Folbot News RoomEver heard of Folbot kayaks?Posted By: Joey Hollman, The State7/16/2008 PDF: View PDF S.C. firm’s new owners want to raise product’s profile While retail outdoors equipment stores pop up all over the country, Folbot still sells its foldable kayaks only directly to the consumer by phone or online order from its Charleston-based headquarters. The company builds its boats to individual specifications and does all the work in a shop a stone’s throw from I-26 and the Ashley River. Folbot’s new owners, who took over late last year, don’t want to change any of that. They would, however, like to sell more boats. So they’ve set course on a new marketing campaign. They built a new Web site, put together a card-style brochure and wrangled reviews or stories in magazines such as Wired and Town & Country. That’s a big step up from the old ads tucked in the back pages of comic books, National Geographic and Popular Mechanics. They have an interesting product to sell. Folded up, the frame sections and outer skin of the kayaks fit into an oversized backpack, perfect for airline travel or storage in small apartments. The aluminum Folbot skeleton goes together like a tent frame. The outer skin — a waterproof canvaslike fabric on the deck and a more rubberized fabric on the hull — slips over the frame. David AvRutick, one of the company’s new owners, assembled one of the boats in The State’s photo studio in about 20 minutes. Longtime owners claim they can do it in less than 15 minutes. Thus the marketing theme: “Assembles in minutes; guaranteed for a lifetime.” The folding kayak concept has been around for decades. Hans Klepper introduced collapsible kayaks in Germany in 1902. Another German, Jakob Kissner, founded Folbot in London in 1933 and moved to New York in 1935. He fled the big city for Charleston in 1953. Through the years, he built high-quality kayaks that engendered impressive loyalty among boat owners. One of the company’s best marketing tools, for example, is the folbotforum.com Web site, where longtime owners share their admiration for the craft and look for rare parts to fix older boats. “They appeal to a certain type of people,” said Robert Gaines, a 63-year-old Folbot enthusiast in Freeman, Mo. “A lot of it goes back to when we were kids and saw the ads in the comic books. It’s a techy boat. You can take it apart and put it back together.” Gaines owns 4½ Folbots, which based on forum entries isn’t an unusually high number. Fractions of boats also are common, saved to be scavenged for parts or in hopes of finding parts to make repairs. “The people who own Folbots and know about Folbots, when you mention Folbots to them, you get this incredibly passionate response,” AvRutick said. “‘Oh my gosh! My grandfather and I built one when I was 8 years old, and we paddled that thing for 30 years and I loved it.’ “But you get other people who when you mention Folbot say, ‘Folbot? What’s that?’” The dichotomy made for the ideal business challenge for AvRutick and co-owner Tony Mark. “You either love the product or you’ve never heard of it,” AvRutick said. “That suggests with the (overall) sales of kayaks growing fairly strongly, we can grow the company simply by making sure people know about our product.” The market for growth appears to be good. Nearly 8 million people in the U.S. now say they kayak, twice as many as a decade ago, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. AvRutick is astounded how many longtime Charlestonians tell him they never have heard of the boats or didn’t know they were built in the Lowcountry. The new marketing is aimed at the product’s two major niches: airline travelers who want to take kayaks with them and apartment dwellers who don’t have room to store a 16-foot hard-shell kayak. Airlines don’t allow travelers to check traditional hard-shell kayaks, but folding kayaks are easier to deal with on trips than golf clubs, AvRutick said. The newest boat in the Folbot line, the 10-foot CitibŌt, is designed for city dwellers who face storage and transportation dilemmas. A New Yorker could carry the CitibŌt bag on the subway. Or South Carolinians could keep one in a car trunk, ready to hop out anytime they drive past an intriguing river or lake. Neither of the new owners has a background in the outdoor gear business — AvRutick is an attorney with experience in the publishing industry, and Mark is a software engineer. AvRutick, who most recently founded a building arts college in Charleston, was looking for a new challenge when he heard Folbot owner Phil Cotton, his neighbor, was ready to sell the business. (Cotton has stayed on as chief designer.) “I like kayaking, and I thought it was a neat company,” AvRutick said. “The concept was different.” He doesn’t want to change much. Customers tell him they appreciate a product built to order. They’re willing to pay a little more for a quality product built entirely in the United States. (Prices range from $1,094 for the CitibŌt to $2,595 for the tandem Greenland II.) “We’re just doing what we can to raise the profile of the company,” AvRutick said. Folbot The foldable kayak is South Carolina-based. Founded: 1931, in London; moved to New York in 1935 and to Charleston in 1953 Product: Kayaks with collapsible aluminum frames that fit in fabric skins Sales: The private company doesn’t release sales figures. Current line: Ranges from 10-foot CitibŌt for $1,097 to 16-foot Greenland II for $2,595 S.C. angle: People all over the world are paddling boats named for S.C. rivers — Edisto, Kiawah and Cooper. Information: www.folbot.com Back to all news |
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