A New Kind of Kayak

(Photo provided)

What started as a Cabela’s catalogue-only folding canoe has become a locally run and solely U.S.-sourced manufacturer with a global reach. Dan Norton, originally the inventor of the Tuck Tech Tote 'N Boat in 2004, has come a long way from his one-man garage business.

"Dan, when he came up with this, he literally sat down with a piece of paper in his sink, right, and kept folding it up into a boat configuration," says Tucktec General Manager Pete Connell. "He took what he learned from that, got a few sheets of plastic, started working on them."

The first orders came in from friends and family who heard about Norton's "origami boats," but soon enough, he began working the watercraft trade show circuit, going on to feature in Cabela's catalogues. For two years, Norton plied his trade, until the work became too much. Too many orders, not enough time, and with a wife and three children at home, he made the shift from trade shows to home life.

"He was actually a potter from 2006 until 2018 … no engineering experience, nothing like that," says Connell. "Just a super creative guy that didn't have room for a kayak."

In 2018, Norton decided to reopen the garage, this time joined by his son. "The first year this company popped up was 2018. (We were doing) only about $100,000 a year," explains Connell. "The second year was about $400,000. And then 2020, we were part of one of the largest watercraft Kickstarter campaigns on record up to that time."

The Kickstarter closed at nearly $2 million by the beginning of April 2020. "And I'm sure you remember what else closed," laments Connell. An already profitable company, Tucktec was positioned well to not only weather and solve for the supply-line fluctuations brought by Covid, but continue scaling up operations and hiring during the pandemic.

"When Covid hit, there would be weeks where we would have hundreds (of kayaks) sitting here ready to go, waiting for one part or piece or another (from China)," explains Connell. Experiencing the wait and uncertainty of global manufacturing trade of raw materials, be it plastics or custom parts, Norton made the move to source as many materials locally as possible. While some watercraft companies moved manufacturing operations to Mexico, Tucktec sourced plastic from Canada during Covid, avoiding delays and keeping costs down.

More amazingly, they leaned even further into local procurement. "We now work with a company in Charleston called Polymer Shapes," says Connell. "They procure all of our plastic from a company, Simona, up in Pennsylvania. They bring in the full batches of material to their warehouse, and they release it to us weekly as needed. And that has been huge, huge, especially right now."

Tucktec makes their own kayak seats, sews their own straps, and completes all assembly in-house. As Connell puts it, "(Our kayaks) come in one door of our business as a flat sheet of plastic and leave the other side a folding kayak." The only exception would be the metal fa ication. "We do all of that with a company called CRC Metal Fa ication," continues Connell. "They are literally right down in Murrells Inlet. Every couple of weeks, I drive my own truck to go do a pickup for our levers and the anchors and all of that."

Starting in 2018 with "a little 1,100-square-foot building, (with) people pretty much crawling on top of each other," according to Connell, Tucktec bounced from an added 3,000 sq ft space to a larger, consolidated 8,000-square-foot warehouse. When that warehouse was purchased by another company, they shrank back down to a 6,000-square-foot building while waiting for their final space to finish construction. Since 2022, Norton and co. are happy to say they've been working comfortably in their 10,000-square-foot factory. "I did tell Dan that if we move again, I am a contingency of this lease, because I'm not moving my desk," chuckled Connell.

Now, seven years on, Tucktec has a solid understanding of their business model, and the quirks that come with selling watercraft. "If you look at our year over year, it is a beautiful bell curve that starts and ends around the same time every year," Connell says. Roughly 75 percent of sales happen between April and the end of September for Tucktec, leading to an expanding and contracting of both immediate cash-flow and labor needs.

"We have a core group of people that work here year-round, and then we'll expand and contract," says Connell. "The goal is every year at the end of the season to keep more of those people, which is something we've been very lucky to do."

What seems to have driven the longevity of their success is their emphasis on sustainability; hiring local, living local, and selling global. "We've always been a privately funded company. There's no bank, there's no corporate leaders. … This has always been funded right out of the owner's pocket," explains Connell. "Thankfully, we've been healthy enough to keep things that way without having to give up equity or control in the business.

While Tucktec works with "mostly small mom and pop shops" and an expo here and there, Connell notes their business model is "99.9 percent e-commerce." Though, as Tucktec looks to the future, they hope to push further into the wholesale market.

"We're comfortable sitting here where we are. We don't need to take over the world. We make a great product, (and) people are happy with it. … None of us have a yacht. I did not take a helicopter into work this morning. I drove my 2019 Ford F-150, but I did that comfortably."

It’s been a long journey, but “we're really proud of coming from a little folded up origami boat in somebody's sink to what we are today"