Part III of our series where we look back to popular Fishing tackle brands and find out how they got started and what lead them to success. This time we are going to take a look in Abu Garcia background, previous ones were Shimano and Penn.

I can confidently say that Abu Garcia may have one of the most interesting founding stories and its road to the tackle market top has been all, but easy. This story doesn`t involve usual American success, that could have been predicted pretty much right when the company started out. Far from that.

I would say that in many ways hardships and obstacles themselves gave Abu Garcia needed push to becoming what they are right now. Ready to get deeper insights? I certainly am, so here we go.

Swedish Crafting Company

So Abu Garcia was founded in far away from America, in Sweden by Carl August Borgström. Borgström was quite experienced craftsman thanks to his years spend in the Halda watchmaking factory, which was the company he ended up buying and renaming it to the AB Urfabriken . It first started out by producing pocket watches, telephone timers and taxi meters.

Soon, Carl died and in 1939 his son Göte Borgström took the company over. Göte had a choice: either to keep producing clocks and watches or , fishing enthusiast as Göte was, start making Fishing Reels.

Maybe the most influential factor for preferring to go on with fishing reels was the fact that after World War II there wasn`t a big demand for watches and taxi meters. After the decision , company name was changed to ABU.

So 1941 the first Abu Garcia fishing reel named ABU Record was released. The firm didn`t attract a lot of attention and media until Ambassadeur baitcasting reel was introduced. It became very well-known reel for its precision engineering and quality processes that were used to manufacture it.

Launching Ambassadeur was the beginning of Abu Garcia fishing reels world-wide success and even nowadays Ambassadeur is available in tackle shops.

1950 Abu started to expand to USA through fishing equipment distribution and selling company named Garcia.

In 1955 company officially announced the first Abu Garcia spinning reel called ABU 444, which reinforced the company market position because now it had more variety of reels to offer.

Finally, when ABU acquired the Garcia distribution and reselling firm based in USA, company was named Abu Garcia.

Modern Abu Garcia Tackle

Now Abu Garcia top of the line products carry name Revo which stands as revolutionary. In todays world, their most well-known fishing reels are the Revo series low profile baitcasters that continue to get lighter and more compact each year. For spinning reels, Revo Premier still has its place even in professional bass anglers hands.

Maybe the most distinctive change the company has done in past decade is the choice of putting bit more focus on fishing rods instead of being solely reel focused brand like they used to be. Appropriate examples are fishing rods like Vendetta and Vengeance.

Of course AG has stayed true to it`s most popular and the critical part of their success journey- Ambassadeur. Every baitcaster that still maintains the old fashioned round-look instead of low profile one, is part of the that same Ambassadeur product line.

However, the old ABU times still hold their worth even today, there are whole bunch of specialized collectors out there who will go crazy over some of the earliest ABU fishing reels.

Ending Thoughts

Abu Garcia journey could be titled as most engaging and interesting one for a many anglers. Firm born in Sweden as crafting company was transformed with continuous and relentless work from multiple generations into something so dominating and time-proven.

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