Having A Hull Of A Time -- Kirkland Brothers Gain Comfortable Share Of Kayak Market

When Northwest sea kayakers get together to talk about their boats, which they seem to do somewhat more frequently than use them, somebody is likely to mention a Mariner.

And they are not talking baseball.

They are talking about the sleek, fast, fiberglass boats produced by Cam and Matt Broze, whose Mariner Kayaks shop is sandwiched among yacht brokers and seafood restaurants on Lake Street in Kirkland.

In the past decade, the Broze brothers have carved their niche in the Northwest's fast-growing kayak-making business.

It's a narrow niche, to be sure. Major manufacturers in the Boating Capital of the World have little to fear from two long-haired, overgrown Bohemians who produce a few boats per month, sell them for about $1,800 to $2,500 and are not interested in expanding.

But those few boats are enough to put Kirkland on the kayakers' map.

How it started

It all started with a couple of broken legs. Battered by a 1974 car wreck, Cam Broze, then a drummer in a rock'n'roll band, had to find something athletic that he could do while sitting down. So he bought a kayak, a fiberglass rendition of the ancient Eskimo and Northwest Indian design.

He liked it enough to build one of his own.

Before long, Cam and brother Matt were paddling kayaks along the remote west coast of Vancouver Island. Matt, who had previously distinguished himself as a free-style skier, became a convert.

Soon they were ready to move up to a better boat, but they couldn't find one. So they decided to design and build it themselves.

Never having designed a boat before, Matt went to the library to read up on things like hull design, stability and length-to-speed relationships.

``We wanted something that was fast, and something that performs better in open water, especially when paddling into the weather,'' Matt says. ``I was tired of compensating for the wind and waves. The trick was to push more boat forward.''

Several months and some $2,500 later, they came up with a mold, essentially a prototype constructed of cardboard and fiberglass, hauled it down to Lake Washington, and paddled it.

``We kept modifying, shaving a little here, adding there, testing and retesting until we got a boat that performed the way we wanted it to,'' Matt says.

The Mariner was lighter and, at 18-feet-plus, was 2 feet longer than most of the competition. This seemed to produce the optimum hull-length-to-speed efficiency. It had a higher, knifelike bow for cutting through waves, and adequate space for stowing gear.

The first five boats off the mold were produced in the Broze brothers' Seattle basement. They sold quickly, and the brothers had found themselves in a new career.

Within a couple of years, Mariner Kayaks was the nation's third-largest mail-order kayak business, Matt says, enabling them to rent the storefront in Kirkland, where they could allow prospective buyers to test their boats on Lake Washington before writing their checks.

Wave of a sport

Mariner Kayaks is just one of a half-dozen or more local businesses which have ridden the wave of a sport that appeals to affluent professional people, aged 30 to 45, according to Kitty Graham, executive director of TASK, the Seattle-based trade association.

Little or no hard sales data is available, but Graham estimates that 12,000 sea kayaks were sold in North America in 1989, and that about 80 percent of them were manufactured in the Seattle-Vancouver, B.C., area. On average, sales appear to increase by 10 percent or more per year, and the industry appears to be unaffected by the nationwide economic downturn.

``It looks like people may be more willing to buy a kayak during a recession,'' Graham says. ``Once you've bought your boat, it's cheap recreation. They're quiet and clean. They don't burn gas. . . .''

John Abbenhaus, who operates Northwest Kayaks in Redmond, adds that kayaks appeal to affluent, well-educated people ``where money is not the issue - even in a recession.''

Checking the competition

It helps that the business is not fiercely competitive. In recent years, Abbenhaus has become one of the larger operators in the area, exporting boats as far as Japan and using modified assembly line techniques to produce a variety of boats - including the Broze brothers' Mariner line.

This occurred several years ago, when the Brozes discovered the primary drawback to the kayak-making business - the hazards of working with fiberglass.

After years of breathing resins and catalysts and glass fibers, they decided to contract the messy work to Northwest Kayaks, and confine their own operation to design, detailing and finish-work and sales.

Over the past decade, the brothers have designed and sold five more hull designs - from the sporty, lift-it-with-one-hand ``Coaster'' to the expedition-sized ``Escape.'' After 99 boats were sold, the original Mariner design was retired, replaced by new, improved versions - ``Mariner XL'' and ``Mariner II.''

``We cater mostly to upper-end professionals,'' says Matt. ``People who are heavily into the sport. We want to produce the best kayak available.''

All or most producers aim for the same high-end market. Enthusiasts can and frequently will spend hours debating the relative merits of Mariners and other boats - differences measured in speed, stability, workmanship and aesthetics.

The Mariner boats have been among the favorites, in part because the Brozes are purists who prefer a simple boat. They will add things like airtight bulkheads and rudders, and they offer them in the popular colors - but they would rather not.

Since their Kirkland shop is the only place one can buy a Mariner kayak, they are not likely to dicker over price. ``We sell every boat we make,'' Matt explains. ``We could sell more if we could produce them.''

This, and their tiny storefront leave little room for expansion. And that's just fine with them.

``Nobody gets rich making little boats,'' says Cam. ``We're all just a bunch of little guys, making a living and trying to make a better kayak. But I can't think of anything else I'd like to do.''