Now, you wouldn’t think you would run into a lot of savvy entrepreneurs by spending the summer in the woods near the sea, Down East in Maine http://bit.ly/cDc9AD. Not in the little towns, or in the boatyard from which we sail. But here is just such a microcosm of small business and committed entrepreneurs, and with a surprising twist of humanity to it. Here is the first in a series of stories.
Our full-service boatyard on Somes Sound on Mt. Desert Island is a family-owned business, started in the 1970s, John Williams Boat Company (www.jwboatco.com). It is not a marina with amenities for cruising folks; it is a working boatyard, where they build boats and service boats. The company has a wonderful tag line which speaks to the boatyard itself and to the working culture in Maine: “No Corporate Culture. No Dealer Incentives. No Focus Groups. Just Boats.”
Now, we have been in deep recession for a couple of years now. There are fewer sailing vessels to be seen out on a lovely afternoon. And the business of building beautiful, custom built boats, like Williams’ own “picnic boat” the Stanley 38 http://bit.ly/9G4tUB is limited these days until we see a significant recovery.
So, the fancy marinas on other parts of the Island have laid off a great deal of their workforce, beginning a couple of years back. Sales are down, visitors to the marinas are down, and tourism is down.
But Williams has kept its entire workforce year-round without a single layoff these past seasons. In the winter, when custom boats are built, the workers are kept busy building the elegant, classic Down East rowing boats called “Peapods.”
“I sure am lucky I got settled in at Williams some years back,” one of the workers told us. “Those other folks who got laid off the marinas—there’s nowhere for them to go to work on boats. And other building trades are down, too.”
Another told us, “We hear there is some hiring again, back at the marinas, but the offers are at a lower wage than the guy was getting when they fired him, and with lost benefits – like starting again at the bottom, just to get work, after years building up your seniority and such. Sure feel bad for those guys.”
The folks at Williams are working boat builders – craftsmen with special skills. They are warm and welcoming to us when we return each year, sharing stories and tricks of the trade with my husband. It isn’t that we feel like prized customers, but more like part of the team, focused on knowing everything that is useful about boats. Williams Boats’ loyal customers for boat services are keeping the crew busy this season.
I must assume that Mr. Williams took some kind of financial hit by keeping his entire crew working through the past two years of recession. But he did keep them, when other places did not. Maybe it was his loyalty to his workers. Maybe it was his realization of what it would mean to them in this economy, and to their identities as master craftsmen. Or, maybe it was his wisdom of how economies can shift in all directions over the long decades of his business, and his understanding of the value of his special crew. Whatever the explanation, he is a highly admired man in our part of the world.
