generate much (if any) profit.
So, what is the point of all this money being moved around? Who wins and loses? In my view, after looking at this program closely, I think everyone does in most cases. And here’s how. Orvis wins because its Endorsed Guide Lodge Program is an elaborate corporate branding effort that sets up associative links between the Orvis name and the very best fishing and wing shooting experiences. The good feelings generated by successful fishing experiences translate into company loyalty and good will, and that leads to increased product sales. Orvis is very open about this underlying objective of the program, by the way. There is no trickery involved.
As for the guides and lodges, they win because endorsement by Orvis not only earns them instant respectability and increased visibility, but it puts a small army of Orvis staff members to work promoting their service. Even Orvis Travel, which some anglers mistake for a booking agency, is a promotional arm of the endorsed program. The Angling Report is written for anglers who travel, not the professionals who serve them, so I won’t elaborate on all the things Orvis does to generate business for its partners. Suffice it to say, they do enough to make all of the endorsees I have spoken to happy to fork over their annual fees.
That leaves clients to be discussed. They usually win (if they use the program) because Orvis truly works hard to separate the wheat from the chaff among guides and outfitters. Every endorsed guide and lodge is vetted in person by an Orvis staff member, and then is rechecked once a year thereafter. The guidelines packet handed out to would-be partners is lengthy and detailed. Truly, you can forget the idea that Orvis takes all comers, because they don’t. One endorsed lodge operator I talked to recently said his checkout visit was really tough, and he was told afterward his lodge, out of the four that were visited on a swing through his area, was the only one that was accepted. Another indication of the attention paid to client satisfaction is the way Orvis monitors the after-trip reports that come in on endorsed guides and lodges. Orvis gets very involved in client complaints and pushes partners hard to take the steps necessary to make an unhappy client happy.
These kind words about the efforts Orvis makes to find good fishing operators don’t mean I think the program is right for everyone or that it is necessarily right for anyone as the sole source of information about where to go fishing and with whom. Orvis-endorsed guides and lodges tend to be older and more established. The lodges they endorse lean toward being luxurious and expensive. Also, I can’t think of a single endorsee who operates in a place that is still under development, such as Sudan and the Andaman Sea, or where either the fishery or conditions are unpredictable but where you can have a peak fishing experience if you arrive there at the right time. There are huge gaps in its coverage of the world, too. For example, there is not a single endorsed operation in Russia, Iceland, Seychelles, Bolivia, Brazil, or Australia, just to name a few. As for those wonderful locally owned lodges in the Bahamas and those fun, barefoot kind of places south of Cozumel, forget it. That is not what the Orvis Endorsed program is all about.
The really clever and remarkable thing about the Endorsed Guide/Lodge program, in my view, is the fact that Orvis has made it financially sensible for its branding partners to help pay for its branding program. It might even be a profit center for the company. Contrast that with the way other companies (Adidas, for example) shovel huge sums of money out the door to get branding partners to use their products and/or hold them up in ads. The Orvis program actually stands this business model on its head by requiring endorsees to buy products from them, albeit at a sharp discount, and keep them on hand. The overall deal for endorsees is so positive, however, that they cheerfully do that for the most part. I know they do because, in the course of researching this report, I asked several endorsees about this requirement and no one seriously complained. Is that clever business or what?
Here at The Angling Report, our job is to help you decide where to go fishing and with whom. So, what’s the bottom line here? Do we recommend this program? Yes, we recommend that you put it in your trip-planning tool chest, along with the phone number of your favorite booking agent and that veritable Rolodex of phone numbers of individual guides and lodges you have personally vetted and/or we and your fishing buddies have recommended to you. Hold on to your common sense and intuition, too, when you call an individual or entity Orvis has endorsed. The Orvis program is clever and well done, but it’s not perfect, I’m sure.
Postscript: Have you had a good, bad, or so-so experience with an Orvis-endorsed partner? Weigh in at: doncausey@anglingreport.com

johnsquires
07-20-2015, 03:52 PM
Well, it's nice that this business plan seems to benefit all involved.

I could easily be corrected, but from my experience in looking at Orvis brochures, it seems like they cater exclusively to high-end clientele - and when I say "cater," I mean the pricing. Or maybe it's just the high-end vendors that get spots in the brochures.

I think it would be a great idea for someone to start catering to those of us who aren't neurosurgeons, developers, pro athletes and people of that ilk (there are a lot of us out here).