Orin Edson - From Runabouts to Megayachts by Marianne Scott       Orin Edson, who founded his boat-building company in 1961, bought the "Bayliner" name from Al Koffel, who'd been supplying his brokerage with plywood boats. The price for the now famous brand? One hundred dollars.       A quarter century and hundreds of thousands of Bayliners later (43,000 in 1986 alone), Edson sold his company to the Brunswick Corporation for cash and stock totaling $470 million. The 25 years he spent building the largest yacht manufacturing firm in the world are a monument to entrepreneurial spirit, hard work and the conviction that fun on the water should be available to everyone.       I met Edson (Mr. Edson to everyone around him) at his Pacific Marine Management offices at the Arlington Airport in Washington. His office runs along one side of an immaculately maintained hangar, located just a couple of blocks from where he built his first Bayliner plant. The hangar contains the Dassault Falcon three-engine jet in which he flew himself from Arizona the night before. A couple of gleaming helicopters, handy for landing on his 161-foot, Bill Garden/Don Starkey-designed yacht, Evviva, flank the jet. His office is spacious, with colorful carpeting, red leather couches and contemporary office furniture. Edson himself looks younger than his 71 years and works hard at keeping in shape - in part to keep up his airplane pilot rating. He's an imposing man, self-contained, used to being in charge, and he gives the impression that to be on the wrong side of him would be decidedly uncomfortable. Childhood on the Water       Edson grew up on the water. Born in Bellingham in 1932 during the Depression, he played on the family rowboat on Lake Whatcom until age nine, when his father, an engineer, began working for the firm that built Sandpoint Naval Station during World War II. The family moved to Seattle and a 30-foot cruiser became part of family recreation on Lake Washington. "We didn't drive the car so we could save our gas coupons for the boat," Edson reminisces about that gas-rationing era. He soon wanted a boat of his own, got a paper route to save up for it and bought a 12-foot molded plywood boat. Toward the end of the war, he managed to obtain a five-horsepower Johnson outboard through his uncle who ran a cannery and was eligible to purchase commercial engines. By age 13, the future entrepreneur was speeding around in his runabout, exploring every nook of Lake Washington.       After high school, Edson enrolled in the University of Washington's electrical engineering program, completing three years before the Korean War intervened. "I was either going to Korea to get shot at or doing something else in the military," he recalls. He joined the army and entered the Signal Corps, the branch responsible for communications and information systems supporting the combined armed forces. He served in the Alaska Communications System and spent three years in the service.       Back in Seattle for his last year of duty, he worked nights, using the daylight hours for boat racing, a hobby in which he'd invested time and money. But when he decided to get married, he needed the money he'd invested in his race boats. "My brother referred me to a fellow on East Lake Avenue who had a parking lot," says Edson. "The owner sold roofing kettles used to heat tar for roof repairs. I answered his phone while he was on the roofs and he didn't charge me for using his parking lot. I put six or seven boats in the lot and sold them all in a week." A Born Boat Salesman       Edson's friends noticed the swift sales and asked if he would sell some of their boats too. Thus the empire was launched. By 1958, Edson had bought property on East Lake Avenue, built a showroom and embarked on a retail boat business. He first focused on selling used boats, but soon obtained dealerships for several brands of new powerboats, including Glasspar, Owens, Reinell, Sea Ray and Dorset. He also marketed wooden boats like Sabrecraft. One day, he bought a trailer load of plywood runabouts with the brand name "Bayliner." He liked their quality so much he drove to Tacoma to meet the fellow who built them. That's how he found Al Koffel (an approximate spelling of his name) who, working in tandem with his brother, was fast enough to complete one unpainted plywood boat a day. Edson promised Al he would buy all the boats Bayliner could crank out.       Along with the boats, Edson frequently sold outboard engines, selling so many that Mercury made him a dealer. He grew into one of the biggest outboard retailers in the country and struck up a friendship with Mercury's founder, Carl Kiekhaefer. But the new fiberglass boat business grew ever more daunting. "We'd get a line selling well and then the builder would put in more dealers all around us. It was tough to hold margins against the competition." Somehow, Edson had to find a new, reliable supply of boats. He knew of a small company building fiberglass boats and drove up to Marysville to visit with Pacific Mariner's Al McKay, who ran the manufacturing side of the company.       Edson vividly recalls the auspicious meeting: "I remember sitting down with Al and his wife Bonnie in their kitchen. I asked him how hard it would be for me to get into the boat building business. He said it wouldn't be hard at all. I'd need a place and a plan, so we decided right there at his kitchen table we'd build a 16-foot outboard and a 19-foot stern drive." Edson rented a hangar from the City of Arlington. Al promised to get the molds done in 90-100 days and by mid-June, 1961, the first Bayliners rolled off the assembly line. Obtaining the Bayliner Name       In the meantime, Edson had asked "the other Al" if the Bayliner name might be available. Edson smoothes back his thinning hair while recounting the response. "Al told me, 'well, plywood boats are getting harder to sell and I'd just as soon sell houses. So would $100 be too much for the name?' And I said, 'No, that's all right.' He had the brand all properly registered with the federal and state registries. So, for a hundred bucks I got the name and a long association with a very nice man."       Edson had intended to only build boats - primarily family cruising and ski boats - for his retail boat stores, now numbering three. But as he met the other top Mercury outboard dealers at their annual convention, he learned they were having the same boat supply problems. His colleagues asked him if he had any "extra" boats he could send their way, so he increased production. Ron Balmank of Bal Marine in Tacoma became the first other local dealer and Bob File in Wenatchee turned into a successful eastern Washington trader.       For the next five years, Bayliner stretched its assembly-line plants in Arlington, until the need to service the eastern Mercury dealer network with boats led Edson to open a manufacturing facility in Pipestone, Minnesota. Growing pains accompanied the expansion and Edson knew he needed more help. Dissatisfied with the sluggishness of the com-pany's financials - and knowing their critical importance - he hired Don Saunders to manage the company's finances. "It was," says Edson, "a good start of a long and close relationship with a wonderful man."       Edson was doing Bayliner's marketing himself and "not doing a very good job of it because I was just too busy." So he eventually enticed a fellow skier and friend, Slim Sommerville, to leave Howard Head's ski business and take over marketing. "When he joined us, Bayliner really took off because Slim is probably the best sales person in the world," Edson says enthusiastically. "He could actually sell more than we could manufacture. So we expanded again and built another factory in Georgia."       As Edson loathed commercial airliners, he learned to fly at age 26 and has flown his own aircraft ever since. Using a Beach Baron, a small twin-engine airplane, he and Slim traveled the country, landing on small local airports and putting on their "dog-and-pony show" at two or three dealerships a day. By 1968, Bayliner had about 100 dealers in the U.S. and Canada.       Beginning in 1974, the firm also built sailboats. Yes. Sailboats. "It was after the oil embargo drove up the cost of fuel. Our competitors called them the 'tilted Hilton,' grins Edson. "It was called the 'Buccaneer,' a roomy 24-foot sailboat. We made several models and it sold well through our powerboat dealers. We also bought some tooling rights for boats out of eastern Canada and called them 'US Yachts.' That was a very poor business. No way to make any money. We'd have a promotion on a sailboat and people would say, 'when I retire I'll come back.' You do the same sort of promotion on a powerboat and you'd sell 200 of 'em. So we returned to power and by the mid-seventies we were building 6,000-7,000 boats a year, with sizes ranging from 17 to 30 feet." The Incentive Plan       The boat business is a fickle one and in 1978, between economics and stiff competition, Bayliner was faced with shutting down or slowing production at the Minnesota plant. Loath to lose a well-trained, motivated workforce, Edson, Somerville, Saunders, head of production Ron Cooley and Dave Livingston (a designer who'd worked for Reinell), cooked up a plan to increase efficiency and competitiveness. What, the team wondered, would a customer pay for 19-foot stern-drive boat? They determined that for a turn-key boat complete with trailer, the magic number was $8,995 - a price roughly equivalent to the cost of a Chevy. Like Henry Ford and his model T, they wanted to make boating available and affordable to the average-income family.       To test their theory, Edson and Slim flew their new plane, a Cessna, around the continent visiting dealers. To participate in the promotion, a dealer had to order at least 20 boats - roughly 30 of them did. Edson gambled and ordered materials for 1,000 boats. Then the production folks made sure every inch of material, from floorboards to woven roving, came in the right size to eliminate waste. They produced as much in-house as possible, assembling their own windshields and doing their own upholstering.       The next step was the close collaboration with the Pipestone employees. They were promised that if they reduced the standard 48 hours it took to build a boat, the company and workers would share the savings equally. Ditto for material savings. And if the boat required no repairs during its warranty period, the warranty reserve would be shared as well. "Thus," explains Edson, "they participated in both the profitability and the quality.       "It was tremendous. The hourly savings were immediate and the workers saw the results in their next paycheck. They made a lot of money and so did we. We'd figured these boats would have low profit margins but they turned into some of the best margin products in our line. We were working hard but I like to work and so that wasn't a problem. We obviously had to expand our production." Over the next three years, Bayliner opened another four factories, each building a specific boat or group of boats and all employing the same winning incentive plan.       Edson also paid particular attention to his dealership network. Keeping in mind how his early boat suppliers had crowded the field with other dealers, he made sure Bayliner dealers had room to maneuver. His philosophy is clear. "Consumers like to deal with the same company if they've had a good experience and want to get a bigger boat. If it's through a dealer with good service, that dealer continues to get the business. We wanted to make certain the dealers were strong and had enough profit to offer excellent service. We made some dealers very rich." Brunswick Buys Bayliner       In 1986, the Brunswick Corporation, which had started as a billiard table and bowling supply company, added Bayliner to its stable of marine companies. (The corporation had acquired Owen Yachts and Larson Boats, as well Mercury Marine in the 1960's and has added a horde of other boat-related companies since.) For the first time since he left the army 30-plus years earlier, Edson had leisure time. A non-compete clause in his agreement prevented him from messing around with boats for six years. So he went cruising.       His first personal "retirement" boat was a 105-foot Azimut built in Italy. "I did a lot of traveling," he says, brown eyes twinkling. "All my previous cruises had been hurried. Now I had time." He and his second wife Charlene (his first wife died of cancer) cruised Europe and the Caribbean and brought the boat home to Puget Sound. But he yearned for something more personal and ordered a yacht from Admiral Marine in Port Townsend, closely working with the president, Daryl Wakefield. The 161-foot Evviva was designed by famed naval architect Bill Garden, who, like so many of Edson's collaborators, is a long-standing friend. Don Starkey, perhaps the best-known European designer, created the interior. The boat has nearly 160,000 miles under her keel - more than six times the circumference of the earth at the Equator. Megayachts Pop up on the Radar       It seems, though, that Edson missed the challenge of being an entrepreneur. In 1994, brothers Rick and Randy Rust, owners of Westport Yachts, asked him for advice on a boat-building project. Edson complied. The brothers didn't follow his counsel. A year later, Westport asked Edson to join the company. Somewhat reluctantly, he visited their plant on Grays Harbor on the Pacific. "They were doing a good job building a nice product but in a very difficult way," he explains. "You see, when you build fiberglass parts, you must tool very well so the parts fit and you don't have to patch them. Well, they had lots of different molds and different parts." After the visit, the Rusts again asked Edson to join the company. Although Edson doesn't admit it, his tone betrays he was itching to increase the factory's effectiveness. So he bought into the company and the firm changed tacks.       "They were producing a high quality boat already but the man-hours were sky high so we first improved the tooling. They'd been building 106-foot yachts. We changed the 106 into a 112 and then added the 130 with its four major molds. We also introduced a 98-footer, a real success story. We had 450 employees and had hired all the available workers in Westport, a town of 2,200."       The need for more crew grew stronger when the company decided to bet on a new size yacht. Edson and his partners carefully evaluated international rules and regulations governing large motoryachts. They determined that a yacht not exceeding 50 meters and staying under 500 gross tons could reduce its crew requirements, crew training and pilotage in certain regions, thereby cutting operating costs. (Gross tonnage is measured in units of 100 cubic feet; its use dates back to the time when a ship's capacity was measured by how many barrels [tuns] of wine a ship could carry.) They came up with plans for a 164-foot, 495-ton yacht. To build such a yacht required a bigger plant and new manpower. Shopping for on-the-water premises they could buy led to a short location list: Port Angeles and Anacortes. Edson had assumed Anacortes, with its long shipbuilding history, would jump at the chance to host a new Westport plant. He frowns when he recounts what actually happened. "The people in Anacortes were wonderful and the press was great, but the city didn't make an attractive offer. The political environment was incorrect. But in Port Angeles, the port and the city worked closely together, solved the problems and thus made our choice easy."       A year later, in November 2003, a contractor handed over a ready-to-operate, 10,000-square-foot plant and tooling began immediately. Edson expects the factory will be able to produce one $30 million yacht a year. Again, familiar names are associated with the project. The hull design is by Bill Garden, while Don Starkey has designed the topside. And Daryl Wakefield is now Westport's president.       Edson is far from retired. "Gosh," he says, "I'm having such fun with the yacht business and I'm still one partner among several in Westport. I have an obligation to see this 164 through to completion and get the production process running well. I enjoy the challenge of making superb quality boats."       He adds that the Westports are different because they perform well although they're a 20-knot cruising boat. "You see," he emphasizes, "the concern about fuel is range, not the cost of fuel. It's about being able to go far enough. When you compare a big boat to a similar size trawler style, the fuel consumption is similar if you run it at the same speed. Now, it takes discipline to slow down. But if you run a boat at flank speed, you're going to waste fuel. No way around that."       Is the megayacht market getting close to the saturation point? Not according to Edson. "The market is much bigger than production," he states forcefully.       Nevertheless, he's keen on the marketing strategies Westport follows. The company operates its own brokerage in Seattle and Fort Lauderdale, which sells both new and used boats. Why used boats? "To stay in close contact with present and potential customers." The Philanthropist       Besides continuing his lengthy career in yacht building, Edson is involved in a variety of other activities. His wealth has allowed him to donate several million dollars to Seattle's Fred Hutchison Cancer Center, in support of building construction, T-cell research, and an on-site garden named "Edson Park" in his honor. He's also established the J. Orin Edson Foundation, which recently offered grants to the Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology (formerly the Westlawn School of Yacht Design).       "The American Boat and Yacht Council is the school's new corporate member and with its encouragement and support, most of the courses have gone online," says Edson with pride. "It has sped everything up. The academic program is improving and expanding, we're enrolling more students and the students are getting more complete programs. This is important for the boating industry."       His philanthropy has also extended to save cats and dogs. Charlene Edson discovered that the Everett Animal Control put down about 25 dogs and cats a day. Wanting to take these animals off death row, the Edsons founded an animal adoption center that saves about 125 animals monthly by finding good homes for them.       "It's a very rewarding experience and we get lots of help."       Edson has achieved astounding success in his life - success won through hard work, business savvy and the increases in disposable income in the second half of the 20th century.       But his philosophy about life is plain: "Be sure you like what you do. Never do anything just for the money - you must like doing it." He also quotes a friend of his, Ed Kennel, a "good old sailboater," who said, "Encourage all people to get out on the water regardless of what size or type of boat. If you like boats, you like them all." Marianne Scott is a frequent contributor to Northwest Yachting and has profiled many people influential in the marine industry.