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Many of Indiana's boat-building companies are independent and decades-old. Several started in other businesses before entering boat building in the 1950s or 1960s, when boat manufacturing presented great growth opportunities. Indiana's boat-building: companies tend to be family-owned and-operated, and their success can be attributed in part to staying within the boat market niches in which they started.
"We have some old, established boat companies in Indiana," says Pete Gillon, sales manager at Harris-Kayot in Fort Wayne. "The niches have always been there--they didn't have to go after a niche. They stayed in a niche and perfected a niche."
Indiana's independent pleasure-boat builders include Harris-Kayot, Godfrey Marine in Elkhart, GW Invader in Tipton, Rinker Boat in Syracuse, Smoker Craft/Sylvan in New Paris and Thunderbird in Decatur.
The Indiana company that builds the largest boats is Thunderbird Products. It builds cruisers up to 36 feet long, as well as the speedy off-shore performance boats commonly known as "cigarette boats," says Vic Porter, chairman and chief executive officer.
Porter was a fiberglass pioneer, founding Duo Inc. In 1958 in Decatur to build runabouts. Starcraft acquired Duo in 1966 and Porter stayed on for a time. He eventually founded Signa Corp. in 1970 to build trihull boats in Decatur, the seat of Adams County, south of Fort Wayne. Three years later, Duo was sold to Fuqua Industries, an Atlanta-based conglomerate.
Fuqua hired Porter to be president of its entire small-boat division, and in 1976, Porter bought Thunderbird, including the Formula product line, from Fuqua. Now, Thunderbird builds cruisers and performance boats at its 5-year-old plant in Decatur.
Since the late 1950s, fiberglass has replaced wood as the material used for building runabouts, the relatively small boats used for pulling water-skiers, cruisers and yachts. Runabouts and mid-sized-cruisers are manufactured by Rinker Boat Co. in Syracuse, a family-owned company founded in 1945 in Noblesville. Originally a builder of wooden boats, Rinker made the move into fiberglass about 1960, says general manager Kim Slocum.
Later, the Rinker family moved the company to the Lake Wawasee resort area in northern Kosciusko County. From its location in Syracuse, Rinker Boat can test its smaller boats on nearby inland lakes, and its larger watercraft on Lake Michigan or Lake Erie.
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