Many people spend years casting about for a career direction. Zack Richardson ’21 already knew where his was heading by the time he hit his teens.
Owner of Zack’s Custom Rods, Richardson translated an early love of fishing into a cottage industry, beginning with making and selling fishing lures as a child.
“My family had a house in Westport, Massachusetts, so I grew up near the water,” he says. “We had a 13-foot Boston Whaler and my dad would take us out on the water all the time. That lit my passion for fishing, and I’ve always had the ambition to make money. An entrepreneurial spirit and love for the outdoors has been a thing for me since I was five years old.”
By age 12, Richardson had switched from carving and tying lures to building fishing rods, which turned out to be far more lucrative.
“I'd sell one or two lures for $20, and at that age you think you’re a millionaire,” he recalls. “But that was for four or five hours of work. I thought about fishing rods because they were a more expensive item.”
By the time he arrived at Bryant as an Entrepreneurship major, with a minor in Environmental Science, Richardson already had an established business, selling fishing rods for a few hundred dollars each to individual anglers as well as through tackle shops, some of which asked him to do repairs, as well.
To improve his skill and the product, Richardson watched YouTube videos and researched the best suppliers of fishing rod components.
“I built rods throughout middle school and high school and got ‘Fish Boy’ as a nickname,” he remembers. “Other kids would go home from school and play soccer, basketball, or baseball; I'd go home and build fishing rods.”
“Other kids would go home from school and play soccer, basketball, or baseball; I'd go home and build fishing rods.”
Richardson excelled at Bryant, winning the Jackson W. Goss Prize in Entrepreneurship and using the prize money to open a manufacturing shop in Westport. He also drafted the first business plan for what would become Zack’s Custom Rods while at Bryant.
“That was a key fundamental, having a plan that you could execute step-by-step versus just blindly going off and thinking ‘this is going to work,’” says Richardson, who also is using lessons learned at Bryant as he moves toward his first acquisition of another company.
“As a first-year student I had a class where we read The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey,” recalls Richardson. “On the very last day of the semester my professor said, ‘There are two ways to get ahead in life: you either get a job that pays you a handsome salary and you invest and live below your means, or you own the means of production. And I was like, yep, that's what I want to do.”
The business of Zack’s Custom Rods includes repairing fishing rods and restoring vintage gear. But its primary niche is building inshore and offshore rods to exact customer specifications, taking into account not only where and what clients are fishing for, but also factors like body structure and personal style.
“We hear from people who are frustrated because they bought a high-end, pre-made production rod, and the little eyelets and circles that run up the rod are not in line,” says Richardson. “The livelihood of the shop owners that we work with depends on having a good product. Our rods are made done by hand by a team of craftspeople who are very detail oriented and quality driven.”
Customers have included wealthy sportsmen who want multiple custom rods to outfit their yachts, as well as anglers with physical limitations.
“For people who physically cannot cast a certain way, we use a smaller grip section on the rod so they can bend and move the rod the way that works best for them,” explains Richardson. “We’ve had former mixed martial arts fighters who cannot wrap their hands into a fist, so we use a big foregrip so they can hold the rod when they're fighting a fish. I have a client right now who has no left arm, so he has to hold the rod on a hook.”
"Our rods are made done by hand by a team of craftspeople who are very detail oriented and quality driven.”
A basic inshore fishing rod from Zack’s Custom Rods can be had for under $400, but costs can escalate quickly alongside customization.
“I'm working on a rod right now with an exotic animal theme for one of our top clients in Nashville that’s going to be sniffing $9,800,” Richardson says. “We’re resourcing materials from all over the world and it's going to take hundreds of hours to do. That’s about the highest anybody can physically go unless we start putting gems or gold on them, which would be pretty cool.”
Richardson is currently shopping for a bigger fishing boat for himself but acknowledges that the hours he’s been putting into the business since high school leave little time for a social life.
“I went from living on the water, just fishing every day, to where if I can get out six times, that’s a good year for me,” he says. “I get crazy invites to fly all over the world and do these big exotic tournaments, and I have to shut them down.”
All the hard work and sacrifices have landed Richardson some big successes, however. Barely a decade after building his first fishing rod, Zack’s Custom Rods is now closing in on $2 million in annual revenues.
“We became New England’s largest custom rod builder a few years back, and we’re punching through the ceiling and reinvesting and growing as fast as possible,” he says.
