Prisoners' Pride Helps Lift Revenue At Nyman Marine

Nyman Marine

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-- Employees: 30

-- Headquarters: Issaquah

-- Business: Boatlift manufacturing and residential dock construction

-- Co-presidents: Everett Johnson, Melinda Lyle

-- 1990 revenue: $2 million

-- Strategy: Set up factory in state prison to shave production costs

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Security measures at Nyman Marine Corp.'s factory seem excessive for a small, family-owned company whose product - lifts for recreational boats - isn't terribly exotic.

Two rows of 20-foot high fences topped by razor wire, double doors with automatic locks, super-sensitive metal detectors, 24-hour television surveillance and a legion of full-time guards watch over its

production floor near Monroe.

But those measures aren't meant to keep intruders out or protect trade secrets. They keep Nyman's 12-man production force - all inmates at the state's Twin Rivers Correctional Center - on the premises.

Nyman is one of 10 private companies that in recent years have set up production facilities inside prison walls in Washington. Despite the hassles and risks of doing business in a medium-security prison, Nyman executives say the strategy is working. A highly motivated, dedicated work force is making products that are revolutionizing the industry.

The program also helped Nyman, which builds residential boat docks and marinas in addition to lifts, surpass $2 million in revenues last year. When the present owners bought the company in 1979, its revenues were $43,000.

``These guys take an incredible amount of pride in this business,'' says Everett Johnson, Nyman co-president. ``They are treated as employees when they walk in the door.''

Louie Mendoza, a 49-year-old inmate who has been a welder's helper and metal polisher at Nyman's Twin Rivers floor for two years, agrees. ``It's fantastic. Now I have a chance to pay my bills out on the street. This helps a lot of guys. They get out with a sense of self-worth.''

Echoes co-worker David Blake, a 29-year-old welder: ``It's a good job skill, and I'm able to send $500 to $600 home a month.''

So far, Nyman's boatlift reputation has been confined largely to the Northwest. But the company recently agreed to supply lifts to Sea World in Orlando, Fla., for its water-ski show boats, a move Nyman executives say could showcase its products to customers across the country.

Nyman's participation in the state's prison-industries program was motivated by equal measures of social conscience and business savvy. The Issaquah-headquartered company had been producing boatlifts in an abandoned chicken coop in Woodinville for several years. It moved into Twin Rivers in July, 1988, attracted by the opportunity to gear up a new line of business quickly and at minimal cost.

``We didn't want to purchase a factory,'' recalls Melinda Lyle, co-president and Johnson's wife. ``But we felt we had a good product.''

Nyman pays the state's Department of Corrections only $1 a year in rent.

``This makes up for problems with having to train people who've never had a job,'' says Lynn Lodmell, director of the division of correctional industries in the Corrections Department.

The company also pays inmates the prevailing wage in Snohomish County for their job classifications. For welders, that is $8 a hour.

In return, inmates pay 20 percent of their earnings to the prison for room and board. They also must make any court-ordered payments, such as victim restitution, child support or alimony.

Additionally, inmates must set up savings accounts. ``This means they'll have money when they get out, enough to have first and last month's rent, for example,'' Johnson says.

Despite those requirements, Nyman's jobs are the most sought after at Twin Rivers. They are the highest-paying positions at the institution. Jobs in the prison laundry or kitchen, for example, pay $30 to $50 a month.

Compared with opportunities offered by the other private enterprises at Twin Rivers - a plastic-packaging concern and a concrete- form company - Nyman provides more transferable job skills.

``You have to work,'' says Mendoza. ``There's 300 people waiting to take my job. I've got to show results.''

In this environment it's not necessary to motivate workers, Nyman executives say. Inmates are rarely absent, aren't late because of car or child-care problems and don't take long lunch breaks.

But prison production has problems Nyman's competitors don't face. All visitors must give prison authorities two day's advance notice of their arrival and undergo thorough security checks. Work stops whenever guards conduct a prisoner count. Only one person on Nyman's production floor, foreman Bernie Dobson, isn't an inmate.

Even with those hurdles, Nyman produces 250 lifts a year at Twin Rivers. The lifts, designed to raise boats, jet skis and seaplanes out of water for storage, are a departure from traditional lift mechanisms. They raise vessels hydraulically, using cylinders which can be filled from simple garden hoses.

Boat lifts made by competitors raise boats with a series of winches and pulleys. Their lift housings are visible at all times. Nyman lifts are anchored to lake or sea bottoms and are visible only when in use.

``In the past, people used ugly, bulky contraptions to lift boats,'' Lyle says. ``We developed lifts that are easy to operate, esthetically pleasing and environmentally safe.''

Nyman makes eight models; the largest can raise boats weighing up to 12,000 pounds. Its most popular model, able to lift a 3,000-pound speedboat, costs $3,000 in a stainless-steel version. An aluminum version, better suited to salt water, costs $4,000.

Virtually all of Nyman's lift sales are in the Northwest, with most customers in the Puget Sound region. The company has a near-monopoly on seaplane lifts on Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish, Johnson says.

Lift sales are an outgrowth of Nyman's bread-and-butter business, residential dock building. Founded in 1959 by Ed Nyman, the company began constructing docks for houses that lined Lake Sammamish, and expanded onto Lake Washington several years later.

Johnson and Lyle bought the company in 1979, following Nyman's death. It stuck to dock building until it came out with its first boat lift in 1983.

Personal experience motivated Johnson and Lyle to move into lift production. They live on Lake Sammamish and are water enthusiasts, owning three float planes, a motor boat, a speedboat and several jet skis. ``Living on the water helped us be tuned into what people will be needing,'' Lyle says.

The company remains one of the largest dock builders in the region, getting much of its business from high-end customers in Medina and Hunts Point. It recently put up two of the largest residential docks on Lake Washington and is building new docks at Youngquist Moorage along Lake Union in Seattle, Johnson says.

Nyman's dock-building enterprise employs 10 full-time workers.

About 70 percent of the company's revenues and the bulk of its profits come from dock building, Lyle says. But as its lifts catch on, margins in that sector will improve.

``These are complementary products,'' he says.

Other companies soon may be able to move into prison production. The state Corrections Department is contemplating letting four more private companies open operations behind prison walls. ``We like the private sector,'' says Lodmell, correctional industries head.

``It makes our inmates get a taste of the real world.''

Strategies appears weekly in the Business Monday section of The Seattle Times.