Turning Point Boat works on YouTube.
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Joey & Play, sunrise off Cumberland I (paddle around).
8000 (water) miles later, still going strong.
The best on your future endeavors, Joey.
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Sorry to hear that that TPB/Joey is concluding. But can understand where he is at with his decision. Having come out of heart valve replacement surgery, seeing the sudden passing of my sister, the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer for my father in law, I too decided on retiring sooner than later from a job that I loved while doing it. However, as someone pointed, there is always more work do and money to make, but you can’t get more time for yourself and for those you love. I am 2.5 months into my new phase of life, enjoying time with my granddaughters and re-engaging with my outdoor pursuits, and but still trying quite a bit to figure what “it’s all about…”
-sing
PS. Guess the Petrel Play is NOT in my future. I recently saw a Mariner Elan… Thought long and hard about getting it and then passed on what was one of my long time “dream boats.” I am sure it will be similar with the Petrel.
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I was hoping it was not him, but noticed West Side Boat Shop wasn’t offering his usual layup like they did last year. Wonder who WSBS is using now.
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I don’t think any builder can survive building one type of hull.
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Sorry to hear that Joey. I noticed you were going after more and more. I know that just as a retired guy I have limits on the stress I can handle and have had to shed some responsibilities. Good luck.
Economy and inflation is killing the toy world for many things. If it’s 6 grand used what was it new?
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Coming to terms with what is really important in life takes a little time to figure out your place in your new world. But it is worth the effort. I also was forced to find my new place due to circumstances that were mostly beyond my control (I say “mostly” because you always have power when there is choice) 12 years ago, and in dealing with it positively, I’ve found a very rewarding life and freedoms I never knew were possible.
I hope you and Joey can both find what makes life truly meaningful for yourselves, and make it your world.
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The FB post said the new cost of one being sold is $8,000.
“20% of the sale will be donated to the Florida Springs Council (FSC). FSC fights daily to protect Florida Springs and aquifers.
One of a Kind: Petrel Play by Joey Schott/Turning Point Boatworks.
Immaculate condition. 14’/30 lbs Petrel Play. Original price $8060. Selling for $6000 (firm). Includes kayak protective cover and a Lendal North America Voyager carbon fiber paddle (not shown in photos) https://lendalna.com/product/voyager/”
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Yikes 
I think all who wanted one bought one and the market is now gone for them. I think it’s way over kill for most sea kayakers. Seem like great high tech hulls but most don’t need that.
Sad to see anyone trying to make it be put in a position where they can’t for what ever reason.
However, I had one ordered (with a 50% deposit) and after multiple delays and extensions for delivery ( many months) I finally asked for a refund from his distributor and moved on.
Unfortunate because I really wanted one of Joey’s kayaks
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you are correct, but
Does one NEED that $60,000 truck when a 40000 one will do.
Does one NEED a $300,000 home, when they could live in an apartment.
etc.
My case - I know it is an excellent design (Nick Schade) and an excellent build (Joey - materials,etc).
And it weighs 30lb, so I won’t NEED an operation in the future on my back. (1/4 walk to the water every day)
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Appreciate the sentiment here. Thought I would share some truth.
While we have built some notable custom kayaks like the one referred to above, the vast majority were standard three color variety. Our most popular layup was Basalt/Innegra which retailed at an average of $5700 with options. The kayak above is full carbon with the outer layer being a special carbon with silver thread that goes for just over $100 per yard now. That is the reason the quoted retail price is what it is.
Here is the truth, the business is hard and the ROI is poor at best. The people in it could make a lot more money elsewhere but CHOOSE to be in this business. Paddlesports shops are dropping like flies right now because they can not compete with direct online sales from a variety of sources. This is my story and I’m sure I am not alone. As a manufacturer with distributors, the transaction of selling wholesale opens the maker of that item to the cash flow issues of the retailers. If they have issues, you have issues. We simply were not large enough to absorb problems like that. The retailers have to scratch and claw for every sale and it is hard to get any breathing room at all. As a supplier told me last year, they were focusing on the OEM side of their business because the retail indicators were getting pretty scary.
Here is what is happening on the composite side. Crude oil prices skyrocketed and returned to a somewhat normal level. Every aspect of composites is affected by the oil market. Carbon and resin are product of crude oil. Fiberglass and basalt rely heavily on oil for the manufacturing process to extrude the material into the final product. In infusion, ALL of the consumables used in the process are oil derived. The issue is that once the prices went up, there is about a 90-180 day delay in composites depending on a variety of factors, they do not come down. VE resin nearly doubled in price and has only come down about 10% of the new normal. So, you see where I am going with this. Our manufacturing margins have been shrinking ever since the pandemic and demand has leveled off. There is still demand and it is healthy, but it has never been more expensive to build anything composite as it is now. Part of why, is composites is exploding. Automotive and aerospace are the two largest consumers of materials. Kayaks and sporting goods are at the bottom of the food chain.
For me, I made some fatal mistakes. Getting involved with EJ and Apex Watercraft was the first of many. After I had taken on more overhead and fixed all of the engineering issues with the Apex fishing kayak, it became apparent that he and his partner never had any intentions of keeping manufacturing at home here in the US. I saved the expletive filled tirade left on my voicemail by his partner Bob after I refused to share what I had done with Nelo. In all, I lost more than $80k in time, overhead and lost production of my boats. I also got involved with a dealer that nearly sank a well known distributor by cancelling a very large order over terms that could have been renegotiated. Instead they were threatened by that dealer and had to eat an $80k loss in sales. That dealer did the same to TPK. When I said the business was cut throat, I meant it.
Could I have survived all of the above? I like to think so. But when a job offer comes along from a well funded company doing exactly what I have been doing for the past eight years, you listen. When they have extremely deep pocketed clients and offer a very comfortable salary package, you take it.
That is some truth. Supporting small business is not a like or follow on social media. It is not going to a store to try out a piece of equipment or clothing and then ordering it on Amazon. It is getting good advice from an enthusiasts that CHOOSES to be in this business and then spending your money with them instead of ordering something for the sake of free shipping. Consumers have been trained to buy from the comfort of their home and roll the dice on getting what they really need. The manufacturers that have gone down the road of selling on Amazon, do so at a reduced margin. The only real winner in this equation is, you know the answer.
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I wouldn’t begrudge this type of decision by someone–after all it is your decision to make. We each only get one of these lives to tinker with, so do what you choose to as soon as you can.
Beautiful boats no longer being made.
Sadly, this has been a trending effect for a number of years on small business, but certainly was put on steroids as a result of pandemic policies (not the pandemic mind you) but the reaction by politicals and bureuacrats, who are 1) not the brightest 2) not aware of what real life requires to succeed and 3) are always much more sure than they are correct. #3 is practically an law of human nature. They leave destruction in the wake of almost every decision they make because they only consider the seen…and are fast thinkers loaded with confirmation bias.
So good luck, thanks for what you did as a pursuit of passion, and who knows–maybe the cycle of economic stupidity will swing back toward rationality sometime in the future to make small business viable again.
Peace
Bingo.
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It is a BINGO, but at the same time, it’s a symptom far downstream of the problem. Not sustainable to make small business patronage akin to charity. Small business can have competitive advantages–but the problem is they don’t have the resources to lobby those making the rules that favor the big companies. Whether it is why you really only have one search engine database, or two types of home computers to choose from, or any number of other examples, you cannot make a business plan that relies on consumer sacrifice. It’s poetic, but it is not enough. There is no scaling of it.
That is a criticism of the rulemakers, not the businesses.
I agree to an extent. However, customer service counts too. Not phone trees. Not chat bots. Not AI-enabled [im]personal assistants. But real service. Service that comes from knowledge, experience, and a genuine interest in customers that goes beyond their credit card numbers. Yes, that kind of service has a cost, but paying for it isn’t charity, it’s just a different - and in my view better - value proposition.
Certainly the deep pockets of huge companies and their fancy K Street lobbyists tilt the playing in their own favor, but we bear some responsibility too. Every time we use the time and investment (maintaining inventory costs money) of a local brick and mortar retailer to help make an online buying decision, we take $$ out of our community and send them to Bezos or Bentonville. Then, when the stores are gone and we look around and wonder what happened, we’ll find out that shipping wasn’t free after all.
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Not arguing, but then where does that line get drawn? 20% difference? 40%?
Whatever it is, it is up to each consumer to decide and the end-buyer is well downstream of the thousands of transactional decisions in the supply chain–materials, manufacturing, transport, operations. All those wholesale businesses are being squeezed too.
I despise Amazon, Walmart et al because most of the products are garbage in my opinion and they aren’t adding value. They are serving a remote point of sale market. Heck these days people are shopping for food at Dollar General (gasp), Walmart etc. I enjoy my CSA for most produce and meat, but I’m guessing I have more disposable income than someone who shops for groceries at DG or WalMart. It certainly won’t be my “fault” when the CSAs close shop and I am forced to shop at DG for food. Then I’ll leave for the mountains! It isn’t just kayak makers.
If we are saying people are obliged to not make a free market decision, but must make another instead as a duty of sorts, then it is worse than charity. My point is the fix is not to put additional burden on buyers when their discretionary funds are dwindling. A truly free market would fix it but that solution is not likely. Momentum is in the opposite direction.
I got my desired value from my two local boating shops–in fact got a kayak, paddles, and gear from each of them because each only carried certain brands. And they are both still struggling right now even though I did “my part”.
This (TPBW) was a company I had my eye on for possibly a custom lifetime boat in a few years. The niche is that you cannot get that kind of build on Amazon et al so he wasn’t even competing with them for my business. But now what are my realistic options for a forever boat, maybe Swift? They do ship nationwide directly, even though I have no local dealer and would have to travel to test paddle.
Are they an acceptable purchase for someone to be responsible–Or is that over the line?
Not exactly the same custom product as this fine company was making, but I digress.
I’m a former proprietor of a retail business that I closed in 2021 and the business environment is brutal–and becoming more brutal following Covid policies. Many could not survive with a 3-month pause on revenue. Some friends decided to just exit and sell their long-time family businesses or close them up (mine was not that example).
These were community staples and they could have stayed open but it would have been difficult. DId they have a responsibility to stay open? Of course not. No more than the consumer’s responsibility to “choose” them, in my opinion.
Whatever it is, I agree it sucks, I would do whatever more that I can, but I did all I could in my little corner of existence and it sounds like probably many here have. So what now?
I understand both sides to the issue here. I am also going to retire (mostly) from my one-man business that I have done part time (30 hour weeks) and full time (60 to 75 hour weeks) since 1984. In my business I had an idea that has caused the business to grow and to be back-logged, at times up to 8 years deep. What was my secret?
Compete!
I would go to the nationals and to various other evens as see what others doing my kind of work were charging. and see who had made money enough in some job where they were now receiving pensions and then did flintlock-making as a well paid hobby, as opposed to the very few that did it as a full time job and actually need to work. The ones that have a pensions charge what ever they think they can get and I’ll admit, some of the very best craftsmen in the field were part-time builders who drew pensions.
But the small minority did the work full time since they were young man and did little else.
I fall in-between, but far closer to the full time builder.
I did contract work making up SOP manuals for the Department of Defense as well as a few private sector employers here and there, but those jobs came a few times a year and sometimes a time or t every 3 years. The rest of my money I earned making flintlocks. But I always priced my flintlocks well below the average of what the large majority of men were pricing theirs a.t When I’d go to Friendship Indiana (the National shoot and headquarters for the national Muzzleloading Rifle Association) I’d get a good feel for what certain levels of workmanship were selling for.
So at a certain level of workmanship, where others were pricing their work at say $5000 I priced mine at $3500. At a level of work that they charged $9000 I’d charge $6800, and so on. In time my reputation was well known and my guns were in high demand, and yet I never allowed myself to get “all I could” because I understand international and historical lessons in studying economies.
When top priced production (to the point just below what most call gouging) is hit by a down swing in the economy from inside or outside the nation, they are the ones who most often loose customers. Not the fault of them or of their customers, but it’s just a fact of how economies work. I on the other hand never suffered any down swing at all. I did not earn as much per gun but I was able to ALWAYS have several guns backlogged, and so down swings never effected me at all. Now, today, I am simply working off the a back log and when it’s all done I may or may not take more work, but if I do I’ll take an order as and when I want to do that work.
Simple free market competition.
What makes a market truly free is not needing some form of cronyism to support it and no need to be a part of a group, association, union, or club. Just me and the work I do, priced at a level that is lower then others doing that work and getting 10 orders for my business for every one they got.
Some other artisans were so good that they could make 1 gun every 10 months and get as much for it as I got for 8 guns. That’s very true. But when the economy dips there is not another man or woman standing in line to give them another $18,000 to make another one.
Once someone makes a base line figure that they live on and especially if they live on “credit” (true meaning debt) they can’t earn less unless they are willing to downsize things in their personal lives. So at such times they either stop working all together at the job in question, or take on a side job.
I expect that $8000 kayaks are not in high demand in the USA now and considering that you can buy a VERY good top end kayak from Europe or the UK for 1/2 that amount, (even now with the US dollar in decline) it doesn’t seem realistic to continue making them, and it’s not right and it’s not wrong for anyone to decide what they will or won’t work for per hour. That’s why it’s called free market. It’s a study in math, not morals, but the math is how the truth is proven and when people cannot or simply will not pay a price point, the product either disappears or is lowered in price. If the amount it would need to lower is greater then the life-style of the person doing the lowering, the business collapses or re-organizes (sometimes in a form of it being sold to someone who can and will lower the price, or the quality, or both)
In the case where medical expenses are factored in ( a crony based and supported non-free industry) and the cost of such care is insanely high, the one that is squeezing the market to the least drop in their pricing finds it’s an expense they never banked on and in addition to that it makes them realize time is running out, so those 2 factors often cause a radical change in life style and prioritizing of time. Often in a good way. But such stories are more common then not.
I for one believe Joey is correct in his decision because all of us have a set amount of time to live and few of us know when the sand in out hourglass will be finished. So making the best of it when he can and when there is money enough to enjoy what time is left makes a lot of since to me. I truly wish him well. I can’t say I would “miss the kayaks” because I have never even seen one, and where I live it’s not likely I ever will until such time I start going to the coasts of the country or the Great Lakes to do trips, but even then the odds of seeing one are low, and the odds of paddling one are far lower. But I listened to his vid and I feel the same feelings. 6+ years ago I decided to stop taking on any new work. So I could say I came to the same point in my business where I need to close it up after the work on order is finished. He said he has a few more (I’d guess 3-4) plus one more for him and one for his wife. So his closing up the shop is going to be in a year or so. Mine was over 8 years deep when I stopped taking orders, so I am still working 60 hour weeks and I will be for the next 2 years or maybe close to 3. But it was the same feeling. To make a decision to stop the business, when you poured your heart into it for you whole life (longer for me then for him) I DO understand the mixed sorrow and gladness in the decision to close the doors for the final time. I wish him and his wife, family and all his friend well and I hope his remaining life is full of joy and happiness.