Small Business Project: One fishing sinker to rule them all (when surfcasting)

Monday, 9 March 2026

DaCinka was born when Zane Nicholson (pictured) was lured into a better way of surfcasting with an innovation originally devised by Dave Lenden.

The Small Business Project is a weekly series that shines the spotlight on Kiwi small businesses doing interesting and unusual things in their industries.

Surfcasting, or fishing from the foreshore by casting a line with bait and a sinker a long distance into the water, was long a passion of Zane Nicholson. Several years ago he happened to come across one-armed fellow fisherman Dave Lenden, nickname “Captain Hook”, who Nicholson could see had devised an innovative sinker that contained bait within a cavity, which is slowly released into the water as the biodegradable tape holding it in dissolves.

Without perhaps realising the enormity of the task ahead, Nicholson and partner Jo Lukic, who had never started a business prior, formed a company with Lenden to commercialise the lure. It is now sold in fishing stores across New Zealand and a few in Australia, and sent around the world from the DaCinka website.

What has the business set out to achieve?

Zane: It’s really about people having a more enjoyable fishing experience. As soon as I saw what Dave had, I knew it was something special. He’d been working on it for years. Because he had one arm he needed something that was easier to cast. We worked with two engineers for six months on turning his prototype, which was was metal, into something usable and not too expensive to make. We ended up with a product that gives us everything we want on there.

Jo: Zane’s brain does not stop. He’s always saying to me ‘I’ve just had an idea’. Sometimes I say ‘Can we not do ideas tonight, can we just relax?’ But he’s always thinking of different ways of doing things better and more effectively.

So when he came home with this idea, and was so excited about it, I thought ‘let’s do it’ and I have absolute, 100% confidence in the product, because we work really, really hard every day, both of us in different ways, to make sure that the business works.

Zane: It’s a cliche, but we just don’t give up. I swear though, I would 100% have never been able to get this business of the ground without Jo.

Where have you got to with commercialising and selling the product?

Jo: We’ve worked for three years with a mentor, and I said to him recently, ‘do you remember when my biggest problem was how to create a website?’ It’s interesting to think that was our biggest issue then, and now, the website’s fine, but we have so many other, bigger things to worry about!

Zane Nicholson and his partner Jo Lukic work together as directors of the company - and have strict rules about keeping personal conversations and “executive” conversations separate.

We’re now selling the product around the world through the website ‒ some massive orders to the States, where people love drone fishing. Also to the Netherlands, and fielding enquiries from South Africa ‒ and we’re also in just under 60 stores in New Zealand and four in Australia. We’re working with an exclusive distributor in Melbourne, and that is a real learning curve, both in terms of working with an exclusive distributor but also just in Australia, which is a completely different market. But we’re chipping away at it.

How much time and money have you invested?

Jo: I feel like we have put our lawyer’s children through private education!

Zane: Our bank balance would probably not be bad if we did not have to pay lawyers, even though they are excellent at what they do. The thing is that if you don’t do the lawyer thing, and don’t make sure you have protection for your intellectual property, a big company would never want to come in and buy you out, for example, because without protection, there’s nothing there.

Luckily Jo’s parents helped us out through the development phase, because for three years we did not sell anything and it was just money going out.

Jo: We still don’t earn a wage from the business. When you are a new business, to me it doesn’t make sees to take dividends out, you need to keep capital in it. But all our stock is paid for, we don’t have debt on that side of things. We now need to build up the sales and getting into the US and Australia will be the thing, and then we may also need to look at manufacturing the product outside New Zealand, maybe in Vietnam, although we’d love to keep all our very supportive local business relationships.

But we’ve only been in market for just over two years, so we are still, really, a baby company.

What’s the biggest challenge your business is facing?

Zane: The cost of a regular sinker is about $6, ours are $24.95. But ours reflect the development and level of manufacturing required, and the performance is so much better. Many fishermen are pretty stuck in their ways in how they fish. So it’s a matter of convincing people that they can have a much better flycasting experience with our sinker. It’s really getting it into people’s hands.

Getting feedback can also be a bit of a challenge. We do get some really nice feedback ‒ and when it is from someone who flycasts a lot, it means so much. But fishermen in general rarely talk, they just fish. So it can be hard to get them to say anything!

What’s one thing you wish you’d known before starting the business?

Jo: I think it does go back to the legal costs that were involved in protecting a product. We never realised what it cost. If we’d known prior to starting, we may not have done things the same ‒ we might have planned a bit more or waited and not rushed some of the patents and legal stuff ‒ but it is all learning. It’s helped shape how we run the business now.

Zane: We have some great business meetings in the garage. I get to play CEO so I can sit in the chair.

Jo: We have a whiteboard in our garage, which is where DaCinka headquarters is I suppose, and have ‘whiteboard meetings’. Zane sits back with a cigarette and a coffee, and I stand at the whiteboard with the pen, and we write down a list with everything we need to do, and our ideas. Being in a relationship as well as a business relationship, the lines get blurred ‒ so an executive conversation sometimes becomes a personal conversation and then you don’t talk for an hour, because you don’t agree.

So we have rules printed up in big font on the wall in the garage and in the office, and we try and work by them and stick to them, to make sure when we’re keeping to business.

Overall, it can be stressful, but we do try and have fun!

If you would like your business to feature in The Small Business Project, email Aimee Shaw at aimee.shaw@stuff.co.nz