We were lucky to catch up with Kelly Barefoot recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kelly, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today

I would try to better understand there’s a large difference between creating tackle, turning them into products and just how to difficult it is to bring them to retail in a massive fishing industry as an independent brand.

Retail is a tough nut to crack, no matter how superior your product may be to other “mainstream” tackle.

Kelly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My 1st introduction into making tackle was as a cub scout, literally made a fishing “spoon” for a project. My upbringing was kind of unique in that my dad always had my brother and I in the outdoors, hunting, fishing, and playing sports. My mom meanwhile would take us with her to pottery classes and intro’d us to crafting different items. Later as a teen, I started carving tackle for my own use out of broomsticks and wood handles.

I’ve always had a love for being outdoors, …sports, fishing, drawing and painting, so it was only natural they merged onto crafting tackle. By the time I was in college (Psych major), I began to branch out into tying saltwater and freshwater flies. After college and having left the NC coast to marry, I leaned back into freshwater bass fishing, and fishing tournaments. In the late 90’s I began custom painting other brands of lures. After press and some local success, it started to snowball. My simple hobby was turning into greater demand from other anglers. By 2003, I created and launched Custom Lures Unlimited (CLU) . I opened the 1st website under that name. A business that would specialize in custom, high end repaints and repairs of tackle. That kind of exploded and within a couple years the fishing world came calling and I was placed at a turning point b/t my career & hobby,

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

In 2006, just 3 years after the start of CLU, the sheer volume of requests from both local, regional, and professional anglers started to explode. I was still working a full-time day job in the infant and child development psych field for the state of North Carolina and UNC Children’s Hospital. In addition, my wife, Heidi, and I also had two young children under the age of 5. Long nights of work started to pile up. Something had to give, so we made the hard decision to leave my degreed career and to pursue lure craft full time. I’m pretty certain my whole family thought it was a crazy idea to leave a stable job for a dream. Looking back now, the timing was key. The internet was in its infancy. The idea of custom painted lures was novel. From my knowledge, there were just 3 lure painters in the world at that time. The creation of YouTube changed that forever.

The first few years were financially lean. I went from a steady paycheck with benefits to zero income on day 1. You learn alot about business in a hurry.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One thing that has helped the business to thrive was a mantra I created on day 1 of starting the biz. I’ve never shared this tidbit, but it seems fitting looking back now I wanted to do at minimum, one thing EVERY DAY that made the business better. Just one. It could be as simple as making a work related phone call, creating better website graphics, learning to take higher quality lure pictures, or as complicated as designing a new lure from scratch.
My thought was it takes one brick at a time to build a house. Why not approach building the business with the same concept. When I look back now, those once a day tasks have added up to over 8,000 business “bricks”, laid daily. I still do this daily.
What I’ve learned from this approach that persistence is the path to success in life or business, much more so than talent, luck or other variables.

By 2013, the tackle world was saturated with custom painters. The US economy was on a huge spiral downward. Anglers just weren’t spending funds on high end tackle like they had in years earlier. I was at a crossroads, again.
I made the incredibly hard decision to move away from custom to more affordable tackle. Tackle that would reach a broader group of anglers. I created Catch Outdoors and moved away from CLU. Over the years I had built up plenty of my own lure designs like the Zero Gravity Jig, acquired Danny Joe’s Original Floating Worm, created other items like the Ikon, Ikon M2, Pitbull, J-Fusion, Goliath, and many other hard baits. I had multiple pros anglers on the team and began to approach major retailers. By 2016, that plan started to thrive and we began to be accepted as Catch, a legit tackle company. With the creation of other lures like the Jack Slap in 2019, I branched out further into tackle that focused on multiple species. Nowadays we offer a large variety of tackle, gear, accessories like angler backpacks, hats, and even polarized sunglasses.

It’s almost unbelievable that 23 years have gone by. We’ve been extremely blessed to have anglers that have put their trust in our products. The most rewarding part without question is seeing and hearing about catches on our tackle. In the end, it’s all about enjoying the simple joy of catching a fish and creating a memory for an angler. I think we’ve helped create alot of those moments.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.catchoutdoors.com
• Instagram: catchoutdoors
• Facebook: catch outdoors- powered by custom lures unlimited
• Other: threads-> @catchoutdoors tiktok-> @catchoutdoors919

Image Credits
Catch Outdoors Kelly Barefoot