The Bait & Tackle Box is a full service live bait and tackle shop located north of the western basin of Lake Erie, “the Walleye Capital of the World.” Not only did the shop cater to the fishermen looking for the elusive walleye, they also stocked tackle for small mouth bass, trophy muskie, pike, crappie, bluegill, silver bass and jumbo perch. My husband and I, along with my father and brother-in-law, started the shop from scratch in March 2010 as a family business. We recently sold the business in May 2014.

The sign for The Bait & Tackle Box was already at the location from a gentleman who had the business by that name for a little under a year, and then shut it down. In the beginning of 2010, my husband and I came upon this opportunity of an empty building and the existing sign. Ourselves along with some of my family members decided to reopen it as a bait and tackle shop again. We took this empty shell of a building and existing sign, and turned it into a family business.

I wanted to use the existing sign as much as I could in my designs since people were already used to seeing it and a new sign was not in the budget. I incorporated the existing sign in the business cards, which I also wanted to double as a loyalty reward program for our customers.  So at the bottom of the card, I  implemented a punch system based off minnows (Buy 8 dozen minnows, get 1 dozen FREE & 10% off tackle). I included a map on the back of the card, along with our phone number so that customers could call and get the latest fishing report. The punch based customer loyalty reward system increased sales by 25% over a 2 year time period.

Just like the business cards, I utilized the existing sign as our logo on our car magnets, the advertising, promotional flyers and yes, even our own bucket labels. 

However, when it came to the apparel, I had to take a different approach when it came to using the existing sign. I took it and altered it to be a more graphic logo, so I could embroider it on hats and fishing shirts. I wanted to have fun with it, so each family member was able pick and choose the colors they wanted. The cost to do the embroidery for family was fine, but it would have been too costly to sell in the store. 

I decided to create screen printed T-shirts, which we could turn around and sell in the store. I wanted to have a little more fun with this project. Since we are in the “Walleye Capitol of the World”, that is what I designed for the front of the shirt. I chose a more rustic font for our name, like vintage mom and pop bait shops. I found this cute saying “Our Minnows are Guaranteed to Catch Fish or Die Trying” to place on the back of the shirt, which I stylized the fonts a bit reminiscent of an old Johnson motorboat engine sign.  To tie everything in, I included the graphic version of our logo on the back.

In addition to receiving our tackle from vendors, we also made and packaged our own tackle, under the name “Get Hooked” tackle. I created the packaging for two of the types of tackle; stinger hooks and 4” rubber worms with a paddletail (available in 18 different colors). I chose neutral brown for the background so the different colors of worms/tackle would be easier to see.  The graphic red accents with logo were added to make the packages stand out.

I designed the website and facebook page to work together. I wanted everything important to what our customers want above the fold - a map of where we are (linking to google maps), weekly fishing report (linking to Michigan DNR), local weather (linking to National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office), our phone number and a live facebook feed. The facebook feed was set there so updates on local fishing could be easily found, whether you found us on our website or facebook. 

In addition to all the designing, I also helped work in the store, from stocking, organizing and merchandising product, to filling buckets of minnows. I was also responsible for organizing all of the paperwork, and calculating the monthly and year end taxes.