. . . survived another one . . . :-D
Posted on 09/07/2003 6:24:58 AM PDT by NewHampshireDuo
OLD TOWN — Thousands of brass tacks, hammered by hand, scatter light across the glossy, cedar-planked hull of a 17-foot canoe, cradled on sawhorses in the Old Town Canoe Co. wood shop. That's the way they've built canoes here for a century. Upstairs, workers install seats in 12-foot kayaks made from PolyLink3, a patented composite that sandwiches flotation foam between two layers of strong plastic. That's how modern boats are made.
The past and future intermingle here at Old Town Canoe, the country's largest canoe and kayak maker. This summer has been a time to reflect on that heritage, as the company and its 200 workers celebrate the production of the one-millionth boat and mark 100 years of incorporation.
But out of public view, the celebration has been marred by a series of challenges for this icon of the Maine outdoors.
Sales have been weak at Old Town Canoe. Technology upgrades initiated by its parent company, Johnson Outdoors Inc. of Racine, Wis., contributed to an inability to fill canoe orders on schedule. Old Town also has been trying to modernize in a multistory factory erected to make shoes during the 19th century, at a time when most manufacturers use efficient, single-level plants.
Industry trends aren't working in the company's favor, either. Canoe sales nationwide have been dropping for years. The sale of kayaks, which surged in the 1990s, are as flat as a lake at dawn.
Despite the troubles, Old Town Canoe was the most profitable division for Johnson Outdoors, and the corporation is taking steps now to regain that position. Management is talking with state and local officials about a new plant. They've cut the factory's too-high rate of producing canoes with imperfections that need to be sold at a discount. They're modernizing the firm's information-technology infrastructure, and making amends with dealers who couldn't get orders filled on time.
"To me it was like surgery you needed to have to make you well," said Bob Scudder, Old Town's marketing director. "But it was painful, and there were complications."
To succeed, Old Town Canoe must develop the product innovations and manufacturing efficiency to carry the company through another 100 years - which will likely mean moving to a new factory. At the same time, it needs to maintain the reputation it has nurtured over the past century.
Many locals know the story of how two entrepreneurs built a wood and canvas canoe behind an old hardware store here in 1898, modeling the craft on the birchbark canoes used by generations of Penobscot Indians. In 1910, the Old Town Canoe Co. churned out 3,500 boats, leading proud townspeople to call their community the Canoe Center of the World.
The company soon moved into a converted shoe factory overlooking the Penobscot River. Over time it expanded the canoe line and began making kayaks, which now outnumber canoes in terms of both production and revenue. It developed strong, lightweight polyethylene and fiberglass technologies that have all but replaced wood and canvas. It has cultivated a network of 900 dealers who sell Old Town boats worldwide.
In the process, Old Town canoes have become synonymous with recreational paddling and closely identified with the state of Maine. Think of them as the L.L. Bean boot of boats.
Today, the whole manufacturing process still takes place in the red, clapboard-sided shoe shop and adjacent additions. Touring the 200,000-square-foot factory, a visitor can see how history and contemporary enterprises take place side by side.
Less than 1 percent of Old Town canoes are made today from wood and canvas. But the company maintains the shop and skilled workers to handle an order for, say, a 16-foot Otca, a honey-colored, cedar-ribbed, hand-made paddle craft that will set a buyer back $4,000. Or maybe the shop will be called upon to repair someone's heirloom boat. Workers can consult the plant's records room, with its wooden boxes that hold customer order forms and work specs for wood and canvas canoes built since 1903.
"A lot of the old wooden boats are long gone," said Scudder, the marketing director. "But a lot are passed down from generation to generation."
At one corner of the shop, Scudder showed off the ceremonial millionth boat, an 18-foot Otca inverted on sawhorses, its cedar hull half finished. Every employee is taking a turn building the boat, which will be completed this spring and put on display.
The wood shop resembles a museum, with wood-and-metal molds and aging hulls stacked here and there. The building's worn wooden floor and ceiling joists, the steep wooden ramps that connect each floor, are relics of the industrial revolution.
But next to the wood shop, machines that look like metal submarines are spinning through the air. Inside these rotomolding machines are powdered plastic resins, released in phases and heated, to create modern canoes and kayaks. Roughly seven out of 10 boats produced today at Old Town are rotomolded, Scudder explained.
On this day, workers were making red, 11-foot kayaks for L.L. Bean. Along with the Dick's sporting goods chain, Bean is among Old Town's largest dealers. These Loon model kayaks are entry-level recreational boats and top sellers. They retail for around $550.
Upstairs, workers drag a heated sheet of Royalex, a laminate composed of ABS plastic, foam and vinyl, onto a vacuum forming machine. They lower a canoe-shaped mold over the sheet, while other workers trim away excess plastic from a boat that has already emerged from the vacuum mold. Light and strong, Royalex canoes sell for between $700 and $1,600.
On another level, a line of nine fiberglass canoes, shiny and green, rest on sawhorses as workers polish out the remaining imperfections in the gelcoat. These 12-foot Stillwater models will sell for $699.
Sometimes, imperfections - or blemishes - can't be fixed. These "blems" find their way to the Old Town store, a true factory outlet next door. The store is a mecca for paddling enthusiasts, who know they can find almost-perfect boats for roughly 20 percent below retail prices. Sales in April and late summer offer even greater bargains.
Blems may be good for customers, but not for Old Town. The company brought in a consultant to study the aging plant's manufacturing process. One result was improvements that have cut the blem rate to less than 4 percent a year. The previous rate was so high, Scudder said, that he declined to share the number.
Old Town has been searching for efficiencies in a national market where the number of people canoeing has fallen nearly 20 percent since 1987, according to SGMA International, the sporting goods manufacturers trade group. The number of kayakers, which rose a staggering 59 percent between 1987 and 2002, has also slowed, according to the trade group. Maybe it's just the stagnant economy, and sales will recover. But kayak makers worry that demand has peaked and there are too many boats in the market.
"It forces everyone to be a better businessperson," Scudder said.
That's clearly the message from Johnson Outdoors, Old Town's parent company. Old Town was purchased in 1974 by S.C. Johnson Wax, which created the division that today owns Old Town and a handful of familiar outdoor products including Eureka tents, Camp Trails backpacks and Minn Kota electric motors. Its watercraft division includes Necky and Dimension kayaks, Escape sailboats and Extrasport life preservers.
Johnson Outdoors took an important step last year to upgrade the software used across the corporation for inventory and materials management. But the multimillion-dollar effort became bogged down at Old Town, according to Patrick Donohue, an analyst at Northland Securities in Minneapolis. Donohue, who follows Johnson Outdoors and its publicly traded stock, said the corporation underestimated how hard it would be to make changes to the obsolete practices at Old Town.
In an annual report on Johnson Outdoors, Donohue noted that it took 10 weeks to ship canoe orders from Old Town in 2001. During this year, he flagged "systems integration and manufacturing hiccups" - specifically the software upgrade at Old Town - for causing "significant order disruptions with a material impact on the 2003 summer season sales."
This has hurt operating margins for the watercraft division, he said, noting that Old Town typically accounts for 35 percent of watercraft revenues and "the majority of profits."
But in a third-quarter review published in late July, Donohue said the watercraft division seemed to be rebounding. He noted that Old Town did lose some orders due to shipment delays, but that the company expects those dealers to stay loyal. Overall, Donohue said he's looking for strong performance in 2004.
Old Town now believes most of the software hang-ups and the resulting shipping problems are behind it, Scudder said. The company is building inventory this fall, and assuring dealers there won't be any supply problems next spring.
The future of Old Town Canoe is of special interest to Maine's new economic development director, Jack Cashman.
Cashman is a former city councilor and legislator who lives in Old Town. As a consultant, he has worked with the company on past expansions. And as a former aide to Gov. John Baldacci, he has spoken recently with company officials about their desire to build a modern manufacturing plant. There's no specific timetable, Cashman said, but he expects something to happen over the next five years, with the state and city playing a role.
"The state of Maine wants Old Town Canoe to stay in Maine," he said. "And the city wants them to stay in Old Town. We'll do what we need to do to make that happen."
Scudder acknowledged that any decisions are probably years away, and he said there's little chance of Old Town moving its manufacturing operations offshore. The biggest cost in canoe and kayak making is plastic resin and other materials, he said, not labor. And boats are heavy. Shipping expenses have so far kept the industry in North America.
But Old Town isn't ignoring the potential of overseas markets. Johnson Outdoors recently opened a distribution center in France, to take advantage of sales growth in Europe. Sales through the center were 3 percent of total revenue through June, according to Patrick Donohue, who expects it to grow to 10 percent by 2005.
Closer to home, Old Town is refining products based on demographics research. Surveys show its primary customers live in northern states, are 40 or older and have higher-than-average educations and incomes. While 70 percent of canoe buyers are men, kayak sales are equally split between men and women. Old Town does make some sport kayaks, but its target market is recreational paddlers and light tourers, not adrenaline junkies.
"You won't see a lot of people going over waterfalls or down Class 5 rivers in Old Town boats," he said.
Recreational buyers are becoming more sophisticated, however. And like car owners, they seek greater levels of comfort and utility. Old Town is trying to anticipate those demands.
For example: Conventional deck hatches on kayaks feature a stretchy rubber cover that's difficult to fasten, especially with cold, wet hands. Old Town is introducing the Space Hatch, a hinged cover with a water-tight cam lock.
Another idea: Fisherman and hunters have discovered kayaks as a way to access shallow, protected coves and streams. The Predator series has a roomy cockpit and features including rod holders, an anchor system, a drink holder and work deck with mesh pockets.
Despite today's growing pains, Scudder said, Old Town is fortunate. It has had the same corporate owner for 30 years, one that appears committed to making investments to keep the company competitive. Ten years from now, he predicted, Old Town Canoe will be in a modern production facility using the latest manufacturing and development techniques.
"I am convinced," Scudder said, "that we will still be the market leader."
And they're trying to be all things to all men - the rotomolded kayaks are made by what's really an antithetical process to the highly skilled labor of love required to make a handcrafted old-fashioned canoe.
My family does whitewater and sea kayaking. The boats Old Town is making are "recreational kayaks" i.e. compromise boats - not fast enough for flat water and not maneuverable enough for whitewater. The Loon in particular is a very frustrating boat - slow and wallowy. I spent one August afternoon as a swimming lifeguard paddling the Loon - just about wore myself out.
We sold our canoe (a plain vanilla 17' Mohawk) because in tidal water it was a nightmare - especially with the winds in coastal waters. We have two Altos - a rotomolded low freeboard sea kayak made by Wilderness Systems - and other than being unable to give a ride to the Labrador we haven't missed it a bit.
Very true. When I was a kid at summer camp we used the wood-and-canvas canoes on the lake only - for running rivers we used the old Grumman tin cans. Hit a rock, you just hammered out the dent . . . if you REALLY hit a rock you riveted a patch on with a tar-like substance underneath.
There's a rock on the Nantahala known as "Delebar's Rock" for a guy who painstakingly built a beautiful handmade wooden canoe and promptly wrapped it around this large midstream rock. He salvaged the remains and spent months repairing it, then when he ran the Nanty the next time . . . yes, you guessed it, he wrapped it around the SAME D&*N ROCK.
I love my little whitewater kayak (Dagger Outlaw) because I can actually stop midriver and back ferry side to side (while thinking, "Heck, no, I don't want to run THAT hole!" and looking for a good line.)
. . . survived another one . . . :-D
This time last year, the Tuck was so low that you had to get out and drag your boat at the riffles above Train Wreck Rapid. No riffles at all this year, they were under water.
Problem is, while some rapids get very exciting (the hole at Railroad Rapid was big enough to bury your boat - you look around while you're in the hole and all you can see is WATER higher than your head) others wash out completely. Usually there are huge standing waves at Moon Shot and Surfing Rapid, but the channel widens out with the high water, so the waves were just little 8-10" troughs. There wasn't even a good place to surf at Surfing (there's a rock shelf river left that ordinarily makes a beautiful recurving wave that you can surf on forever or until you get tired . . . it was completely under water, nothing but a ripple.)
Here are a couple of websites - I'm not sure where you are located, but we drive up from Atlanta to Northeastern Georgia and Western North Carolina for most of our kayaking. You CAN do it in a day trip, although it's a very long day.
Tuckasegee Outfitters rents duckies and rafts and tubes for the Tuck Gorge. I believe they are closed for the season after Labor Day, though. Blue Ridge Outfitters is their competition on the other side of the river.
The Nantahala Outdoor Center has probably the best instruction program, if you're looking to learn to kayak in a serious way. (You don't have to paddle the Nanty, they give regular instruction on the Tuck and other NC rivers).
If you want to do things on the absolute cheap, the best deal we've found is the Georgia Canoe Association. Once we joined (and dues are quite reasonable - $25 bucks a year) we were able to sign up for various kayak courses in the summer at rock bottom rates (the instructors donate their time to the club, the fee just covers expenses.) Of course they do canoe instruction as well (there's considerable friendly rivalry between the canoe and kayak contingents.)
If you don't live near GA, I'm sure there's a local canoe/kayak club in your area with a similar setup.
Good luck, and happy paddling!
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