UKMA:Can you explain briefly how you got into angling?

Darren Conway (DC):I got into angling around 27 years ago through my granddad fishing for Pike on the River Dee in North Wales. He was a specimen pike angler and held quite a few records for specimen pike around North Wales.
I progressed onto course fishing over the next 10 years and eventually onto Carp and it has been predominately Carp only since that time.

UKMA: How did you start in the angling trade?

DC: Bait has always interested me, for years I had played about with various mixes/ tweaked bait, custom bait and such so when the thoughts of starting a bait company came up I jumped at the chance to work in the industry. Before then I had field tested bait for around 7 years a well known Essex bait company. 

UKMA: What made you decide to start your own business within the angling industry?

DC: I had been rolling bait for a few friends for quite some time, fishing time got less and less and there was no way of meeting demands so I had to look elsewhere for the rolling to be done. During this time I had the offer of starting a bait company from scratch with Vision Baits. Tony Mills and I would be putting the company together during the winter months ready for the launch early spring.  

UKMA: How long has the company been running?

DC: The company has been trading just over 6 years. We initially started off in a small unit across the road from where we are now. Within no time the unit was too small and we needed a bigger place. Demand and brand awareness grew and grew and for the second time we have moved to a bigger unit again on the same trading estate. The unit is equipped with everything we need to produce and supply on a much larger scale. We sourced rolling machines/ bagging machines and various types of mixing equipment to increase production and we are still expanding today some 6 years later.   

UKMA: How do you see the future with regards to company expansion over the forthcoming years?

DC: After last year’s increase on sales things are already looking promising for 2010, we are now actively distributing into 16 European counties and over 400 shops in the UK. All Vision products are sold by reputation and catch results only, We do NOT pay anglers to talk about our products, we do NOT pay for them to write about them in every magazine and wearing every single item of clothing possible. A good product should sell itself rather than having 20+ people on a monthly basis writing about it to drum up interest. 
The field testers have been very active testing new ranges of products and putting final tweaks to them ready for the launch. After the very successful launch of the Ecto-Plasm and Carp Candys in 2009 we have now added to the Carp Candy range Euro Candy in larger sizes and later this year will see the launch of another exciting range of Glowing/ fluoro pop ups.   

For more information on Vision Bait International, please click the logo below to visit their website.