>>>>Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 04:31:48 -0700 From: "Matt Broze" <mailto:mkayaks_at_oz.net> mkayaks_at_oz.net <big snip> It is hard to do much kayak testing at the greatest chance to do so (a symposium) __if you are one half of your companies work force__ and you are already seriously overworked hauling around and demoing your own kayaks to potential customers. <<<< Matt -- So all those Mariner kayaks I've seen (I'm a Seattle-area guy) are made by only two people?!?!?! If so, that would appear to speak highly for your quality control (owners generally having a higher vested interest than regular employees). Or did you mean you have only two "management" employees, plus a bunch of others who do the fiberglassing, etc.? Evan Dallas Woodinville Washington *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
Evan Dallas asked: >>>>>>Matt -- So all those Mariner kayaks I've seen (I'm a Seattle-area guy) are made by only two people?!?!?! If so, that would appear to speak highly for your quality control (owners generally having a higher vested interest than regular employees). Or did you mean you have only two "management" employees, plus a bunch of others who do the fiberglassing, etc.?<<<<< We have only two employees, Cam and I. During the late 1970's I supervised about 25 to 30 people for Early Winter's production department. Cam did all the art work and lay-out of their catalog. Early Winters tried him out as a copywriter (he is a far more talented writer than I) but all he could do was parody the catalog. "The Winterlight tent, named for the one season for which it is unsuitable" (or something close to that) was one sentence that he wrote during his tryout. I think he was too honest to want to write ad copy he didn't believe himself. But I digress, my point was that while I think I was a very good supervisor for someone else (I think I might be too demanding when it is my own dollars at risk and being wasted). Supervising is not something I really want to do again. It is often easier to do the work yourself just the way you want it done than it is to train and then supervise someone else (not to mention become an unpaid bookkeeper for the taxman when you hire any employees--what happened to the 14th amendment forbidding involuntary servitude). Philosophically I would rather encourage some one to take responsibility for their own life and employment so would rather deal with an individual who is an independent contractor with their own business than ride heard on employees, which can become a full time job itself. We have only had two hired employees during the entire 24 years we have been making kayaks and they were pretty short term. Both were excellent employees and expert kayakers (I think Craig was the first person to paddle the entire outside coast between Seattle and Glacier Bay) but the longest either employee worked in our store was for about for nine months during the busiest times of the nineties sea kayak boom. We started out in 1980/1981 doing all the designing and building ourselves (from the plug to the molds to the kayak and all the parts we couldn't buy off the shelf) but soon we contracted with John Abbenhouse (later he expanded and renamed his business Northwest Kayaks) to build the hulls and decks (with the vacuum bag process) at first in his garage. We then transported the separate hulls and decks to our garage (to be seamed together by us), and then to our basement (to be finished by us--right down to bending the aluminum strap into a figure four for the foot pedals at first). Over time we contracted out those jobs that professionals could do better (like making foot braces) and more efficiently than ourselves. We have always done the critical (to being straight and centered) seat installation and finishing work on the kayaks we sold ourselves. I wrote " kayak we sold ourselves" in the last sentence because there was a period during the 1980's when NW Kayaks expanded greatly and sold our designs to dealers around the country (outside of WA and OR) and paid us a royalty for those sales. For several reasons, including quality control issues (with the wholesale kayaks we never saw) hurting our reputation, and the delay in being able to serve our own customers in a timely manner (because our molds were also being used for building kayaks for NWK's wholesale customers) we ended that arrangement and therefore quit competing against our own designs (being sold by others) and risking our reputation for a relatively small royalty return. In 1987 we opened a retail store near the water in Kirkland and in 1991 we moved it (with our own car and minivan) to a better location in Seattle near NWOC where we have stayed ever since. Once we had to keep regular shopkeeper's hours because of the store we no longer had the time to seam the hulls and decks together so we contracted with NW Kayaks to also do that particularly odious part of the building process. We contracted with others to make the basic seat and coaming parts (although for a long time I still glassed the sliding seats and seat plates together and glassed in all the coaming and hatch rims after Cam prepped them and made sure they were installed straight and even to his artists eye). Several years ago we lost our workshop and warehouse space (that had been right above NWOC) to yuppification and since them all fiberglass work must be contracted out to others. Tom Wilkinson, of Wilkinson Boat/Seaworthy Kayaks built our seats and small glass parts for years and later installed hatch rims when we lost our workshop space. For the last several years we have contracted with one individual to build all the glass work on our kayaks. Noy Palatvov is a perfectionist and takes great pride in his work. He set up his workshop in Sultan, WA. He does a better job of building the fiberglass parts of our kayaks than we could do ourselves, Where seconds had become a major problem for us due mostly I think to expansion and high turnover at NWK (we wouldn't ship seconds so we would have to make another kayak for a distant customer and sell the cosmetic second at a discount in our store where storage space is now very limited) now cosmetic flaws are practically non-existent and this makes my life much less stressful. We have watched many companies we bought items from grow from one person operations to having many employees and in every case I can think of, quality went seriously downhill and screw-ups magnified as those companies got expanded and took on employees. It is kind of funny because when we started we put out a very professional looking brochure because we wanted to appear big and established rather than like we were, just a couple of guys building kayaks in their garage and basement. now that we are well established (and have seen the dangers having too many employees) we would rather it be known that we are a very small company but also very experienced. One other advantage of remaining small is that we have never had to go into debt. we watched Early Winter's die under a crushing load of a debt they had acquired by expanding rapidly (they were the thirty fifth fastest growing company in America according to Inc. magazine, but they had no control over the interest rate they paid because it was tied to the prime interest rate during a rapid inflation). As I have done from the start, I still install every sliding seat and foot brace system. Cam still installs the deck rigging and fixed seats and backrests in all our kayaks. I created (with some help at first) and keep up our website. Now we do all the advertising, answering the phone and talking to potential customers (I hesitate to call it selling--today I told a guy how he could modify his used Sprite to solve its broaching tendency so he wouldn't need to buy a new kayak from us). We think if you do your best for the customers, even if it might cost a sale in the short run, in the long run treating the customer like you would like to be treated will actually pay better. We do all the finishing (seats deck lines etc) and arranging for (and packaging for) shipping. I also do all the buying for the store. We do all the bookkeeping and accounting for the business as well. We used to have an accountant go over our books at the start of the year but she would be chronically late getting the books done by tax time and often made errors we had to catch at the last minute anyway so we even started doing our corporate taxes ourselves because we could get it done earlier and plan our estimated tax payments better. We also wholesaled several items to other dealers until just recently. Items such as pumps (we had the gray Beckson pump modified for use by kayakers) and our paddlefloats, and other items we designed like tapered dry sacks, sea kayak sized float bags, clear urethane watertight chart cases etc. but in the interests of having more free time we ended all of our wholesale operations a few months ago. Some folks ask us why we don't give kayaking lessons or why we don't rent kayaks. Hey man, give me a break! We are happy to suggest several places where customers can go to get those needs met. The kayak business has been down the last few years, especially in the economically hard hit Seattle area (Think Boeing, 911, and the dot com bust). We are not worried about this, we are relieved (except we worry about keeping Noy profitable so he can keep building kayak hulls for us). I was able to take several multi-week vacations during the last few years, that's been a treat. Matt Broze www.marinerkayaks.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
Hey Matt, I still have a few Early Winters products around the house, including the sushi boxes. About the only one I still pack, though, is the candle lantern. I always enjoyed reading the catalog, and I think I might still have one or two of those squirreled away, too. I was sorry to see the company go under. Chuck Holst *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
[Moderator's Note: Content unaltered. Excessive quoting (including headers/footers/sig lines/extraneous text from previous posts, etc.) have been removed. Please edit quoted material in addition to removing header/trailers when replying to posts.] I knew a lot of the story already, but it is always interesting to read the history in a "nutshell" so to speak... Kirby S Coastal Waters Recreation www.CoastalWatersRec.com <http://www.CoastalWatersRec.com> Every trip, a new adventure! -----Original Message----- From: Matt Broze Subject: Re:[Paddlewise] Mariner kayaks Evan Dallas asked: >>>>>>Matt -- So all those Mariner kayaks I've seen (I'm a Seattle-area guy) are made by only two people?!?!?! We have only two employees, Cam and I. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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