I will attempt to offer some clarity here though it is a bit complicated. Gary Loomis started G.Loomis in the early 1980's and quickly emerged as a leading innovator in carbon blank fabrication with many "firststs" attributed to him. He was not renowned as a taper designer and it was only after Steve Rajeff, even then the World Casting Champion joined the company in the mid 80's that G.Loomis begin to develop a reputation as a top fly rod brand. Steve's first project was post IM6, IMX then on to seminal GLX one of the best and most influential rods ever.
Their success attracted Shimano USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent Japanese giant. Around this time Gary Loomis developed a serious illness and his very survival was in dobut so mutual intereset intersected and the company was sold to Shimano. G.Loomis, left to function independently by Shimano who wisely supplied only financial and other business input but less wisely packaged Loomis together with Shimano products through a commercial rep agency, continued, under Rajeff, to design and fabricate some of the absolute best performing rods in the world and still do.
Meanwhile, Gary Loomis recovered from cancer and, barred by sales agreement from branding fishing products under his name for a set period of years, eventually started North Fork Composites, a blank building enterprise. He primarily sold product to costom makers but also did contract and consulting projects. Finally his agreement with Shimano ended permiting him to re-establish his name and, after having thought about it for years, introduced EDGE. First as casting and spinning rods but last January at Somerset, introduced a limited line of fly rods. I wrote about them in my Somerset Report after the show and have been fishing the smallest, an 8 1/2'/#4 through this past season. A fast action, $895 beautiful rod, it casts great. Its blank is fabricated by NFC but is unique to the EDGE line of rods and, to my awareness, is not available as a blank. Loomis has been a consultant to TFO regarding their conventional tackle and, now with EDGE, TFO is the exclusive distributor for the EDGE line of rods. New models are slowly proliferating and when the line-up is fleshed out, I imagine TFO will include them on their website and make a marketing push for these born mature premium rods.
Under Gear Reviews, I published a review of*the 4-weight with an image if you wish to read a more detailed evaluation of EDGE.
