WRITTEN BY Nick Wise

Hello! Well, it’s been a long time in the making, but our website is finally at the point where we feel comfortable putting it out there for the world! I won’t say it’s done because we’ll always be looking to improve things. As far as our products and our company go, we want to constantly be improving. Not just updating to update, but updating to get better. Since we started over a year ago, we’ve updated our Freedom 1 to the Freedom 2 and gotten a new model, the Bravery, as well as adding 4 more sizes to our Justice series of coolers. And that’s just the beginning!

So without boring y’all with my life story, some of which is in the About Us section of our site, I’ll mention a few more things here. I both was and was not born into an outdoors family. My father and my grandpa are not big outdoorsmen. We mess around on the golf course, and I grew up playing soccer and watching rugby because my parents are both from South Africa, but no hunting or fishing. However, my mom’s father and her brothers are all big outdoorsmen. It was when my Oupa visited or when I visited them in South Africa that I got to experience some fishing and hunting. 

Reed buck shot with my uncle on their farm, Kwa-Zulu Natal South Africa, June 2007. 

Pigeon and Dove hunting just outside of Johannesburg, South Africa July 2017

I didn’t really get into fishing in a big way until I moved to St. Pete for law school in the summer of 2012. In law school I met my business partner Andrew, and his friends, who are avid fishermen. We’d go out and mess around on his flats boat and it was with them that I got my first redfish, first trout, and oh baby, my first snook!

You could say I was hooked. Wow, I can’t believe I just posted a pun that terrible. Anyway, flats fishing got in there and she got in there deep. A year after graduating law school, I was trying to find my place in the world. I was also looking for a fishing kayak for myself because, well, I couldn’t afford a boat. It wasn’t until I got my kayaks that I realized just how amazing kayak fishing can be. You can’t sneak up on a school of reds in a boat, but you can watch a snook destroy a greenback 5 feet away from your kayak. 

So, a little over a year and a bunch of kayaks later here we are. I can proudly say that I’ve met over 90% of our customers, either picking up their kayak, or having it delivered in the back of the Liberty Outdoors mobile! There’s so many more things I want to say, but since this is an opening article and not a book, I’ll leave y’all with this: Thank you to all of our Liberty Outdoors customers. You all have been wonderful and you make my job the greatest in the world. See y’all on the water and don’t forget to exercise your Liberty Outdoors!