The Slow Feed

If Reddit is where your customers go to make up their minds, Substack is where they go to think, and where your brand can meet them with something worth reading.

The two platforms are not competitors. They serve different moments in how a person relates to the things they care about. Reddit is the campfire argument about which reel holds up and which doesn’t. Substack is the long read on a rainy afternoon that makes you feel like you found your people. Smart brands and retailers should be present for both.

Substack launched in 2017 as a platform for independent writers to publish newsletters and get paid directly by subscribers, without advertising or algorithm-driven feeds. It grew steadily and then fast, spurred by the COVID pandemic and a contraction in traditional media. By 2025, the platform had 5 million paid subscribers and 20 million monthly active users.

It has since evolved into something more than a newsletter tool. It’s a hybrid publishing, social, and community platform with a Notes feed (think Twitter without the chaos), podcast hosting, and a recommendation network that can surface your publication to readers of similar content. But at its core, Substack is about one thing the rest of social media mostly abandoned: depth.

People are hungry for intentional, slower-paced feeds. In a world of three-second reels and algorithmic outrage, a well-crafted 800-word piece that lands in someone’s inbox, from a brand or writer they chose to follow, is an increasingly rare thing. That scarcity is an opportunity.

So why does this matter now? The share of newsletters run by brands totaled 5.3% in 2025, up from 4.3% in 2024, and consumer goods brands saw the biggest increase, jumping from 20.9% to 26.9%. The window to establish a credible voice on Substack before the space gets crowded is open. It won’t stay open indefinitely.

There’s also a structural reason to care: some of the most engaged creators are building communities on Substack, Discord, and Reddit simultaneously, creating layered audiences that are far more loyal than social media followers. For fly fishing brands and the shops that sell them, which have always lived or died by community trust, that kind of engaged audience is the whole ballgame.

And Substack connects directly to the AI search landscape discussed in the Reddit companion piece. Just as Reddit threads are increasingly surfacing in AI-generated search summaries, Substack posts are being indexed and cited. Publishing substantive content on the platform builds both an audience and a body of work that helps shape how your brand appears when people ask questions.

The fly fishing industry is unusually well-positioned for Substack. This is a trade built on writers. John Gierach built a career on it. McGuane, Lyons, Traver, the culture has always made room for language that goes deeper than a product spec sheet. Substack rewards exactly that sensibility. That’s true for manufacturers and for the fly shops, outfitters, and online retailers who sit closest to the customer. A brand sells a rod; a shop sells the local knowledge, the river report, and the relationship that turns a one-time buyer into a regular. Substack is built for exactly that kind of voice, and a retailer often has more of it than anyone.

Here are the plays worth considering:

Launch a brand publication with a genuine editorial voice. Not a newsletter that recaps your product drops. A publication that has a point of view on conservation, on craft, on where the sport is headed, and on what’s happening to the rivers. Luxury consignment brand The RealReal uses its Substack to engage with fans through editorial content, and sees a high percentage of product link clicks originating from the platform. The lesson: when people trust your editorial voice, they trust your product recommendations.

Make it a behind-the-scenes window. Customers buy stories as much as they buy gear. Who built this rod and why? What went wrong in the first three prototypes? What do your guides actually argue about on the drive home? That kind of transparency builds the kind of loyalty that no ad buy can replicate. Consumers have demonstrated they will make blind-buy purchases online when the story is compelling enough; they bought the story. For a retailer, the window is even wider: the staff pick that actually fishes, the honest take on what’s overhyped this season, the bench notes from the repair desk. Shops earn trust by being candid in ways a manufacturer often can’t, and that candor is the most valuable thing a fly shop owns.

Partner with the writers already there. Substack has a thriving fly fishing ecosystem. Reel Pure Radio and flylab are good examples of what’s possible when the writing takes the culture seriously. Denim brand Still Here partnered with five Substack creators for a product launch, giving each creator full creative agency, and saw 75%+ open rates and sold out on launch day, with 80–90% of click-throughs originating from Substack email. The fly fishing trade equivalent is straightforward: find the writers your customers are already reading and build something with them.

For retailers: become the voice of your water. This is the play built for fly shops and outfitters. No brand can write the local river report, name the hatch that came off last Tuesday, or tell a customer which run is fishing and which is blown out. A retailer can. A weekly or biweekly dispatch, conditions, flies that are working, a guide’s short essay, a quiet plug for the gear that suits the season, turns your shop from a place people buy from into a publication people read. It keeps you in the inbox between trips, drives foot traffic and online orders without feeling like a sale, and builds a subscriber list you own outright rather than rent from a social platform. The shops that already run a good email list have a head start; Substack just gives that list a home with depth, discovery, and a community attached.

Use it to own conservation advocacy. This is where Substack separates from every other platform for AFFTA members. Instagram gives you a caption. Reddit gives you a thread. Substack gives you a publication. Legislative updates, science communication, policy analysis, river dispatches, and conservation content with real depth find a natural home on Substack, positioning your brand or shop as more than a vendor. It positions you as a stakeholder in the thing your customers love most.

Substack is not a replacement for Instagram or your email newsletter. It’s not where you post your sale announcements. It’s not a platform that rewards posting three times a day. The brands and shops that fail on Substack treat it like another broadcast channel, pushing content without any interest in the reader or the community.

Business fundamentals come first. Substack works when the commitment is genuine, and the content earns the read.

Reddit tells you what your customers think. Substack gives you a place to tell them what you believe. Used together, they form the kind of two-way relationship that social media promised and almost never delivered: authentic, durable, and built on something real.

The fly fishing community has always rewarded people, brands, and shops that show up with knowledge, integrity, and a genuine love for the resource. Substack is just the newest place to do that.