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Vermont
Business People |
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Two
If By Sea |
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by
Sean Toussiant |
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Managing Editor |
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Steve Kaulback and David Rosen combine a quality product with the romance of the
Adirondacks at their guide boat company in Charlotte.
They are complimentary business partners,
with one acting like the screws that hold a boat together and the other like the varnish
that draws in the wandering eye. |
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At the Adirondack Guideboat Company in
Charlotte, Kaulback is the designer, spending untold hours crafting wooden and Kevlar
guideboats to the point that he says he rarely has a chance to take his creations out on
the water. Rosen is the salesman, visiting boat shows and introducing people to the beauty
and the uniqueness of the Adirondack guideboat. |
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Rosen tells a story of the first time he set
out for a boat show shortly after investing the Adirondack Guideboat Company in 1995. As
he loaded a single rack of track-lights into the back of his station wagon, Kaulback inquired what he intended to
do with them. “I’m going to use them to light up the boats,” Rosen
replied. This was a new thought to Kaulback – dubbed a perfectionist by coworkers
– who said he usually found the darkest place at a show to hide any imperfections
or dust on his boats. |
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“These are interesting boats with a long history behind them," says Rosen,
over the din and clatter of tools in the production area.
“It’s now just a case of doing more than we’ve been doing." |
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Originating in the mid-19th
century by hunters and sporting guides in the Adirondacks, the guideboat varies from other
paddled and rowed boats by riding lower in the water and allowing occupants to sit lower
in the boat, giving them more stability and making the boat less susceptible to wind.
Among other refinements, Kaulback’s contribution to the design of the guideboat is
the curve of the bow, making them faster and more stable. One of Kaulback’s wooden
boats has won hundreds of races, some of them out in the open ocean. Also, the boat
has set course records which will not likely be replaced anytime soon. |
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Kaulback has been designed guideboats for more than 20 years and has built a
reputation of being one of the most accomplished boat builders in the country. Such
outdoor enthusiasts as National Public Radio’s Willem Lange and Professional
BoatBuilder’s Brooks Townes own Kaulback guideboats. Kaulback’s boats win
high praise for design and attention to detail. |
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But Kaulback is not done honing his designs. The company is
experimenting with a sliding seat in their 12’ Kevlar composite pack
boat (46 lbs) which will create a new pre-sculling trainer for children.
The company also manufactures a pack boat with a stationary seat, a 15’
Kevlar guideboat (68 lbs) and wooden boats ranging from 13’ to 19’ in
length, the 15 footer weighing 70 lbs. |
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Peter Barton, co-owner of Blue Mountain
Outfitters in Lake Placid, NY, said he has two of Steve’s guideboats in his shop
– one for sale, one for rent. |
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“I just had a couple in here who were
undecided on what they wanted to try out,” Barton says. “They tried a canoe and
a two-person kayak and then we showed them the guideboat. So many people want to get out
on the lake that it’s nice to have another option; and they’re more affordable
now that they come in glass and Kevlar.” |
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When Kaulback started his business, he dealt
strictly with wood, enraptured by the design and lure of the 19th century
guideboat. “I realized that if I wanted any depth to my operation, I needed to start
selling fiberglass boats,” Kaulback says. He then moved to a Kevlar composite –
one of the latest boat building technologies and the fabric used in bulletproof vests.
Kevlar has proved popular with women, children and the elderly because of its light weight
and durability. |
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Kevlar boats sell for about $4,000 and have a production schedule of 8
days; wooden boats take 25 days to build and cost about $12,000. With
those kinds of prices, Rosen admits, their wooden boats have a rarified
clientele. “The single largest bunch of our wooden boat customers are
from the investment community. Then lawyers, doctors, architects, folks
in aviation and a smattering of everything else. We've also got quite a
few writers who own our boats." (Alas, this writer is not one of them.) |
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The company has a few dealers but mostly they sell their boats
direct. Kaulback says, “We
can’t build as many as we ourselves sell, why go looking for trouble?” |
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Rosen and Kaulback visit boat shows as far
away as Chicago, Miami and they are planning a trip to open up the California market at
the end of the summer. While the shows are confidence builders, they also reveal a point
of frustration, because at these shows they are discovering more and more of a market,
which they can’t yet accommodate. “In
terms of production, we need to move to larger facilities”
Rosen says. The company is currently in negotiations for a larger, consolidated
manufacturing facility. |
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Kaulback and
Rosen flirted with taking in investment money but then backed away from the
idea. “We had no skill in that area,” Rosen says.
“We were used to dealing with the financial community as customers, not as investors. We
don’t know how to think that way.
One of the things we learned through that experience was that there wasn't
the excess profit that investors look for. None of the big companies want to
build these boats, they know there's no money there." |
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Rosen and Kaulback are adamant about not
wavering from their niche, a lesson Kaulback says he learned from working in the canoe
market with a former company |
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A graduate of the Pratt Institute in New York
City with a concentration in fine arts, Kaulback moved to Vermont in the late 60’s,
which he fondly refers to as part of the “back to the earth” movement. His first
full-time job was as a foreman for Vermont Furniture in the Maltex building on Pine Street
in Burlington. “I came out of collage and wanted to work with my hands,”
Kaulback says. He carries lessons from that supervisory position with him today, handing
out tips – not orders – to his employees. |
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While wooden boats exude a romance of a
different time, Kevlar boats have proved more popular, mostly due to their
greater affordability. When building the molded boats they start by spraying a mold release on a fiberglass mold and
laying in sheets of Kevlar and fiberglass. Then they pick a color pigment with which to
tint the resin and begin building the boat. As they go, Kevlar is added in strategic
places to give particular strength in precise locations. When the resin hardens, workers
paint the interior of the boat, add wooden cleats and then pop the boat out of the mold.
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Because of the limited room at the shop, a
steel industrial building on U.S. 7, the hulls are then transported to a leased workshop
up the road where woodworkers fasten the trim and ship them back to the boatshop for
varnish and finishing touches. As Rosen says, “You don’t have to look far to
find where our inefficiencies lie.” |
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Behind a door bearing a sticker which a
picture of a woman in a boat reads a caption which says, “A woman’s place is on
the water,” Mona Tatro and Mike Graves churn out Kevlar boats. “It’s not
every day you hear someone say he’s a boatbuilder,” Graves says. |
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“I like building boats,” Tatro
says. “I also repair canoes on the side, but it’s not the same as building a
guideboat.” |
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Wooden boats are built at a third location,
in a 5-car garage behind Kaulback’s home in Ferrisburg. The building process in more
involved, more expensive and requires far more labor than do the Kevlar boats. Cedar
strips no more than an inch wide and a quarter of an inch thick are screwed into each of
the 13, or so, ribs that run perpendicular to the bottom board of the boat. In addition to
the screws, epoxy resin is used to attach each of the 50 strips to adjacent strips.
Matching strips on both sides of the boat are then symmetrically arranged by grain and
color. Finally, the boat is sealed inside and out with resin, and on the outside with a
covering of transparent fiberglass. |
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Despite the need for skilled labor, Kaulback
and Rosen say they have had no trouble hiring employees to build their boats. “We ran
an ad for administrative help and got no responses, but we have waiting lists to people
who want to build boats. There is something emotional about building a boat,” Rosen
says. |
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“Retaining the full crew of
12 through
the winter was a challenge,” Rosen admits, “but the sales kept coming and we
squeaked through.” The company ships their boats, (and kits for their wooden boats,)
as far away as San Diego, Texas and Alaska. Many of their winter customers prefer not
taking delivery until the weather warms and they again have the urge to get out on the
water. “We’ll deliver their boats to them whenever they want, but when we stop
building the boat, that’s when we’ve got to get paid.” |
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At the beginning of May, when I visited their
shop, boats filled racks in front and behind their shop and overflowed into two
tractor-trailers they use for storage. |
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Kaulback saw his first wooden guideboat while
working at the Cold Hollow Cider Mill, where, he says proudly, he was “Mister
Apple.” It wasn’t until his second boat that he felt comfortable enough to take
them to one of the premier shows in the country, the one put on by WoodenBoat Magazine in
Newport, RI. “I didn’t feel
as if my craftsmanship was there yet, so there wasn’t any reason for me to go
bragging about it.” He sold two boats at that show. |
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From there, Kaulback moved into a little shop
in Waterbury Center but wasn’t set up six months before the landlords decided they
wanted to move and ended his lease. With his shop closed and the last boat sold, Kaulback
set out for New York to make what he thought would be his final delivery.
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“I remember driving down, thinking this
was my last hurrah,” Kaulback recalls. “Then
I stopped in Lake George and wound up selling a boat. What I got back in the car, I
thought, “I couldn’t leave this job even if I wanted to; it’s where my
talent lies.” |
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Kaulback’s next shop was more-or-less a
storage room on Battery Street that was so small he had to open the door to cut long
boards. Moving to downtown Burlington gave him exposure and he joined up with a few
acquaintances to start Rainbow Boat Works. That was when he started making composite
boats. |
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The company moved to a building on the
waterfront and then to the Rossignol Ski building in Williston. Rainbow Boat Works
branched out from guideboats and concentrated mostly in canoes, a market which was
difficult to break into with competing companies like Mad River and Old Town, Kaulback
says. |
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The
company disbanded. Kaulback reclaimed his tools and molds from the joint
venture and went into the house remodeling business. He soon moved into
a building on Ferry Road in Charlotte, where he made and sold composite
and wooden boats. “It was a struggle, but after all of the time I’d put
into it, I started gaining something of a reputation,” Kaulback says. |
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Then, in 1995, his
future partner walked through the door, “and it dawned on me,” Kaulback
recalls, “as a one-person shop, there was a limit to how far I could go.
Especially on the business side of the business. I guess I’ve always been
more of a builder than an office person.” |
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That may be why he and
Rosen make so good a team. Sitting in a cramped office with piles of
promotional material and pictures of the company’s boats, Rosen spends much
of his time at the computer, bookkeeping and dealing with the firm’s web
traffic, before heading out to further spread the word about Adirondack
guideboats. |
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A former Green Beret, after leaving the Army,
Rosen went to college on the GI Bill and went up to the dissertation phase of a PhD in
Sociology at the City University of New York. Then he too went to the country to work with
his hands. He and his ex later developed a gourmet line of children’s sweaters based
in Middlebury. Rosen says he picked up the tricks of selling after setting up their booth
and wandering through craft shows with his infant son on his back. |
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Rosen also had a woodworking shop of his own.
The shop burned to the ground and, while watching it burn, Rosen didn’t know whether
or not the building was insured. Soon he found himself at the Adirondack Guideboat shop
with an insurance check in his pocket. |
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Rosen, 55, and Kaulback,
54, admit that most of their time is spent building and promoting their product – an
effort that seems to be paying off. They’ve had their boats at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art and the National Marine Manufacturer’s Association has extended a
blanket invitation for them to bring their boats to any of their shows, thus far
they’ve taken them to the New York National Boat Show and their shows
in Atlanta, Miami Boat, Norwalk and Chicago. The routine at
these shows is a ffamiliar one,
Steve builds ‘em, Dave sells ‘em.
Back home, there are 12
men and women building better boats. Stay tuned. |