At Rig’Em Right, our story doesn’t start in a boardroom. It starts in the dark, in the cold, long before sunrise—where gear either works, or it doesn’t.
For over fifteen years before founding the company, Matthew Cagle was doing what most serious waterfowlers do: buying gear, testing it, and breaking it. And over time, he started to notice something. There were very few companies that truly understood what it felt like to be out there at 5 a.m.—frozen fingers, failing equipment, and no margin for error. Too much of the gear on the market looked good on a shelf but fell apart in the field.
Matthew didn’t come from a deeply rooted hunting family. His father worked constantly and wasn’t involved in the outdoors. Hunting came from his grandfather, but those opportunities were few and far between. When Matthew did get out, his gear was whatever he could piece together—often inadequate, always frustrating.
He remembers using an old duffel bag instead of a blind bag. Bread bags over his feet to try to stay dry. Zippers that froze. Straps that snapped. Designs that didn’t make sense. And instead of accepting it, he started paying attention. Every failure, every flaw—he logged it mentally.
That mindset stayed with him.
By his early thirties, while working a sales job that gave him time in the field, Matthew had spent years thinking about how gear should work. He had bigger ideas at first—early concepts for trail cameras that could send images to your phone, even before that was a reality. But like many ideas, they required capital he didn’t have.
So he looked at what he could build.
At his hunting club, he had been making simple decoy rigs and anchors—nothing flashy, just practical solutions that worked. Other hunters noticed. They wanted them. And that was the opening.
Matthew started building rigs by hand in his garage in North Carolina, selling them locally. No investors. No big plan. Just a hunter solving problems he understood firsthand.
The turning point came at a Ducks Unlimited Expo in Wisconsin. Matthew showed up with about a hundred handmade rig packs. He spent the day demonstrating them—showing how they didn’t tangle, how they worked in real conditions. By the end of the day, they were gone.
Sold out.
That momentum carried forward quickly. Retailers picked them up. Then came a meeting with Cabela’s, where Matthew committed to producing thousands of units—before he had the infrastructure to do it. It was a leap. One he figured out on the fly, building relationships and scaling production as demand grew.
That was nearly twenty years ago.
Today, Rig’Em Right offers a full lineup of gear—decoy systems, blind bags, packs, dog gear, apparel, and more. But the way we build hasn’t changed.
We’ve never operated off a traditional business plan. Instead, every product comes from one of two places: a real problem Matthew encountered in the field, or something hunters repeatedly asked for. Nothing gets added for the sake of filling a catalog. If it doesn’t serve a purpose, it doesn’t make the cut.
Our design philosophy is simple: eliminate what doesn’t matter, and refine what does. No unnecessary features. No gimmicks. Just gear that performs when it counts.
Everything we make is field-tested—often for a full season or more. If it doesn’t hold up, it doesn’t ship. That commitment has meant delaying products, reworking designs, and sometimes shelving ideas entirely until they meet the standard.
Behind the scenes, we’re still a small team—eight people based in a coastal North Carolina town. It’s hands-on. It’s personal. Matthew’s wife has been part of the operation from day one and still jumps in wherever needed, from logistics to loading shipments. This isn’t a distant, corporate machine. It’s a group of people who care deeply about what they’re building.
And it extends beyond products.
Matthew has always believed the future of hunting depends on the next generation. Getting kids outside. Teaching them patience, awareness, and respect for the outdoors—without the distractions that pull them away from the experience. That belief continues to shape how we show up in the community, from supporting youth programs to staying engaged in conservation efforts.
Because at the end of the day, Rig’Em Right was never just about gear.
It’s about building equipment that hunters can rely on—because we’ve been in those same conditions ourselves. It’s about solving real problems, not creating artificial ones. And it’s about staying true to the mindset that started it all:
If it doesn’t work in the field, it doesn’t matter.
That’s who we are. That’s how we got here. And it’s how we’ll keep building—one product at a time.
