However, I have never had a fish look at me over the cash register! Most of time spent is about the consumer, not the fish.
I sell very few baits or jigs and use most of what I make as hand-outs or I put them to use personally. I've asked this question of a lot of pretty decent anglers throughout Minnesota and a few in Wisconsin and Iowa and South Dakota during casual conversation and almost unanimously they say color over detail.
A good friend that makes some serious detail finished jigs belongs to a walleye club as well as a bass club with the goal of selling to other members. Those members will take free samples all day long but when it comes to orders they want nothing but simple single-color jigs. He's super frustrated to say the least. Years ago, I did sell to a couple bait shops, one of which ordered several thousand jigs at a time and all but four colors were the usual black, white, purple, fluor. orange, hot yellow, hot pink, chartreuse and blue. The other 4 were glitter colors either in black powder paint or transparent powder paint. Those four colors I had registered under my trademark and were nothing fancy but sold as single-color heads along with the others. Those 8 colors were pretty much industry stand colors. Today with laser and transfer technology applied to the tackle making industry some beautifully realistic baits are available to anyone. Air brushers have become masters at duplication not only of some of the trick patterns but in realism when compared to actual fish. They spend a tremendous amount of time honing skills and talents to do what they do and I envy those talents. But still, when it comes down to catching fish on a personal level, customers out of the equation, I do best with baits using a color or a combination of colors, rather than detail.
When I sold jigs in those two tackle shops, I sold based on the colors I mentioned. Period. Bags of ten of one color and one size. Everything was standardized. When customers began contacting me directly wanting other than what the store had I got out of the trade. It doesn't take long in dealing with the anglers at a personal level to find out how big of idiots they can be. Anyone selling tackle over the internet today has my admiration but I won't deal with that element any more. I'm a panfisherman first, walleye second and Lake Superior caster third. I make a lot of panfish related tackle and carry a ton of it when I am fishing. When I see an angler struggling to catch fish, I'll happily give him/her a few plastics that are working for me along with a couple the appropriate jigs and maybe even one of my custom-made floats and show them how to rig everything so they too are in on the action. I don't take a cent for any of it. I'd rather see them introduced to fishing bait free and watch them succeed. In the end this benefits everyone. By keeping it simple and focused on simple colors it makes accomplishing this easy.