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Summer Sports
Small Sailboats Catch A Breeze NEW YORK - In the past two decades, a tiny Rhode Island company, Vanguard Sailboats, has become the pre-eminent builder of one-design racing dinghies--small boats whose speed and simple design have made them a favorite of racers and recreational sailors alike. Vanguard's Lasers and Finns might race in the Olympics, but the company's Sunfish is also one of the boats most likely to be helmed by weekend sailors. Vanguard was founded in Wisconsin in 1960, but its rise really began in 1986, when two entrepreneurs, Steve Clark and Chip Johns, bought the company and moved it to Rhode Island. At the time, they had four employees, built 16 boats a year and made about $200,000 in revenue. In 2002, Vanguard has roughly 100 employees and expects to sell 3,600 boats, bringing in sales of $14 million. In the past five years alone, the company's size has doubled.
But Vanguard was more than just a labor of love for two lifelong sailors. Trained as an engineer at Union College, Johns spent five years working at an anti-submarine warfare firm. Clark had already been building boats for several years when the pair purchased Vanguard, but Johns had ideas about how boats could be manufactured more efficiently. One key was the company's narrow focus. "Typically in the boat-builder world, builders would do everything just because they could," says Johns. "When we had things that we weren't necessarily trained to do, we farmed them out." Another important factor in the company's rise was consistency. One-design racing sailboats have to conform to very narrow design specifications so that one sailor doesn't have an unfair advantage over the other. The boats built at Vanguard vary in weight by only 1%. "The guys who are laminating the boats are the ones who control the weight," says Johns. "We weigh every single boat that we build and we track the weight in a database. The one-month and three-month plots of the weights gets printed out and distributed on the shop floor." One example: Vanguard built all of the 45 Finns used in the Barcelona Olympics. (The Finn is an Olympic sailboat Vanguard does not normally manufacture.) To make sure that different boats raced in exactly the same way, the Olympic Committee measured the moment of inertia on the boats. Johns says that the Finns they sent off to Barcelona were the most consistent Finn fleets ever used in Olympic competition.
The Sunfish is a familiar boat to many beachgoers, popular because it is relatively inexpensive (list price: $2,930) and easy to sail but sensitive enough to interest racers. Its isosceles triangle of a sail, usually striped with rainbow colors, is kept upright not only by mast and a sideways boom but also with a diagonal pole that helps give the sail its shape. If the Sunfish is dependable and versatile, the Laser (list price: $4,300) is a rocket. A high-performance boat used in collegiate and Olympic sailing, it is the sailboat reduced to its simplest form: A giant right triangle of a sail, a few lines of rope and pulleys, and a smooth fiberglass hull that actually lifts out of the water when a sailor catches a good gust of wind at the right angle. Tens of thousands of Lasers are in use in the U.S., and, as with other boats, Vanguard makes a chunk of its money selling replacement parts.
At the same time, they developed their own bright yellow plastic boat, a sleek design called the Pico, which made its debut in 1999 and retails for a list price of $2,500. "We expect it to grow significantly over the next few years," says Johns. The Pico's plastic hull is surprisingly durable: Unlike fiberglass boats, it can be dragged across the sand without seriously scratching the hull, making the boat slower. "People like their toys not to get scratched--and we build toys," says Johns. "We build fun products."
The Appellation Trail - 9/16/02 12:00:00 AM ET A Napa winegrower bets his fortune on new soil. Baseball: Blame the Owners - 9/16/02 12:00:00 AM ET They're the ones who took on too much debt. The Week Ahead: Sept. 2-6, 2002 - 8/31/02 12:00:00 PM ET Merrill's O'Neal addresses bankers; UAL's Creighton will hear from union; Halla reports National Semi numbers. The World's Best Whiskey Tours - 8/29/02 12:01:00 AM ET Whether you're a fan of single malt or sour mash, a visit to a distillery will give you a warm glow. Hires And Fires: Aug. 26-30, 2002 - 8/31/02 12:00:00 PM ET Bible retires from Philip Morris, Camilleri takes over; Beeth named Xerox pres; Dynegy mgmt realigned.
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