Toad Thumper Lure Co.[1], with Arkansas offices in Bentonville and Dierks as well as a location in Palestine, Texas, has experienced triple-digit growth since its founding and is expected to continue doubling its revenue this year and the next.
Cody Tedford and Cody Cannon co-founded the Dierks-based fishing tackle company in 2022. The company’s sales office is in Bentonville, and Cannon is based in Palestine. Tedford also runs Bentonville Merchants International, which manages about $800 million in retail brands with products ranging from robot vacuums to massage guns and frozen pizza. The company has 18 employees.
He previously spent 10 years with Bentonville-based Walmart, leaving as senior merchant shortly after being named buyer of the year in 2014. Tedford then founded Bentonville Merchants and used earnings from a company merger to start Toad Thumper Lure.
Cannon is the lead singer for Whiskey Myers, a southern rock band from Texas that was featured on TV series “Yellowstone” and has multiple gold and platinum records. Cannon handles product development for Toad Thumper Lure.
Tedford, an Ozark native who owns homes in Bentonville, southwest Arkansas and Alabama, oversees the business side of the company. He met Cannon about eight years ago, and they became good friends.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tedford and Cannon were feeling its impacts amid fewer live meetings with Walmart and a lack of band tours. At the Bassmaster Classic, Cannon said he would like to design lures for companies, and Tedford was seeking new ways to make money.
Tedford suggested they make their own lures, and that was the start of Toad Thumper Lure Co. He said the name means big fish. A big fish is often called a toad in Texas, while in Arkansas, it’s a thumper. The company launched its first products at the Bassmaster Classic the following year.
BRAND SUPPORTERS
“At the expo, we got calls from Walmart and from Tackle Warehouse, and they were both like, ‘We want to put these in immediately,’” said Tedford, adding that it helped that Cannon’s band has millions of social media followers. “And I’ve got some good friends like Jeff Foxworthy, who’s got 3 (million) to 4 million followers. They started sharing the brand right out of the get-go.”
Tedford said Walmart and Tackle Warehouse are among the largest retailers of fishing tackle globally. Within the company’s first year, it went from nothing to a mid-sized lure company. He said some larger lure companies took 10 years to start selling their products at Walmart.
Revenue has increased by more than 100% each year since the company’s launch. In the first year, revenue reached $150,000. This year, it’s expected to hit $1 million. Next year, he expects revenue to double again to $2 million or $3 million. Most of its tackle products are under $10, and its soft plastic products are less than $5. It also sells apparel and other merchandise online at toadthumper.co.
The company has five employees, mostly in Arkansas. Including contract workers, the company has between 40 and 50 employees, with about 15 in Arkansas.
NEW STORES
This year, the company will begin to sell its products at Academy Sports + Outdoors, Bass Pro Shops and Sportsman’s Warehouse. Along with Walmart and Tackle Warehouse, the company also sells its products at Scheels. By the end of 2025, the company’s products will be available in about 4,000 stores in 46 states.
The company’s strongest business is in the Southeast, where the majority of bass fishing takes place. Most bass fishing brands start there.
“Now we’re shipping to California, Michigan, Wisconsin and all over,” he said.
Next year, Mystery Tackle Box will start offering Toad Thumper Lure products through its monthly subscription service, “which has hundreds of thousands of subscribers,” he said.
“It’s been really good,” Tedford added. “We ship everything out of our Arkansas warehouse. Our Arkansas warehouse is about 20,000 square feet, and it’s pretty much packed to the rim right now. We’re about to have to expand.”
He attributed the company’s growth to its products, noting they are superior to what’s available, as well as its focus on customer satisfaction. He compared the company to how other outdoor product companies have redesigned products, such as Yeti, whose cooler redesign has contributed to its growth.
“Cody and myself went into it thinking…we also want to make it where it’s aspirational, where people want it like it’s almost like the cool factor,” Tedford said. “We’ve spent a lot of time going about our marketing a different way.”
He said many tackle companies focus on traditional pro staff. He added that the company has customers who are pro staff — people who fish every day — but it also has “the mom-and-pop type customers” who fish on the weekends and work 8-5 jobs weekdays. The company also receives support from people outside the fishing industry, such as Cody Jinks, an American outlaw country music singer and songwriter, and Koe Wetzel, also a singer and songwriter from Texas, and Laramy ‘Sasquatch’ Miller, known for his reality TV show “Sasquatch Mountain Man” on the Outdoor Channel.
TOP PRODUCT
The majority of the company’s products are manufactured in Ocean Springs, Miss., through a manufacturing partnership with American Baitworks. Tens of thousands of units are produced per month, and by this time next year, it’s expected to be between 50,000 and 80,000 units per month, Tedford said.
Including colors, the company has about 40 products. He said in the tackle industry, most products come in six to 12 colors. The frog was its first product and is its best seller. It comes in two versions, Thumper and Swamper.
He said its frog is unique from others in the market because most of them take on water, requiring anglers to squeeze the water from them after a couple of casts. And, most of them require anglers to cut the tail because they come with a tail that’s not the right size. Most also require anglers to bend the hooks because they’re bent the wrong way.
“We spent a ton of time making sure that it was perfect and different. And then all those issues that you see out there with the products on the market today, we fixed them,” Tedford said. “I think we really created something that was the absolute best frog on the market.”
Tedford said the details set its products apart from others.
“We’ve taken pride in making sure that every little piece of it is better than the ones that are out there,” he said. “I think that some of that has to do with the fact that I was at Walmart in products for so long but also that Cannon is a super perfectionist. One of the bad things that comes with that is you don’t release as many new products as other companies.”
The company plans to launch a smaller frog, approximately half the size of the existing one.
“That will be coming out the first of the year, and we’re super excited about that,” Tedford said.
He said the company also plans to release a new crayfish “that’s going to be a game-changer.”
While the company’s products are primarily used for bass fishing, he often sees videos of people catching other things using them. Someone caught an alligator with one. Deep-sea anglers have caught “everything from red snapper to your name it. That’s been crazy to see.”
Related
References
- ^ Toad Thumper Lure Co. (toadthumper.co)