“We have created a new company” says owner of Pacific Pêche after acquiring Rive

Rive, one of the industry’s best-known seatbox manufacturers, has been taken over by AFL Pêche, which trades as French retail chain, Pacific Pêche.

As reported previously on this site, the ailing company recently went into bankruptcy and a court has granted the brand, the inventory and other assets to AFL Pêche.

“We have created a new company, Rive Sport Fishing, which will develop the brand and its sales in France and Europe,” said AFL Pêche President Agathe Boidin (main picture). “The new company will also sell our other own brands including Mack2 and Frazer.

“We will relaunch Rive as a premium brand in coarse fishing with new products for 2024.”

The 35-year-old Rive business has been located in Lieusaint, northern France, since 2016, but the company’s inventory and logistics operations will move to nearby Orléans, the location of the Pacific Pêche logistics team, in the Spring. The new company will also have offices and a showroom near Corbeil in the south of Paris.

Ten Rive employees – mainly sourcing and sales related – have also been transferred. Well known product developer Olivier Gielczynski (right) has left the business and posted an emotional farewell on Facebook on his last day there.

“It has been an intense and rewarding six and a half years,” he said. “The new owners are coming in with a superb project and I am sure will return [the Rive name] to a monument of the fishing industry.

“Our paths part, but I will always have pride in having brought my stone to the building. Thank you to everyone who believed in me and in the brand, and to all the loyalists who even in this turbulent event will stay on board and give us unconditional and flawless support. For me, now is the time for new adventures.”

Rive was previously owned by a Chinese manufacturer, but funding for the once-prominent brand was withdrawn and stock run down.

Once a key player in the seatbox sector, Rive has manufactured seatboxes for UK brand Guru since 2017. It was particularly strong in competition fishing and attempted to leverage the brand by including rods, nets, clothing, luggage and accessories in its 2013 catalogue, but business had diminished in recent years.

Pacific Pêche was founded in 1993 and was sold to a private equity group in 2016. It was placed in administration in 2020 before being bought by LOGS, an international logistics company of which Boidin is CEO.