Akios Fishing Tackle.

How Akios was started and its background by the genius and owner, Simon Bradbury.

No problem, as you know i had a career with Abu Garcia starting in 1992 as a consultant on product development, which became a permanent position in 1994. During the next two years I developed new product across the board in Abu Garcia and then in 1996 they were bought by Berkley U.S.A.

I was then was asked to work with Abu Garcia/Berkley and Fenwick which was when with new investment from the USA the company grew in UK very quickly and then added Red Wolf in 1998.

The company then went on to acquire Mitchell/Spider/Johnson and my role became a European development manager. The Pure Fishing company then made the acquisition of Shakespeare/Penn/JRC/Pflueger/K2 Skis.

Thinks changed dramatically and European centralisation for us in UK was a bad move and halted the growth we had made and took a negative turn with longer deliveries, sku rationalisation and poor management decisions and alot of internal politics between Europe and U.S.A. Then in 2009 I was made redundant after 17 years.

I decided having worked in product development for 17 years and travelled the world with my job that I loved, I should reach out to some very good friends I had made in the industry to see if they could help and support me to start a new venture.

During many years of product development featuring all the brands, I development all categories of tackle to include rods, reels, baits, line, luggage, clothing accessories but was always responsible for bait cast/multiplier reels for the whole 17 years often travelling to Sweden and working with the Svangsta factory as well as a host of other reels in Asia.

My decision to start AKIOS and enter into multipliers was purely my experience and small amount of competition, which gave me the confidence to begin with a small range of 5 reels which were an Akios 656 CS,656CSM,656CTM and the two 757CS and 757CTM series.

I contacted Sea Angler in August 2010 and spoke to Alan Yates in regard to be able to get the reels reviewed in the magazine, Alan arranged to meet me in Dover with a photographer to test and evaluate the reels.

I had the reels all carefully packed in an aluminium briefcase in their own cut out foam slots and was on the road before light.

We duly met up and had a brief chat and Alan was itching to see what was in the briefcase, I lay it some rocks and unclipped the latches and inside lay the start of the Akios brand, five new shiny chrome glistening reels ready to be thrashed on the beach.

Alan was very impressed at first sight and went onto strap them on rods and put them through their paces whilst be photographed and soon had the reels whistling away and the leads soring to the horizon, I can remember it as if it was yesterday.

Some 3 hours later and lots of interaction Alan said I had better let you get back on the 4 hour journey home, to which I said my goodbyes and drove home with a constant smile on my face; this was going to be a very influential moment in the birth of Akios into the reel market.

The review and double page spread was in the following edition of Sea Angler and the phone began to ring.

The multipliers started to sell well in the UK market and the 656 CTM reel quickly became the go to reel for beach anglers wanting multipliers for clean ground fishing, we then started to get requests from Italy, Holland, Belgium and then the U.S.A. which was tough to break into but we started to make some small inroads and has become a very important market to the business.

It was clear in the next few years fixed spool reels were starting to sell well and perform well in casting and we needed to also offer the fixed spool reels, which we then duly launched in our markets. Following fixed spool reels we decided to enter the rod market with our first continental rod to fit our fixed spool reels and since this we haven’t looked back being a very popular aspect of the market.

Since the first rod was introduced in 2016, the Akios Airspeed 435 we have grown the rod range dramatically and into other areas with more to come in 2021/2022.

We also decided to create another brand called Inova in collaboration with Martin McGowan from Ireland who was responsible for the hugely global sea fishing accessory ” The Bait Binder” now sold in over 20 countries. The Inova brand offers innovation and has many different clever pieces of terminal tackle and product keeping it apart from others with big plans for further development in 2021/2022.

Hope this helps to give some insight to how Akios was started and how I gained my experience enabling me to start Akios.