Island Coast Boat Works News-Press Article, Cape Coral, Florida

Boat Fiberglass Repair - Warranty & Insurance Repair - Custom Fabrication - Cape Coral, Southwest Florida

"We do work for some of the world's largest boat manufacturers, let us do work for you."


News from Island Coast Boat Works

Doing Business Above Deck The News-Press, February 16, 2002 By BETSY CLAYTON

Boat show place to renew contacts

MIAMI BEACH -- The business Richard Straus started with one partner and no workers three years ago has flourished into a company 24 employees strong.
The surge -- and an increase in annual sales from $430,000 in the first year to more than $1.5 million in 2001 -- is not enough to satisfy Strauss, a 41-year-old Matlacha entrepreneur whose business is Cape Coral-based Island Coast Boat Works.
So Strauss every February grabs partner David Ort or marketing director Bob Wellman and heads to the Miami International Boat Show, the world's largest marine show with 2.5 million square feet of space and 2,300 exhibitors from 50 states and 75 countries.
Then he stands in line to meet and mingle with top dogs from the nation's major boat manufacturers. He wears no VIP badge, has no special admission time and schedules few formal appointments.
He stands in line with the millionaire boat buyers and the middle-income daydreamers to check out the market's newest boats. Instead of visualizing how he'd look at the wheel, he visualizes how Island Coast Boat Works would look doing business with the makers of the boats.
Then he presses his hand into the hand of an executive and tells the leader how Island Coast Boat Works should be part of the boat builder's vision too.
"You can never stop selling your business," Strauss said. "The minute you stop selling is when you lose."
Unlike high-powered CEOs or presidents of larger companies, Strauss has to do the selling himself. No golf games in Coral Gables while a second-in-command staffer presses the flesh at the boat show. No Saturdays off from the show, which will swell with 145,000 attendees by the time it finishes its annual six-day run.
Strauss does it himself to get business for the company, which specializes in fiberglass repair, structural mending, repowering and prototype construction.
Island Coast Boat Works contracts with manufacturers to do warranty work, and it also does jobs for insurance companies to fix boats.
International Business
Strauss thinks bigger than the region he calls home, even though one in every 10 Lee County residents owns a boat and boat registration in Lee, collier and Charlotte counties equals an armada of 75,000 vessels.
Sixty percent to 90 percent of the company's business is drawn from out of county and out of state. The company works on boats from Maine to Puerto Rico and from Caribbean nations to other foreign countries.
Businesses such as his are the ones economic development staffers crow about.
"When you bring in money from outside the area, that's how you create prosperity," said Joyce Ryan, strategic business development coordinator for the Cape Coral Economic Development Office. "It's money coming into your community that can be used for jobs, for growth of the business here, for things that pump up the local economy."
When Strauss and partner Ort started Island Coast Boat Works, they garnered little interest from economic development types. Their business was mistaken for being a small-employer, cottage-industry-stype repair center for Southwest Florida's weekend warrior boaters.
But Strauss had 19 years experience in the marine industry, having worked for manufacturers such as SeaRay and Regal Marine. Ort, who shares the title of owner/vice president with Strauss had background as a cost analyst with Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and a numbers-crunching job with Marine Concepts.
The combination of an extroverted marine industries go-getter with a computer-and-number-savvy businessman worked immediately.
"Within the first four months we had to buy a bigger compressor to run the tools. Within the first six months we had to get a larger Dumpster. Within eight months, we had no space for our employees to park in the parking lot." said Strauss, who first anchored the business in central Cape coral until moving into the North Cape Industrial Park where the company in 2000 bought a 14,000-square-foot building.
"Our intention is to outgrow it." said Strauss, who rarely fumbles for words to visualize the future.
"Or," added Wellman, the marketing director who's worked 21 years in marine industries, "to have a satellite operation."
Translation: There is no reason to rest.
Strauss and Wellman headed to Miami on Wednesday and were walking the traditional red carpets between sport-fishing boats and cruisers by 10 a.m. Thursday, the opening day of the Miami International Boat Show. They repeated the routine Friday. Strauss expected to go back again today.
Strauss and Wellman had contacted 14 builders before the opening, and as they weaved around boat shoppers along football-field length aisles, they unfolded their printed out "to do" list, which spelled out contact names and booth numbers.
Drop-in is the name of the game at the Miami show, where big deals are done between business people who never wear suits and ties and instead sport khaki slacks and short-sleeved shirts. Boat show concessionaires serve Budweiser by 10 a.m. a handshake and a straight look in th eeye mean more here than a signed contract.
The marine industry still does business the way business used to be done.
That's fine with Strauss. It's friendly.
"My friends in the industry have helped me to open doors," he said. As he walks an aisle, he greets people by first name with high-fives and tight handshakes. "I can be standing there talking to someone I've known 20 years and can meet a new person who has maybe something they need done that we can do."
Plenty of boats in the sea
With more than 385 boat manufacturers in the United States, there's no way to know everybody.
Strauss and Wellman introduce themselves.
The boat manufacturers are there to be met.
"It's a very productive place to make contacts." said Thom Dammrich, president of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, the Chicago-based organization that sponsors the show. "People are busy there. They're accessible but busy."
Strauss is willing to wait in line. He may be high-powered in his vision but he understands Florida is a place to enjoy life without a three-piece suit. At the Cape plant, a yellow Labrador retriever greets customers in the office. A boat Strauss designed and built but didn't finish yet -- following an entrepreneurial dream - sits out back, behind the warehouse of boats being repaired and rebuilt.
Finishing that will come later.
Now it's time to drum up business.
Last year his workers seamed up a 12-foot gash in a 50-foot cruiser that hit a reef in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Photos of the finished product make the motorboat look like new, its fiberglass gleaming smoother than the Gulf of Mexico on a dead-calm day.
He's proud of the work. He knows Island Coast Boat Works can do more like it.
His steady voice and smile are convincing.
Two hours into the Miami show's first day, he and Wellman had stopped at eight manufacturers' booths and already secured one job and a potential job.
"I may be dragging a boat with me across the state Saturday," he said. "Another manufacturer has a customer waiting for work that can't be done until april. We're going to talk mid-week, send someone out for an estimate, make a bid and hopefully get the job."
Then he unfolded the printed list of potential show contacts, ganced at it, tucked it in pocket of his khakis and pressed ahead toward the next manufacturer's display.