Rusting hammers and crunching pliers, metal sticks everywhere. A bunch of rudimentary pieces of machinery and a grinder to sharpen edges. And smoke, a lot of it, dust scattered all around. Tangled fishing lines hanged on the walls. Water lapping on the bank in the front, as people gather on the porch to purchase fishing hooks in the small, bustling port of Poyang, China. Quite an accurate portrait of the tiny workshop overlooking the river where the 16-year-old boy of the Zhan family manufactured BKK’s first hook in 1856.

It was this boy though who first penned our story. It took five generations to turn a small workshop into an organized production laboratory, and one more to make it evolve into a modern large-scale production plant, equipped with some of the most advanced machinery in the industry. We have perfected the art of hook manufacturing over the decades, through six generations of farsighted members of the Zhan family.

It was commercial hooks at the beginning, supporting the local fishermen in their everyday quest to feed their families. It soon turned into manufacturing recreational fishing hooks and transitioned into the modern era, as hand-made was replaced by machinery.