Folbot's new owners see chance to grow sales

An established manufacturer, fed up with congestion in the Northeast, packs up and moves to Charleston at the quiet invitation of local economic development officials.

"It was a worthwhile industrial prospect," said Phil Cotton, chief designer at the company.

But the courting of this business preceded by decades the cut-throat, cross-border pursuit of U.S. manufacturing jobs that's now commonplace between states.

It was the early 1950s when Charleston officials first approached Folbot Inc., then a New York company. Over the past 74 years, Folbot has built a loyal international following with its line of portable folding kayaks.

Now, the manufacturer known for its customer service is embarking on the next leg of a curious excursion that took it from a base camp in Western Europe to its longtime adopted home in North Charleston's Stark Industrial Park, just off Azalea Drive.

Folbot came under new ownership in September when David R. AvRutick, now president, and Tony Mark, chairman, purchased it from Cotton, who in the 1980s acquired it from the family of its late founder.

"David's got the creative side; I've got the spreadsheet side," said Mark, a Charleston native and recently retired technology executive.

The new owners are testing the waters as they work to promote the privately held Folbot brand to a broader base of prospective new customers. Their short-term goal, at a minimum, is to double sales, which AvRutick described as having a case of "inertia" in recent years.

The Pace Street business is a lean operation, not to mention a throwback in an age of automated machines and mass production. With a staff of about 15, it still produces each aluminum-frame kayak by hand, including most of the parts, as individual orders come in through the Web or over the telephone. Folbot bills itself as the longest continually operating maker of folding, or collapsible, kayaks in the world.

Yet despite its longevity, Folbot remains a little-known entity in Charleston. Even AvRutick was unaware of it until he read about the company a few years ago, sparking his interest in buying the manufacturer.

"Wow," said AvRutick, recalling his response to the magazine article. "A kayak company in Charleston. How cool is that?"

Skin and bones

It's cool enough that he and Mark approached the owner. Cotton, as it turned out, had been thinking about lining up a friendly buyer for Folbot for several years. A designer at heart, he wanted to focus on the technical aspects of kayakmaking and leave the sales and financial minutiae to others.

The buyers agreed to that. AvRutick and Mark said they would not have bought the business without Cotton agreeing to stay on as full-time chief designer.

"There is an unbelievable amount of science behind all this," AvRutick said.

The industry's original "scientist" was Hans Klepper, a Bavarian widely credited with introducing portable, collapsible kayaks to the public in 1902. Previously, the vessels were used mostly by hard-core hunters and navigators.

Flotbot founder Jakob Kissner, another German, took his folding-kayak business to London in 1931. Two years later, seeking to tap into the burgeoning U.S. market, he moved it to Long Island City, N.Y. Some 20 years later, Charleston economic development officials came calling and persuaded Kissner to move south to what is now Stark Industrial Park, where the company still is based.

"We were too congested there," Kissner said of New York in a local newspaper the year of the move. "We didn't have room to breathe."

Kissner died in 1982, and his family sold the company the following year to Cotton, a former textile plant manager who majored in product design at North Carolina State University.

Now, with Cotton focused on creating new lines, it falls to AvRutick and Mark to tend to the business side at Folbot. Since finalizing the acquisition, they have removed unused machinery from their small plant to free up space. They also have beefed up their employee benefit plan to keep their workers motivated.

Looking ahead, AvRutick sees just one way to increase production and profitability, and cost-cutting is not an option.

"We're an efficient company already," he said last week. "Our growth is going to come from new sales."

The market on the demand side appears to be ripe for the picking, according to the Outdoor Industry Association, a Boulder, Colo.-based trade group. It noted in a recent report that recreational kayaking is an increasingly popular activity in North America, with sales up a robust 15 percent last year over 2005.

But it's also an industry dominated by so-called hard-shell boats. The custom-order folding "skin-and-bone" variety that Folbot makes is a distinctly niche product, making it tougher to sell to a mass audience.

Shifting course

Mark and AvRutick see room to navigate in these waters. They already have an enviable head-start in the word-of-mouth department, thanks to Folbot's longstanding attention to customer service and its liberal lifetime kayak warranty.

Dave Haus of Minneapolis is among the believers. Haus, who with wife Gelina has been kayaking for about a decade, said when he first learned about Folbot and its direct-sales approach, he was "a little leery of the whole folding-boat idea and not a big fan of buying something sight unseen."

A self-described "research king," Haus came across the online "Folbot User's Forum" frequented by the company's customers. He found them to be "a great bunch of folks who took the time to talk with me about my concerns and answer my questions."

"But the thing that really impressed me was that they universally sang the praises of Folbot's quality and commitment to customer service," Haus said. "Not something you hear very often about companies today."

The new owners said they won't tinker with the company's customer service but will make changes in other areas. They include a new targeted advertising campaign, though details have not been finalized, and fewer end-of-season discounts.

Another key strategy for bringing more recruits into the Folbot tent is to roll out a new model, probably in time for the company's 75th anniversary, that will be priced at less than $1,000. The idea is to lure a new generation of first-time buyers who otherwise would buy a conventional kayak. AvRutick noted it will compete with new hard-shell models, which can easily run from $600 to $800.

"When you consider a roof rack, you're getting closer to the $1,000 mark," he said.

Folbot also hopes to snare more business from overseas customers, who now make up about a quarter of its sales, to keep its production line humming year-round. Specifically, it is looking to make deeper inroads into key kayaking markets including Australia, Chile and New Zealand, where the seasons are reversed compared with countries north of the equator.

Meanwhile, another important sales target is urban areas with big populations of space-starved apartment and condominium dwellers. New York City, not far from Folbot's original U.S. home, is one example. AvRutick noted that 11 access points for kayakers are being added in the Big Apple's waterways.

"That begs the question: Where are people going to keep their boats?" he said. "It's kind of tough to get a 17-foot kayak on the subway."

Reach John McDermott at 937-5572 or jmcdermott@postandcourier.com.