2019 Rapala won best sunglasses
2020-2021 not held due to corona
2022 no awards
2023-2025 best position in soft baits, Crush City was also launched in 2023. Before this, Rapala had not had soft baits under the Rapala brand.
In Australia, it’s important to remember that fishing is also a summer sport there, so December-February are the most popular times for fishing. So, the 23-year fairs mostly fall into the 24 season and so on. Thus, there have been two seasons for business to grow. At comparable exchange rates, “rest of the world,” which included Australia, saw a +5% revenue growth in H1 25 vs H1 24 and dropped 5% in H1 24 vs H1 23, but the verbal opening contains the sentence “CrushCity boosted sales especially in Australia.” Of course, only H2 25 figures will show, but it is likely that CrushCity will at least shift into the next gear in Australia.
At the ICAST trade show in July, Rapala had not won a freshwater hard bait award for 25 years, for example, even though the company is known precisely for these lures. The Claptail 110 lures have not yet reached stores, so it’s difficult to say the sales relevance of that win. However, in my opinion, it’s not that these have always been won, but just not utilized.