Family affair | The founders of Echo Rowing build on their father's legacy of cutting-edge rowing-shell design
Instead, their father, Arthur Martin, took them out in newfangled fiberglass kayaks he designed and built himself. It was the early 1950s, when the only kayaks most people had seen were those paddled by Inuit in photographs in National Geographic. "It was pretty radical, if you can believe that," Lorna says. "Nobody kayaked in those days."
Those first kayak designs, which Doug and Lorna watched their father carve out of Styrofoam in their living room, were the precursors to what eventually would become the Alden Ocean Shell, a boat that would change forever the idea that rowing was a sport reserved for the students of elite, ivy-covered universities. Until then, rowing shells were made of wood and designed for the flat water of rivers or lakes; the Alden was fiberglass and capable of handling the choppy conditions of coastal and open waters. Martin went on to found Martin Marine in Kittery in 1971, and is largely credited with creating the recreational rowing industry in the United States, an industry today worth $398 million, according to a 2004 national survey by The Rower's Almanac, a Bethesda, Md.-based trade publication.
Now Martin's children are in the business. In 2003, Doug and Lorna, along with Ted Perry, Lorna's husband, founded Echo Rowing in Eliot, with the hope of taking over where their father, who died in 1990, left off. Doug, who has designed and built boats and shells for the past 30 years, is regarded as an innovative designer who already has influenced the rowing world with his oar and shell designs. Ted, 62, is experienced in fiberglass boat manufacturing, and owns East/West Custom Boats in Eliot, which was Martin Marine's sole manufacturer of the Alden Ocean Shell for almost 20 years, building more than 10,000 of the boats in the 1980s and 1990s. Lorna is a lifelong rower who, after their father died and Martin Marine was sold out of the family in 1993, saw a need in the market for the innovative boats Doug wanted to design. "I really had a strong feeling that there was a great opportunity to build a new company," Lorna says.
Echo Rowing designs and builds ocean shells that are direct descendents of those famous Alden shells. Last year, Echo sold roughly 200 shells. That may not sound like much — and compared to the 900 shells Martin Marine sold a year during parts of the 1980s, it's not — but these days it's a good number, says Karen Solem Derringer, the founder and publisher of The Rower's Almanac. And with the Echo priced at about $3,500, Derringer says the company's revenues are likely approaching the $1 million mark. (Echo would not disclose its revenue figures).
Lorna says the company sells more boats every year, and hopes this year will see a new sales mark. While the company continues to try to broaden its reach in Canada and the United States through its network of 23 independent dealers, Echo is also attempting to expand its presence overseas. Echo recently inked a deal with a company in Australia that will manufacture, market and sell the Echo in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, and a German company also has approached Echo about manufacturing the shells in Europe. "If we do end up having boats made in Germany, I can see the whole European market opening up," Ted says.
"A boat the market needs"
Like Martin Marine, Echo Rowing was built on the strength of a single boat: the Echo.
Doug, 63, worked for his father's company from 1985 until 1993, when it the company was sold out of the family. He continued on a contractual basis with the two subsequent owners of the business, which was renamed Alden Ocean Shells. But he had never really had the freedom to take his time and design a boat that he wanted to. "For 30 years I'd been designing our boats and seeing things I wanted to improve," Doug says.
He began experimenting on the side with a new design for a rowing shell. Ted gave him space at East/West, and Doug began rapidly churning out designs and rough models — "quick and dirty" as Doug calls them. "This is the benefit of Styrofoam," Doug says. "You carve it, put glass around it and start modifying it."
After a year and a half, Doug had designed what his mother named the Echo. It was lightweight boat, but sturdy in rough water. It included a first-of-its-kind folding rigger system that makes the boat easier to store and carry. "When we saw what he was designing, we thought, 'This is a boat the market needs,'" Ted says. "And we weren't about to sell that to Alden at the time."
East/West needed the business. Ed Jarvis, who bought Alden Ocean Shells in 1999, moved the company to Massachusetts in 2003 and its manufacturing to Canada. At the time, the Alden boats constituted 65% of East/West's business. So when Jarvis moved manufacturing to Canada, East/West had a big hole to fill. "When you take 400 to 500 boats off your plate for the year, it's quite a hit," Ted says. "We're trying to get that back with Echo."
East/West originally marketed the boat at the Maine Boatbuilders Show in 2003 as the Echo by East/West, Ted says. Then they learned the boat was making waves in the rowing community, which hadn't seen a shell quite like the Echo before. "The design is unique," Will Baillieu, a former Olympic rower for Australia, and one of the men who plans to bring the Echo to the South Pacific, writes in an e-mail. "It does not look like other boats because it has not been adapted for open water. It has been designed from scratch by a quiet genius in Doug Martin."
Maine today, tomorrow the world
But innovative design alone won't make a successful business. The rowing shell business has grown increasingly competitive over the past several years, and designers can always come out with a sleeker-looking or supposedly faster shell.
Ted says the goal when they founded Echo Rowing was to have five or six different boat designs to offer customers. He says they hope to reach that goal in two to three years. There's already talk of boats Doug will begin designing once the Ace is finished. Ted says one might be designed for two people, and another could be a lightweight model designed for women — a particularly fast-growing segment of the rowing market.
Then there's overseas growth. Hoping to launch an open-water rowing business in Australia, Will Baillieu and Vic Kibby arrived at East/West to check out another boat Ted makes, but it wasn't suitable for open-water rowing. However, while they were there they saw the Echo. "So I took them out rowing and the rest is history," Lorna says.
Baillieu and Kibby, who founded Open Water Australia, a company based in Melbourne, struck a deal with Echo. Baillieu and Kibby will pay the company a royalty of six percent of the retail price for every boat they sell, according to Ted. The pair brought boats and molds back to Melbourne just before Christmas. They expect to begin manufacturing the boats — in Melbourne and then probably in the Philippines — in about two months. They hope to sell 25 Echos in Australia the first year. "Pretty modest aims, but we aim to double that each year for a few years," Baillieu says. "We would be happy to sell 100 boats a year in Australia."
While flat-water rowing is popular in Australia, open-water rowing is almost unheard of, Baillieu says. But it's a continent surrounded by open water, so Baillieu and Kibby hope to create a market for the Echo, as well as two other open-water boats they plan to begin manufacturing. "There is no shortage of rowers — we just need the right boats," Baillieu says.
Europe is another market that Echo hopes to tap in the next year. In February, Echo was contacted by German company BBG — "one of the top builders in the world of racing shells," Ted says. If BBG likes what it sees, BBG may begin manufacturing the Echo over there, which Lorna says would be a boon for Echo Rowing.
Introducing new boats and inking overseas manufacturing deals all will help Echo Rowing remain competitive in the increasingly competitive rowing shell business. "There is a lot more competition out there right now," Derringer says.
Lorna admits that Echo is up against some major players, including Alden Ocean Shells, the company their father founded in 1971. One benefit of the deal with Open Water Australia — though Lorna cringes when she says it — is that Echo will have a foot in the door if the competition ever gets so fierce they have to transfer some manufacturing overseas. "I'd hate for the only way to stay in business is to have to build boats in the Philippines," Lorna says. "Our customers have a great deal of respect for a boat built in Maine by a family company, and I'd hate to lose that."
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