A good way of staying up to date with all the nice things going on in the outdoor lifestyle clothing world, is to keep a close eye on whatever Outsiders Store are up to.
Recently, the cult retailer introduced a new brand to their roster – Creek Anglers Device.
Now, we’ve been seeing people on Instagram wearing hoodies and T-shirts adorned with ‘Creek’ in that lovely typeface for some time now, but if we’re being totally honest, we don’t actually know that much about the brand, other than it looks pretty cool.
Part of this cool factor is most certainly attributed to in some part by the mystique that surrounds the brand…
So as a way of educating both ourselves, and you lot, we’re going to try and uncover…
Just what exactly is Creek Angler’s Device?
A quick bit of intense internet sleuthing (scrolling back on Instagram to the first post) tells us that Creek Angler’s Device’s was founded back in 2019 – if we’re going by the metric of a brand being birthed when they made their first Instagram post – Creek’s journey began simply with a photo of some ducks on a lake with the caption ‘#creek_anglersdevice’
A bit more internet sleuthing gave us the answer to Creek Angler’s Device’s birthplace, and you’ll win no prizes for guessing that the understated but hugely intriguing brand hails from Japan – the homeland of the true purveyors of ‘cool.’
As you can probably figure out from the brand’s name, Creek’s whole ‘thing’ is angling, as in pulling fish out of a body of water with a rod. However, the brand started out making cotton products not all that exclusive to fishing, namely, T-shirts.
Creek’s first photographed tee featured an MLB-inspired fishing logo with the brand’s name sitting proudly next to it. Fittingly, the only comment on this post is a user asking ‘How do I buy one?’
A bit more scrolling on Instagram tells us that it didn’t take long for Creek Angler’s Device to branch out from T-shirts, as a post from 2019 details a branded wallet.
Now, it doesn’t take a hugely perceptive person to tell you that wallets and T-shirts with a logo slapped across them aren’t the most difficult of products to produce, – and on paper – these products shouldn’t be hugely desirable.
But you’ve only got to observe the sheer amount of ‘How can I buy this?’ comments on the Instagram posts to understand in Creek’s case they are.
And what did Creek do in response to these comments? Absolutely nothing.
And this is pretty genius marketing, whether it be conscious or not. What makes something extremely desirable? When you can’t have it.
Or in Creek’s want-to-be-consumers case, when you can’t figure out how to have it.
It is worth noting, that if you lived in Japan, acquiring products from Creek would be a fair bit easier than for those in the West, but with that being said, you can still find comments in Japanese on Creek’s old posts that echo the same message as the one’s from the Westerners.
Creek Angler’s Device continued to post photos of nice fishing imagery and their lovely cotton products, and people continued to shout into the echo chamber for a link to buy them. Until one day in 2021, the chamber stopped echoing…
Creek Angler’s Device began to announce that their products would be available from specific Japanese retailers, such as MIN-NANO & Paddlers Coffee, but it wasn’t until significantly later that us lot in the West would first be presented with an ample opportunity to quench our Creek thirst.
The chance would eventually come though, when in November of 2023, Creek posted a plastic tag with their logo accompanied by that of a brand based in Boulder, Colorado – Quiet Mountain Cafe.
The duo of brands released a very limited run of hoodies and T-shirts that were available to buy online from Quiet Mountain Cafe and in-store from Blue in Green in New York, in response to the extreme demand, customers were limited to one colourway per style.
Finally, everyone’s prayers were answered, and later on in September, Blue in Green would host Creek Angler’s Device’s first-ever in-person USA event, in the form of a NYC pop-up. As you can imagine the event garnered quite a lot attention, and we’re sure a lot of very cool people passed through Blue in Green’s doors that night.
But we’d also imagine a lot of those people probably still didn’t know exactly what Creek Angler’s Device is, and to be fair, we’ve done a pretty rubbish job of answering that question, even though it’s the title of this article…
So, to sum it up, Creek Angler’s Device is an outdoor lifestyle & fishing brand that has an exceptional graphic design & marketing team behind it. It’s wholesome, relaxing and above all else – very desirable.
And at long last, it has never been easier to quench your desires, simply by heading over to Outsiders Store and perusing the first lot of Creek Angler’s Device products that have ever been available in the UK.
All we’re left hoping is that Creek’s entrance to the UK is no flash in the pan because in our eyes, it’s proper nice gear.
