This year marks the beginning of a new era for Fish Hawk, and I’m more excited about where we’re headed than at any time since buying the company in 2009. In this post, I want to walk through what’s changing, why it matters, and how new products like TD Connect and the Fish Hawk ONE system fit into that bigger picture.

Why I’m Sharing This

Most of what we post focuses on fishing tactics and how-tos. Don’t worry, that will absolutely continue, but I want to open the doors a bit and share more of the business side—what it really looks like to run a small company in a changing world.

Not everyone will care about the behind-the-scenes business side, and that’s okay; feel free to skip this post. This is for those who are interested in why we do what we do and how those choices impact our business and the gear we build. The fishing products industry has been good to me, and maybe this will help another small business in some small way.

The Toughest Stretch Since 2009

I took over Fish Hawk in 2009, and the past two years have been the most challenging. In August 2023, a key supplier closed their doors for good without warning. Fish Hawk had been doing business with that company for over 40 years, and that single event forced me to rethink how we source and build our products. 

We manufacture Fish Hawk in the USA, but most electrical components are imported, and tariffs have significantly increased our costs. Meanwhile, minimum order quantities and lead times for parts are growing, available labor has decreased, and operating expenses—including freight, employee benefits, shipping supplies, and insurance premiums—continue to rise. Without additional revenue to cover these higher costs, profit margins become thinner, and prices increase.

Turning Pressure into Progress

Instead of hoping things would “go back to normal,” I choose to see these challenges as a blessing, even if they haven’t always felt that way in the moment, a push to get better. We’ve invested heavily in product development, our accounting and inventory software, and internal processes to help a small team “punch above its weight.” And I have learned a lot about our company, products, and myself along the way.

The work is never really finished, and I joke that if I had known how much work and money it would take, I probably wouldn't have started! My Finnish grandmother used to say, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” I think about that a lot when I look at our business; we can’t control the weather, but we have much better clothes than we did two years ago.

Meet TD Connect

The first new product in our “next chapter” is TD Connect. Like the original TD, TD Connect records water temperature from the surface to the bottom, but uses your phone to provide an easy-to-read view of the depth and temperature profile. One of my top design priorities for TD Connect was to make it extremely easy to use for customers of all ages. The user experience is straightforward—drop it, retrieve it, and view the data instantly on your phone. It seems like the simplest products are the hardest to design, and the final product is focused and rugged with a clean, straightforward app.

Every species of fish responds to water temperature in predictable ways, and TD Connect is designed to turn that biological reality into a growth engine for our business. TD Connect opens the door for us to serve customers in new regions and fisheries, outside Fish Hawk’s core Great Lakes market. TD Connect also serves as a platform for a community. New app capabilities are already in development, with the long-term vision of making it easier for anglers to share insights and patterns in ways that improve everyone’s time on the water.

Simplifying The Product Line

One of the biggest strategic steps we’re taking is to simplify the product line. We’re replacing four separate system models with a single system that includes all the features anglers use, instead of scattering them across multiple versions. As I age, life has a funny way of coming full circle. For decades, Fish Hawk offered just one system—the model 840 Thermo Troll—and now I find it ironic (and fitting) that we’re once again returning to a single, all-in-one system.

Manufacturing one well-equipped model is more efficient for us and less confusing for customers standing in a tackle shop or browsing online.

One Fish Hawk System...

On the heels of TD Connect, we’ll introduce the Fish Hawk ONE system. Fish Hawk ONE pairs a new, compact display with the ULTRA Probe, combining our most popular probe with a more capable display.

The new LCD lets customers customize how they view probe information, rather than being locked into a single layout. It will also integrate with other electronics, something customers have been asking for. This integration gives customers the best of both worlds: a simple, dedicated Fish Hawk display plus the ability to share key data with other systems.

Legacy displays required a complete redesign anytime we added a new feature, which meant a new model. With Fish Hawk ONE, we’re building a platform that can grow and improve over time, unlocking new capabilities with firmware updates.

Stronger Through Partnerships

Behind both TD Connect and Fish Hawk ONE is a focused effort to strengthen our engineering capabilities. I’ll reveal more about this in future posts. As a small team, we know where we’re strong and where we need specialized expertise, usually associated with much larger industry players. Customers will see the benefits in more innovative designs, more frequent updates, and smarter integrations across their electronics.

I plan to write one of these “under the hood” updates every few months to share where we’re going and what we’re learning along the way. If you’ve made it this far, I hope it gives you a better sense of why we’re doing what we’re doing and why I’m so excited about the next chapter for Fish Hawk. Part of the reason for writing this is to be transparent about how we’re navigating the same headwinds many of you face in your own businesses. Thanks for being with us on the journey!

Trevor