Best Startup
Dangler is a marketplace built for anglers, brands and retailers to buy and sell fishing tackle. Built by anglers for anglers, we are here to revolutionise the way that the World both purchases and sells fishing tackle.
Tell us about yourself?
I am the youngest of three brothers, who are all very keen anglers. I was at the time the Number 1 Javelin thrower in the UK, and competed for Team GB, whilst completing a Sports Degree at University.
My brothers and I, during this time were using other marketplaces to buy and sell clothes, and realised that there was no option for us to do the same with our fishing tackle, the only option was eBay, which was a generalised platform, and not niche.
After looking deeper into the angling industry and realising the market was incredibly fractured, whilst also considerably large, we knew that creating a marketplace was the perfect solution.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Find a technical co-founder! We would have saved an unbelievable amount of cash, equity and would have no doubt launched our business 2 years sooner.
What problem does your business solve?
The angling industry is incredibly fractured, with hundreds of different retailers across the UK and Europe selling the same products, however, many of these retailers do not have the resources or funding to push their products out to the masses, and instead lose a large amount of their margins to general platforms such as eBay and Amazon.
Dangler brings all of these retailers, stores and anglers together into one location, offering immediate price comparison, as well as supplying more stock than any other individual store available.
Not only this, but anglers can also buy and sell their used tackle at the same time, so they can sell their used tackle with complete protection and safety, and use the money from selling their old tackle, to purchase new tackle. They can continually upcycle their fishing tackle.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
We built the marketplace ontop of our own needs. We realised that we didn’t have a centralised angling specific marketplace where we could sell our fishing tackle, but as well as these we found ourselves scrolling through a number of retailers to find one where the item was in stock or for the correct price.
As a result of this, we knew that this was a problem that many anglers faced, and and with over 1 million licensed anglers in the UK alone, the market was perfect.
What is your magic sauce?
We differ from our competition by onboarding stores and brands that offer fishing tackle in their own niche. This means that our marketplace can offer the most sought and popular stock in each angling discipline.
This means that any angler can find the product they are looking for on Dangler, but they can also sell their old tackle, or even purchase used tackle to save on money too. Something that no body else in the angling industry has attempted.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We aim to expand in the UK, becoming the largest stockist of all angling products, and then move into Europe, where the angling industry is worth considerably more. We want to achieve becoming the number one angling marketplace in Europe, creating value for retailers, brands and anglers across the continent.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
The biggest challenge we faced is that this is our first start-up and without being technical founders, we knew that we needed cash to actually build our product, but in doing so, we made many mistakes and lost a considerable amount of time.
Building the product itself was our biggest issue, and if we had of bought in a technical co-founder when we first created the business, we would have been able to scale much faster.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
If you are an angler or wish to start angling, then you can become involved by buying or selling on our platform, or if you own a business that sells angling equipment, fishing boats or fishing tackle, then reach out to me on email and we are more than happy to have a conversation about how we can help your store.
