Our Gen4 Journey

All Gen4 mats are now made in China.  I get it. “Made in China” can carry some baggage. So rather than avoid the subject, I want to tell you exactly how we got here.

Toward the end of 2024, we reached a point where we simply couldn’t make enough gear ourselves to keep up with demand.  We considered building more molds and increasing our crew but the bottleneck isn’t with people it’s with cure time which can take up to 4 hours with casted products.  An injection molded product was the only solution but the equipment costs are way out of reach.

So, we investigated outsourcing production.  We spent months talking with U.S. manufacturers, but the cost, lead times and production methods just didn’t work. In fact, all of them ultimately recommended their own manufacturing partners in Asia.

Around that time, a longtime friend introduced me to David, who helps small companies like ours find and manage manufacturing partners in Asia. I was interested—but only if we could improve the product. Saving money while sacrificing quality was never an option.

So, we tested it.

We sent some Gen3 mats overseas as the benchmark and evaluated silicone from four of David’s suppliers. We then paid for independent accelerated UV and saltwater testing equivalent to roughly two years of exposure.

The results surprised me: all four materials tested better than the silicone we were using in Gen3.

That process also led us to discovering a smoother, less tacky silicone surface—something I had wanted to achieve for years. We moved on to prototypes and discovered another advantage: precision injection molding produced significantly better durability and detail than our casting process ever could.

Then came the test that mattered most. Mason and I put the prototypes through months of field testing and sent others to guides who use our gear hard. The feedback was unanimous.

That became Gen4.

There was another benefit we hadn't anticipated. Manufacturing in Asia made it much easier to serve international markets, particularly Australia, our second-largest market. We now have an Australian distributor who can get SFC products to anglers faster and at a much more reasonable cost.

Would I love to put “Made in the USA” on every SFC product? Absolutely. But I'm not willing to do it simply for the label if it means charging you substantially more for a product I believe isn't as good.

Yes, Gen4 is made in China. But the design, testing, patent, standards and responsibility for every product still belong to us.

And most importantly, Gen4 is a better mat because of it.

For Mason and me, this also means spending less time manufacturing and more time doing what started SFC in the first place—developing better products for you.

If you buy a Gen4 mat, I know you’re getting the best product we’ve ever made. And that's a decision we can stand behind.

Mark & Mason