Howdy folks! Michael Sims here, CoFounder and President of H+G. I hope y'all weathered the cold weather this year and were able to spend time with family and friends doing some duck hunting, skiing, and other cold weather activities. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to spring, warmer weather, and getting back in the groove on the golf course and wearing out some bass in the farm pond in March! I wanted to recap a few things we were able to do these last 60 days and give you a few updates on new watches and other things in the works.
First off, we want to thank the H+G family for a wonderful holiday season. We continue to increase sales year over year-- the "time well spent" movement is growing! We are grateful for our loyal fans and customers. After the busy season, my family took a quick trip to Isle of Palms for a few days for some rest and relaxation. We were blessed with a few warm days just after Christmas, and I took my boys up the ICW on our skiff to get after some redfish. We had two really great days in a row. Winter fishing is my favorite.
Two days after returning from Charleston, I headed for Arkansas for the weekend. Many of you know we just launched a partnership this fall with DU, and we are now the "Official Timekeeper for Ducks Unlimited." We are really excited about this partnership. DU has a loyal following, very similar to H+G (and also much larger!). Their members have really embraced our brand. The watches our CoFounder and designer Gash Clayton created for DU are really special--the mallard feather dial design is unique and something we've never really seen with any other brand. These watches are absolutely gorgeous, even going so far as to capture the grain in the feathers on the dial.
Anyway, I was fortunate enough to be invited by Jim Alexander and Colton McCarty with Ducks Unlimited to accompany them to Arkansas on a duck hunt along with a few other corporate partners from Benelli and Tom Beckbe. We spent two days at the Stan Jones Mallard Lodge. With the area being in a severe drought for several months, the hunting was difficult. We saw thousands of migrating ducks but with very little water in the rivers and feeder creeks, it was a bit of a challenge getting these birds to circle and land in small flooded areas. We did the best we could and managed a few ducks each day, and we had a fun pheasant hunt the first afternoon to keep us busy. I'm very thankful for these guys at DU and we had a great time regardless. I'm always reminded by the old timers, "It's not about the hunting." There's more to the hunt than the actual hunting, and the trip for some "time well spent" meeting new people and starting new friendships was well worth the miles on the highway.
A lot of you offshore anglers out there know we have some boats wrapped in Venice, Louisiana. We've been supporting Captain Eddie Burger of Fish Venice Charters for ten years now, ever since they had the two Contenders. I've been taking trips to Venice for over twenty years with friends and family, and Eddie and his captains have always been first class and seem to put us on fish even on the toughest days. We have some exciting news to share. One of the Fish Venice Captains, Aaron Wilmoth, brought in the pending state record and Gulf record yellowfin just two days ago. At 272 pounds, this tuna is a monster! We want to congratulate Aaron and Eddie with Fish Venice Charters on their success. Also, for those of you who make the trip down to Venice frequently, we are excited to share that we will be taking on a larger role in the marketing and advertising for Cypress Cove Marina where the Fish Venice boats are docked. The marina is under new ownership, and we'll be involved in helping to sponsor and advertise for various tourneys throughout the year. If any of you have any questions about places to stay or who to fish with, both inshore/offshore, just shoot us a message and we'll be happy to point you in the right direction.
At the same time this monster yellowfin was being reeled in, we were wrapping up our final day at the Southeastern Wildlife Expo in Charleston. We want to thank everyone who came out to see us. The weekend was phenomenal. Our sales were through the roof, as our customers were excited to see the DU watches in person, as well as the new "Taxman" King Tide. We also want to thank everyone who voted in person or online for the new DU feather dial, to be rolled out this coming fall in time for next waterfowl season. We will probably continue the voting process online to get a better idea on which dial is more popular between the wood duck and the pintail pattern, but so far we have a good idea which one is going to be more popular! These are sure to become collector's items for both our loyal H+G fans and DU members, so be sure to grab the first one before we sell out.
This leads me to my final thought before closing out. We will have more on this to come, but we wanted our loyal fans to know that our business model will be changing somewhat as we get further into 2026. The wheels are already turning. The plan is to keep just a few of our most popular dial colors from several models on our website as permanent fixtures, but for the most part, with each new dial design or color roll out in our models, we will be doing pre-orders and limited runs. This means we'll have more frequency in our design rollouts, as we will begin changing designs often, rolling out new models, etc in small runs but with the ability for you all to pre-order and make sure you are first in line. We will expand on this idea more down the road but wanted you to hear it here first.
Thank you all! Bring on largemouth, gobblers and warm weather!
Michael Sims