Amanda Haley: How many aspen power catamarans have completed the great loop?

Larry: have finished so far and there's three on it this year.

Maryline: In your career, how many boats have you helped build?

Larry: about 3,000 Glacier Bays. then with Aspen, we built 158.

Amanda Haley: And what is the longest you have traveled on the Carbon Cat?

Larry: eight locks and dams and yeah, great, great fun.

Amanda Haley: Great fun.

Maryline: What's the length overall of that one?

Larry: did it with my 10th footer with a 15 on it and then we had an 11 footer with a 15 on it and then the brand new 13 with a 30 on it. So we had three boats on the trip. It was great fun. Just an amazing adventure.

Amanda Haley: Awesome.

Maryline Bossar: you you you

Larry: you

Maryline: Today we're thrilled to have Larry Graf from Aspen Catamarans join the full displacement podcast. I'm Marilyn Bosser and we have Amanda Haley with us today.

Amanda Haley: Hello Marilyn, hello Larry.

Maryline: Welcome. Welcome Larry. we know quite a few things about you and our audience will discover who you are and what a genius founder you are. I should give a little background and say that it's not until you watched one of our recent videos comparing trawlers to pyrocatamarans that you called up your old friend Amanda and said, Hey, I'd like to say something about this. so Amanda, how far back have you known Larry and what's the story there?

Larry: Hi, Larry.

Amanda Haley: Well, if you look back in the archives of the Aspen YouTube channel, you might happen to see me and Larry going through a bunch of the different models and touring the factory and going through every step of the engineering quality of an Aspen Power Catamarant. And most recently I saw Larry at a boat show selling his lightweight tender called a Carbon Cat, which two of our clients recently, Marilyn, who bought boats from us, chose to be their dinghy on their vessel. So that's the latest and the greatest.

Larry: Now I met Amanda, it must have been 10 years ago at a boat show and she was working for a yacht company and they wanted to do a video on our brand new C120 40 foot yacht. And, she was amazingly intuitive and, you know, She's actually a boater and we put together, I think that was one of the best videotapes with the most responses that we've ever had because just were into the details and gathering them and sharing just the kind of things that people that were looking for a boat were interested in. after we did that and the response we had, I cornered Amanda a few months later and said, hey, I've got some other models I'd love to sit down and do a video. Could you fly out to Seattle? She said, yes. And that's kind of how we've done all those video sentences. So it's been a great, great, great time getting to know Amanda and doing some fun videos together.

Amanda Haley: Yeah. Yeah. And the Yeah, and I learned so much. I learned so much about the build quality, your engineering skills, and just your prowess in this industry. And that's one of the reasons why we wanted to have you come on as a manufacturer to talk about what's going on in today's market.

Maryline: That's terrific.

Larry: Yes.

Maryline: Yeah, so allow me to backtrack so we can get a little bit of the background story from Larry, right? So You built Glacier Bay into the world's largest catamaran builder, then walked away to start Aspen in two thousand and seven, is that correct?

Larry: Yes, 2007 I had done everything I could do with Glacier Bay at that point. I also had, I learned a lot about dilution as you build a company and with a group of partners. And I had a couple of partners that were really terrific business owners and boat owners. And then I had a couple of venture capital guys that were not as, kind of viewed the way to do business a little differently than I did. So that was when I stepped away from Glacier Bay and started Aspen. when I'd been doing all the boat shows, we built that company up from the long side of the house to the largest cataract builder. We built almost 400 boats a in 2007. But in those years selling Glacier Bays, the next step a lot of people were interested in. They wanted a big, comfortable boat that was stable and soft. off-riding and very, very fuel-efficient. a big comfortable cruiser that had that rough water capability that the Glacier Bay had, but they wanted a king-size bed. They wanted a nice galley. They wanted a cabin that you could air-condition and get out of the hot or get out of the rain. and you know the place where we're at the fishing route and uh... the ask and are much more focused at cruising and fishing crowd and adventure group and so you know that's sort of the genesis of it you know i also have wife that kathy that is very prone to getting seasick and that was sort of the genesis one of the kind of factors in starting Glacier I wanted a you know a stable boat if it's stable she doesn't get seasick and We used to raise hobie cats together when we were in high school. hobie should never get seasick. And a monowall where it's rolling back and forth all the time, that motion gets to her. And it actually gets quite a few people. So our boats are about 78 % more rules stable than a monowall. And so That's the basic flavor of where we started.

Amanda Haley: So you're the founder, the designer, and the lead engineer all at once. How does thinking like an engineer and not just a businessman change the boats that come out of your factory?

Larry: Yeah. I think it's a huge asset to be a boat nut and an engineer that is always striving to build a better boat. Maybe from a making lots of money viewpoint, it's not the best sometimes because I'm always thinking of creative new changes and improvements. I drive my boat builders crazy with, I just got this new idea. I come in in the morning and it's like...

Amanda Haley: Hehehe

Larry: I had this idea last night, where I talk to a customer and he's got a problem and doesn't know the answer is, but I've got a solution. you know, the company follows those needs really better than an awful lot of companies. And, I also do a lot of voting myself, do a lot of adventure trips. And I think that really helps us have a product. you get onto an Aspen, you just kind of feel like, you know, that you fit. You can walk around all the spaces. We also build full-scale mock-ups of each new model in chipboard material, know, particle board basically. And, you know, we'll sketch it up, give it our best idea, talk with the owners and prospective customers, get their feedback before we start building the chipboard mock-up. Then we build the chipboard mock-up, then we have the customers that are interested in that model come in and work with them, talk with them, have them walk through it. You know, kind of putting, I mean, it's got cushions in it, it's got... the stove and the sink is there, you get to sit in the space and feel what it's like. And it's kind of like a little port, a little boat port. But what you do at that stage is you get tremendous feedback from customers. like, man, this feels good, but if it could be an inch or two wider, or like our 40-quarter, initially it was a 36-quarter, and ended up going to a 38, and then to get everybody that had a group of launch customers that had money in the game, and you really listen to those people. And you everybody thinks I'm an amazing designer. And I'm pretty good at that, but I've got two years. And if you listen to your customers, you can really build some products. And that's kind of our goal here. And it happens every day. This morning I was talking with a customer about his Carbon Cat on the back of his C110 Aspen. And he had some ideas about how it would be easier to load it. And it's that kind of thing that kind of drives my guys crazy because I'm always improving but for the owners, they love having that best.

Amanda Haley: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Maryline: And to give us a sense of scale, I guess, Larry, could you share with our audience how many boats, how many aspen catamarans are actually built on a given year?

Larry: So we've built about 158 boats so far on the big boat side. And we tend to build about 8 to 12 boats a year. It really depends on the model mix. We had some years, we had a year a couple years ago where all we built was the big yachts, the 40s and 44s. And then we had another year where all we built was cruisers that were 32 feet now. And so it depends on the mix. I've got 45 boat builders and we've got four buildings out in Burlington here, about 60,000 square feet of space. so the volume is a mix. And then we also introduced the new carbon cats, three years ago now. And that started as a nine, 10, and 11. And then last year we introduced a 13. And now, of course, as soon as they get the 13 done, guess what they want? A 15.

Amanda Haley: Fifteen and seventeen. Yep.

Larry: in that group. So we try to follow the market and listen to the owners a little bit and make sure that there's enough volume to cover the cost of the tooling. We're not a huge boat builder and we sell direct from the factory. You'll get to know the guys that build the boat for you. Most of the owners will come out and visit the factory at some point. Although with the cameras and YouTube things, have some owners that because they're traveling and are really busy, we do it all with this kind of format and a lot of video work and stuff like that.

Amanda Haley: And why did you choose the factory direct model? Direct to consumer.

Larry: Well, Cabrands have, my hulls have about 60 % more surface area than a monohull and my decks have about 40 % more surface area. So for me to build that 40 foot boat, I've got to give the customer a lot more surface boat, if you will. And pricing in a given size range is sort of tailored to, you know, the expectations kind of get set by the monohull guys. And so. being factory direct lets me not have to have the margin that a typical dealer would make, is kind of in the minimum of 15%, often 20 or 25%. That's one part of it. The other part of it is, with Aspen, I wasn't trying to be the largest boat builder. With Glacier Bay, we always were trying to get bigger and bigger and a bigger bigger market share. Aspen's kind of up more as a, you know, work with the customer directly, almost a custom home builder sort of a thing. And the customers get to pick their colors and they get to pick their gel coats and we have a standard list of options. And then fairly often, because we're really good at engineering, we can do custom things for people. And it's not cheap, but at least if they've got a special idea, we can follow that and give them or exceed their expectations for something that's unique to their needs. And that's kind of fun too. I also really like working with the customers directly. When you're working through a dealer network, everything you hear about the product, the good and the bad is muffled through a dealer. And some are really good at sharing those things. A lot of them aren't. They just want to sell the boat and be gone. And that's not our model at Aspen. It's a relationship. We work with the customer, that piece of paper, basically, the specs, build that boat. And then it's a process of building the boat. And that's not the end of it. Then there's a training process when they get their boat.

Amanda Haley: Mm-hmm.

Larry: which is two to three days, sometimes four depending on how much experience they have. And then from there, as they're using the boat, they're going to have questions. We support them with that. And then local customers and even across the country, we have a service department that goes and takes care of them. So we take care of the boats after the sale. And then when they want to move up to another boat or they age out, we also have a brokerage group that can take care of that side of it. So it's sort of a much broader relationship. than the typical boat company would have with its customers. And I think it's better for the customer, it's better for the company, and that's sort of our model.

Amanda Haley: And it's much more family oriented, for certain.

Maryline: Yeah, that's

Larry: It's pretty family oriented. It's Larry and then my son Nick is our sales manager. My son-in-law Brandon is the service manager and then my son Steve is our kind of IT and senior accounting guy. So there's a fair amount of family involved but even the people that work here I think they would say that it's pretty family oriented. A lot of my employees have been here 10-15 years now. So some of the very first guys are still with us. That's kind of unusual in industry. But in the Northwest, we've been at this longer than a lot of the companies have. And long-term relationships are important, and long-term employees are just incredibly valuable. So treat those people well, pay them really well, give them great benefits. They stay, and they bring their family members. And there's a number of family members, multiple family members that work for us. So it's a good environment.

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Maryline: And we're gonna explore actually both the products and the manufacturing process, because we we find it fascinating and having the the chance to discuss this with you is is wonderful for for the world to hear and be educated on. Before we do that, I wanted just bounce back on the thing you said, which is you use your boats and you're actually a boater yourself, you're passionate. Can you share with our audience the adventure you've embarked on? We happen to have quite a bit of followers from the Great Loop community, and so I'm sure they'll be excited to hear what what you've been up to.

Larry: Uh-huh. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we have about 14 Aspen owners that have done the Loop at this point, well, last year starting. And this year, there's myself and two other 240s that are doing the loops. There's three on the loop this year. And, you know, the guys that had done the loop are just like, man, your boat is perfect for the loop. And they're just passionately excited about having used their Aspen to do the loop.

Amanda Haley: Fourteen.

Larry: And I've been going to the great, so they initially got me to go to the great looper conferences and I've done two of those a year over last three years. And there's some fabulous classes that they have at the AGLCA. And so when everybody's in class, there's nothing going on in the loop area, so I've been going to the class. I'm like, I gotta go do this, this looks one. they talk about two things. The boating adventure is fantastic. But they also talk about really three things. The boating adventure, the things in the towns and stuff they see along the way. But equally important is the people they meet and the other people that are doing the great loop. And I would have to say I 1,000 % agree. I left a trailer away from wet and cold Washington the first week of March this year. hooked up my boat, it's a 32 foot Aspen C100, and in four days I trailer down to Fort Lauderdale, put the boat in the marina and then drove up and actually picked up another Aspen that had just finished the great loop, brought it back to the factory so we could sell it. The guy is on to another adventure. And then I flew back down and went out in the Bahamas for a few weeks, had a great time. It was very windy out there this year, that was interesting. And then pop back into Stewart. I've been working up my way up the coast. about 2,300 miles in on the Great Loop right now. And the boat's in Syracuse. And my wife and I fly back on Thursday this week to go to the last of Lake Ust- a Swiggo Canal. And then we go up into Lake Ontario and we'll do 1,000 islands. And then. I've learned that I really don't like driving in, you know, the canal trench kind of program. I'm not a five mile an hour voter and it's really hard for Larry to go five miles an hour for all day long and then get to a lock and it's kind of fun. mean, it is scenic. I'm glad I did it, but it's not what I want to do a lot less. Yeah. The other thing is, that a lot of the guys do the whole loop at eight miles an hour and

Amanda Haley: Ha ha ha.

Maryline: Understood. It's not for everybody.

Amanda Haley: And

Larry: And I think part of that is a lot of that is because the typical boats do so much fuel at cruise speed You know, but again, it's not my program either. mean, you know, I'll go slow and it's scenic and it's pretty I do it slow but for me I mean I've learned about six gallons an hour at 17 knots though I mean just isn't a big cost to go quickly, especially when you're crossing Alvaro Sound or going to the Bahamas at 55 miles of open ocean, do that at eight knots takes all day long. You've got to get really, really, and you might get in at dark. Well, for me, it's like four hours from there. And that's kind of my personality. And some people have a personality that is okay to go at bicycle speed, but I'm not that guy. So when we do the Thousand Islands, I've arranged actually, because we sell our boats, I've got a trucker that's going to pick me up in Kingston, Ontario.

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Larry: and then re-splashes me up in Georgian Bay four and a half hours later. The alternative is to do the Trent 7 Waterway, which is 247 miles and 44 locks. I mean, you know, the people that do it say it's great, but for me, I just don't think I could do that. mean, you spend seven to 10 days driving in a straight line for, well, it's not a straight line. There are slates and things to stop. There's some cool lift locks and... I'm going to go see those with a rental car, I'm not going to take seven to 10 days. I just don't have that much time still running the factory. But I'm really excited about doing Georgia Bay and the North Channel. And then this year we pull out at Maffinon Island, and the boat hops on a semi there, and it comes back to Seattle three days later. And then two days it gets a wash and a wax, and I take 20 boats up the 20 Aspen owners up the inside passage into British Columbia for another two weeks on the boat. I have a tough life, guys. I love it. Yeah.

Amanda Haley: Yeah, I'd I'd say so. And what that proves is that you're not just a builder, you actually use these and you hear how other people are using their boats and and that just goes such a long way. Now you're talking about fuel efficiency, right, on your boats. Tell us a little about the hull structure. Some people might not know the difference in an aspen and they pro a hull.

Larry: Yeah.

Maryline: and so to go along with that question from Amanda, I'm gonna share my screen here to show you what the novelty of the design of the Aspen Cadmirns offers. And I'd like for you, Larry, to yeah, go ahead and and tell us. H first of all, how did you come up with this design and what have you learned and and how did we get here? This is this is quite futuristic looking.

Larry: Yeah. Well, again, the goal was a way more efficient hull shape. And I'm an engineer kind of guy that is real creative. And so... you know if you look at history of hull shapes and catamaran shapes everybody sort of looks at what the other guy did and they tweak it a little bit and they get one or two percent more efficiency out of it I wanted a big change I wanted a thirty to fifty percent reduction in burn and so if you look at this where you're at right now you can see that the port hull is thirty five percent thinner than the starboard hull and how I got to this you know I'm the yellow notepad guy And essentially I'll sit down and over period of days brainstorm ways that I might solve that problem. And I might come up with 20 solutions and then I'll think about them and I'll adjust them and I'll get it down to the 10 best of the 20. And then I narrow it down to the top three kind of combining ideas until I get to, you know, the top two. And then I play through those three in my head. And in this case, you know, what you're looking at is what became the Aspen Hull. And you know, when I initially got this hull done, I did the basic line drawings for it. think then took him to another engineer and he put together a 3D model of it. And you know, his initial reaction when he saw my drawing, he's like, Larry, have you lost your mind? And Dave looked at it and it's like, Larry, this is weirdest darn thing I've ever seen and I don't think it's gonna work. I said, look, Dave, let's just go into this.

Maryline: Ha ha ha.

Larry: 20 hours and let's model it up and see what the computer says about the shape and what I've got going on here. I think it's going to be a lot more efficient. I know from marine design history kind of things, the width of a hull, when they're really fat, they're really hard to push through the water. And with like, Hobiecats, you think about how fast they can go, theoretical horsepower in a 16 foot Hobiecat is like eight horsepower in maximum wind. And yet that little boat will go 20, 21 miles an hour. Thin displacement hulls are very easy to push through the water. And this Pro-Ed design where I pulled the port hull down by 35%, the effort for that hull to go through the water goes down by about 50 to 60%. And the other thing with this design, when it's a single engine and an inboard, you lose the appendage drag on that side. So there's no keel, there's no rudder, there's no prop. And all those just flowing through the water draw about 20 % of the, just flowing through the water takes 20 % of the energy right there. So you have a thinner hull that doesn't have any appendage drag on it on the port side. And you think, well, it's going to list, but that's just a matter of doing the engineering and weight and balance studies so that you, you know, you balance out the equipment and the engine on the port and starboard hulls. What you want to have and what I've got is the load per square foot on the two hulls is identical. And part of what the boat feels so stable, and you can't tell any difference when you're running the boat, is because the actual load or pressure, the pounds per square foot on each hull is almost identical. So when you go into a turn and you lean, you go into heavy seas, you can't feel that. I suspected that it would work like that. and no one had ever done it that I knew of, but it does work like that. So you really can't feel the difference when you're using the boat. Manda, you've been out on them. You can't tell. If you don't tell the customer where the engine's at, they don't know. It steers and drives symmetrically, and it's got a nice big keel on the starboard hull, and then there's a pocket for the prop and a big rudder. So the rudders that most guys would use would be 10 inches by 14 inches.

Amanda Haley: Yeah. No.

Larry: And even my small boat has a 14 by 22 inch rudder on it. So I wanted a boat with track and heavy seas really well. And that big rudder and keel do that. again, Amanda, you felt that it's very uncanny to have a boat that will go eight knots and track straight and will go 18 knots and track straight and will go 22 knots and track straight with your hands off the wheel. I they'll literally go five miles without touching it. So that hull difference, the other part,

Maryline: Yeah.

Larry: The two hulls are different sizes, but the other factor that makes it work and is part of our patents is the bows are shaped a little bit like an airplane wing from a top view. And so you've got the front view and then go to the top view. And essentially what I've done is the bows are shaped a little bit like that foil on an airplane wing as the boat.

Maryline: Mm-hmm.

Larry: flows through the water, the hull naturally wants to pull starboard, but the thrust from the engine is pushing forward. And so those two forces, if you think about it, are just a matter of physics and engineering, and you can balance them out. So what I've got is something where when you go from rest to full speed, so you go from 10 horsepower into the propeller to 400 horsepower on a 40-foot boat, it tracks dead straight. Because as it went faster, it took more torque pulling left, and the thrust the lift from the bow is flowing right and it nets a dead straight line. Turns out that just takes a lot less energy, it's a lot more efficient and that's kind of what the Aspen thing works like.

Maryline: Larry, for for clarification, can you confirm this propulsion and and design? Is that across all of the aspirin catamarans? 'Cause I saw you had different propulsion choices.

Larry: Yes, yes. So this was the initial design worked with single engine diesel inwards. And we still build lot of those. It's still a big chunk of our business. But as we progress through, and especially our Glacier Bay owners that wanted to move into Aspen, they were outboard guides. And there's a certain group that their vision for their future is an outboard boat. And they like outboards because they're really quiet at this point. They can trim them up and slip into very shallow water with them. The fuel efficiency on the newer Outboards is so dramatically better than what they were. And then there's another factor for the guys who are going out in the Bahamas or fishing way offshore. They really like the twin engine aspect. So that led us to initially our C107, which was a 70 on the port of Holland, a 200 on the starboard. And we sold quite a number of those boats. And then as that progressed, those customers that were shopping for that were like, man, I love the boat and everything is great, but I want to go a little bit faster. And so that's kind of led the progression. So then Larry has to figure out, okay, so.

Maryline: Okay. Yeah.

Larry: If you want to go, you know, bigger engines and so forth. So we basically went through an R &D project to keep the probe a hull shape, but get to either symmetrical or nearly symmetrical power. And that's been something we've done over the last three years or so. And that's been really successful too. And so I've got some shapes that let me have twin engines for those that want them. There's still the group that's very the efficiency, maximum efficiency. And they want to, you know, and that's me. mean, I've got a C100 and I really am a thrifty guy. And I love the fact that on my great loop, I'm 2,300 miles in and I've used, you know, 720 gallons of fuel. I mean, and I have not, I've run slow some of the time, but I'm almost always off at 18 knots. And so, and then, and our owners that have done the loop with the C110s and C120s, they say the same thing. They go to the fuel dock and they're filling up for just a... fraction of what the other guys are. So there's a balance and it's again, it's one of those things where you kind of follow the market to some degree. I mean, if it was me, I would all do diesel everything, but when you have really good customers that are asking you to do something, a little out of what you thought you wanted to do. as long as I, know, everything we do works and you know, when I do something new, you know,

Maryline: Sure.

Larry: 90 % of the time it's really very right, but the other 10 % of time it's like dang, I need to work on this. And so I always tweak it until I'm absolutely delighted with the shape and the performance. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I thrive on that kind of thing. I just love the new things that really work.

Amanda Haley: Yeah, I'm s I'm sure you see that as a challenge. Yeah, of course.

Maryline: perfect point you made, Larry, too, on where the market is going and we've seen it too with the outboard propulsion being king. we had a podcast with InfoLink, which if our audience hasn't seen has great insights into trends and the boating market. So I'll put the link below in the description and it talks about the the increased dominance of outboard power. So you're right to head in that direction. That is definitely where the market is going at a at a crazy fast pace. But also you're able to listen to your customers, which which is amazing. So

Larry: Right, right. Yeah, and you know, we used to be Yamaha. We've switched to Mercury at this point. Yamaha did some things with their 200V outboard where they put a big hydraulic ram in the front of it that you couldn't pair up with the smaller ram that our smaller engines were doing.

Amanda Haley: Which

Larry: that led us to Mercury and that was about three years ago. I'd say it's been wonderful. Mercury has been very responsive. My old Blitzer Bay dealers that had been big Yamaha guys were both the two biggest dealers. Both like, and Mercury is the leader at this point. They've got the smoothest motors, the quietest motors, the best fuel efficiency, and Larry, you won't believe this support. And I'm into it three years with Mercury at this point. have to say they've been fabulous. And this year, because they're mainly in United States, Our increase in mercury was 2%. That's wonderful. yeah, And the outboard boats are super quiet. They definitely use more fuel. But those guys can also cruise faster too. So we've got guys cruising at 25, 27 miles an hour now with their high speed displacing hull and they can top out at 32. So for certain guys where they want to trade, they're in their certain days where they want to trade money for time, you can do that.

Amanda Haley: Yeah. Which brings us to a point that we see a lot, and that is the manufacturing in the US as opposed to offshore elsewhere. And you build in Burlington, Washington, which is in the United States, it's not overseas, and in twenty twenty six, with the margins super tight, what's the honest case would you say for building boats in America? I mean we all know about the tariffs, okay, that's a huge one. But from your side, what would you say?

Larry: Right. Yeah. Ready? Ready. So I would say that over half of our current owners have owned a boat that was built offshore, either in Asia or somewhere in Europe or someplace. And their initial hope is that they're going to get a boat that's really and they often end up with something a lot less than that and they get frustrated and they quietly go away, they sell that boat and they want to buy, most of these guys are busy, they're just trying to buy a toy and have fun and it drives them crackers to just continually have to fiddle with it and work on it. And so I think American-made boats, there's a certain group of premium American-made boats that really deliver more fun per hour playing with the boat. mean, it's, don't, know, a bunch list with an Aspen out of the box with maybe 1,300 components and you think of all the different systems, there might be six right things that are small that we adjust in the first day or two. And then that's the end of the punch list. The customer then has got a boat to play with. It's a toy. And he has to wash it and wax it you know, and the maintenance. But he's got, he's in the game. He's having fun. Some of these boats that come in, you know, I mean, they literally spend months to get them working before they can even play with them. And then it's a never-ending cavalcade of this is that scene. They end up, you know, buying their mechanics Christmas presents and stuff. They know them so well. That's not my customer. My guy is...

Amanda Haley: Ha ha.

Larry: wants spend a little more beginning yet very high quality and then knowing that because he bought a better at the beginning we go to sell it he's going to get most of his money back anyways some of the most expensive ownership happens when you have a low quality boat that's melting and and the resale value really can be you know thirty percent you know less than two years that's an expensive boat my average depreciation rate the last

Amanda Haley: Yeah. And that's what I think.

Larry: 10 years have been about 2.5-3 % depending on the model. So I think that's kind of, my guys don't mind spending a little bit more at the beginning because they really value not having to fiddle with working out all the time and managing that and managing those contracts.

Amanda Haley: Wow. Wow. Yeah. And And you can tell within minutes of stepping onto an aspen that the production quality, the fit and finish, the quality of the stainless, the heaviness of all of the woodworking and the feel is not like a production boat. And I mean, we all know this. Production boats will look beautiful for the first year or two. and then after a while you start to see where they break down. And that's not the case with an aspen. And like you said, when we talk about

Larry: Right. Yeah, and that's, again, you look at a boat show and we'll have brokerage boats that are six or eight years old right alongside brand new boats and you basically can't tell the difference. But again, we've got things, we start with an armor coat gel coat made by Polan that's literally three times the cost, four times the cost of most of the gel coats that are out there. That's why years later it looks really good. So you you had asked about the marketplace and

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Larry: you know how it is to build in the United States. You know it definitely costs a little bit more. Aspen's content is about 92-93 % U.S. So I'm actually delighted that the tariffs are there for the imported boats. A lot of the imported boats, it's kind of a hidden thing, a lot of boats from Asia, governments from those countries are building the facilities for the boat builders. They're helping fund the tooling and the development. They often, they're basically trying to get people employed and the marine industry is the kind of thing they like and employs lots of people and it's a better, you know. So that's interesting, but for a US builder to compete with these countries where the field isn't level at all, you know, title. Yeah, yeah, and it happens in Europe. The French government has programs that are amazing.

Amanda Haley: It's almost government subsidized, it sounds like

Larry: that make it so much less costly and more profitable for the build builders. I mean, you wonder how do they build a boat, do all the tooling and ship it halfway around the world and the dealer is making 25 % on it and they spent $70,000 on freight and they're still making money at the factory? The only way you can do that is if somebody's helping you on the backside, which a lot of the countries do. Our government doesn't do that. I mean, you know, I pay taxes. It's not like I'm getting, I don't get any freebies.

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Larry: back from the state of Washington or the US government. And I'm fine with that. But I love the fact that right now we've got a much more level playing field for American billholders. And it's had a big effect for our carbon cats too. There was a point when we introduced the carbon cat three years ago where it was significantly more expensive than the offshore import tenders. Now it's not too bad. mean, it's so close that the people are going, wow. I can have this stable, amazing, dry, riding, super lightweight tender for basically the same price as a new one.

Amanda Haley: True. Yep. True.

Maryline: So I have a an additional question I'm wondering as a marketer, how is Aspen contending with the new rules of marketing, the rising cost of boat shows, the rising costs of the platforms like Yachtworld, for example? Do you care to share your opinion with us?

Larry: I really wish we had an alternative to Yabber World. I think they're getting really greedy. know, and their services are okay and they do some of the things pretty well, but there really needs to be an alternative to that. It's gotten, and it looks like they're on a mission to even, you know, make it more painful. So I'd like that. It's a good question. You we've just been working on our P &L statement and I tend to focus more on engineering product and customer stuff, but. But you're right, Marilyn, that the cost of marketing is really significant. We spend about 16,500 a month in different forms of marketing for our company. And three years ago, that was about 10,000 a month. So it's a factor. But yeah, I haven't got the magic bullet yet. I am going to actually do a survey. of our prospective customers and our current owners and ask them these questions of all these places that I spend money and energy to communicate with the prospective customer, what are you actually seeing and doing? mean, you know, there's some interesting thing. We did a trip up the Columbia River with three carbon cats last year. know, Matt and Daddy, tell you about this. took a 10-footer, an 11-footer, and a new 13-footer. We trailer down to the O'Waco.

Amanda Haley: Yeah, you did.

Larry: and where the Columbia River dumps into the Pacific Ocean. It's where they do the Coast Guard boat training thing. You see the surf training boats where there's big ocean. And the day we were there, it wasn't that rough. But we had like a three to four foot swell and maybe a two foot chop in it. We took those three tenders, 160 pound boats and up to 400 pound boat, and went out across the bar and then turned around and went all the way back up the Columbia River over the next five days all the way into Idaho's you know, canyon there on the Snake River, Hills Canyon. And we went up into the Hills Canyon as far as you could go with a 10-foot boat, 491 miles. you know, what an adventure, great fun. But, you know, that was a pretty good demonstration of the capabilities of that little boat. that trip, we made daily videos of that trip, and by the time we finished the trip, had 175,000 people following that adventure trip. And all year long, when I go to boat shows, amazing, like half the people at the boat shows that we're talking to about Carbon Cats saw that adventure. That is powerful. And you know what that costs? Not a lot. And it's great communication and it shares the passion, it shares the capability. The world's changing in marketing. Even what we're doing right here is very effective. I think I've been watching your guys on podcasts and stuff and you share a lot of information that's really hard to get anywhere else. And that's how I feel. I love it. I think a lot of people.

Amanda Haley: Yeah. Absolutely.

Maryline: Absolutely. Yeah, thank you. Well, we applaud you because you have found a way to create your story and share your product and your knowledge and your passion and it's working fantastic. And like you, we wish it wasn't so expensive to promote our industry and our services and our products, but but here we are.

Larry: No, it's good.

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Larry: Yeah, but you have to spend the energy and money there or you don't get the result you want. And you know, can see companies that don't do that and over time it doesn't pan out very

Amanda Haley: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that's I think where we are talking about the tipping point of when at what point do boat shows become unreachable for most you know, to advertise and show their product. So, you know, it's something that our industry definitely has to tackle. we've brought it up many times before. We're not saying we have the answer. hopefully we can all band together and find a solution because it's needed. so we'll see.

Larry: Yeah, yeah. Boat shows are still a key part of it. You've got all these things that kind of get people interested, but at a certain point they've really got to get on the boat and see if it's the right fit for them.

Amanda Haley: Touch and feel and see, yeah. And it and where else can they go and see different brands that they're looking at all in one place? Otherwise they'd have to take a broker's time and go here and there and here and there and spend a week doing the same exact thing that they can do in one or two days. So they they are necessary, but we need to get back to a realistic understanding of what some of these manufacturers can actually afford and their marketing dollars, you know?

Larry: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Maryline: So I wanted to pivot to the state of the market before we say goodbye. Obviously, we know the market has gotten a little bit tighter. we can tell in the numbers, we can tell from conversation with our peers, and we know actually again from that info link report on boat registration that new boat sales for power boats are down roughly I think was 10% through 2025. How does that look to you on your factory floor and on your P<unk>L?

Larry: Right.

Maryline: What's your prediction on the market? what are you trying to do differently perhaps to overcome this this challenging year, let's say?

Larry: I don't know, for us it's I think, you know, our members are up significantly and so especially the carbon caps but even the big boats, the sails are up for us. But again, for me, I only build 8 to 12 boats a year so it's not a real... comparable thing. I just don't have to sell that many boats to have a very successful year or have a big percentage change. And so, I think that the core things, take care of your customer, build a great product, take care them after the sale, sort of a boring business. I'm sort of a boring business guy. Do those things. Those customers, they're happy. They go boating. They talk to people and At least half of our owners have a friend that owns one of an Aspen or they met somebody that owns an Aspen and that's super true with the carbon cats. People that are out there playing with the carbon cats, know, it's really cute and then as they get out of the boat you can stand on the side of it. It doesn't even roll over.

Amanda Haley: This is a remote room.

Maryline: That that's true, Amanda. She's already convinced so many of our customers actually to buy your product as a dinghy. It's it's a great product.

Larry: It's perfect. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Amanda. It's good. It's good. But I think, you know, you just got to take your customers, they'll take care of you.

Amanda Haley: This is a remote.

Maryline: I agree with that.

Amanda Haley: So w what's what's next for Aspen? do you see yourself going into the electric market at all?

Larry: So, no, maybe on the tender side of things, there might be a possibility there. And we do have one company that would like us to do a C108 that's electric. but the issue is that an electric boat is a really different animal, especially a cruiser, than an electric car. With electric car, when you're driving down the freeway at speed, it's only using maybe seven or eight horsepower on a Tesla because it's aerodynamic. so a battery pack that's as big as those car battery packs at heart can give you decent range of performance. I mean, even my boat and my hull is probably the most efficient hull at 32 feet that you can get. I'm still using 110 horsepower to push my 32 footer through the water. So, you know, that's 11 times the energy that it takes to push a Tesla down the bay or down the freeway. And so the energy need is really large and the distances, especially if you want to go quick, it doesn't pan out very well. There's also no regenerative braking in a boat. So in a car, you drive around town, you put on the brakes, regenerator, charges the battery, puts in, you go down a hill, it recharges the battery. And that really helps a lot. We don't have any downhills on the water and it can actually get worse. If it gets rough water, it's like you're climbing a hill all the time. So it's a hard thing to do. And again, if you're okay going very slow at five or six miles an hour, then that's an electric thing that can be done. And you could make an electric aspen that would be pretty darn great if you're okay going six or seven miles an hour. For me, that's not my personality. And there may be somebody who wants that. I'd have to study that if it made sense to build a one-off prototype like

Amanda Haley: Mm-hmm.

Larry: at it, I've thought about it, I've looked at the physics of it. The other thing with electric that people need to think about is where did that electricity come from? I mean if you're charging it with a solar panel on the roof of your house, well that's one thing, but if you're burning coal or bunker fuel in a power plant somewhere and pushing it through a power line and then through a charger and then into a battery, each one of those conversions is basically

Amanda Haley: Right. Loss.

Larry: It's a loss. It's energy.

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Larry: there's heat, there's a loss. But it's incredibly bad for the environment to burn coal in Montana to charge an electric car in Washington. I wish people would think about that. they want to save energy. In Southern California, they have a lot of sun. A lot of the homes have solar panels all over the top of them. That's a great idea. That's good for the environment.

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Larry: So it's a good question a lot of people are going that way but um be the word.

Amanda Haley: Not ready to jump on that bandwagon yet, huh?

Larry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, you know, we really didn't really cover, that comparison between, you know, the displacement, you know, trawler idea and the power cabins. Most of the power cabins are planing boats.

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Larry: And so that's a deal where you're lifting the boat and wait up on the plane to get it to go, you know, quickly. The Aspen doesn't use any of, it's a high speed displacement hull, so it's kind of like an airplane moving on edge, it just slices through. So the big thing that we've got, that crossover, is our hull shape lets you do the trawler speed really, you know, crazy efficiency, like twice the efficiency of a typical boat our size. But the hull shape also, because it's a displacement shape, gives you the option to go quickly and not kill your Visa. It's just crazy. So that was kind of the genesis of maybe giving you a jingles. Like, hey, I've got something that's got maybe the best of both worlds. And that's kind of, you know, I think it's good to share.

Maryline: And now we've come full circle. That's amazing. Thank you for making sure that that's clear w with our audience. So thank you again. And I love the YouTube channel. I love the effort. Aspirin Cats puts great content out there. We'll make sure to share it with our listeners.

Larry: Yeah. Yeah. If

Maryline: And so in addition to the YouTube channel, I was gonna ask Larry, what are the next boat shows where we might see you and Aspen Cadmurans?

Larry: yeah, we'll be at the Annapolis Boat Show Power and we'll have the Carbon Cats at the Sailboat Boat Show. That was our first year in Annapolis for the Carbon Cats. was fabulous. Sailboat guys love our dinghies. Then we do the fall show in Seattle and then we do the Fort Lauderdale show in the fall and then circles into the Seattle show from there and then the spring show in Antwerp.

Amanda Haley: Yeah, absolutely.

Maryline: Well, we look forward to seeing you in our home turfs, respectively Annapolis and Fort Lauderdale. Thank you so much, Larry, for joining us and the Full Displacement Podcast. We shall see you on the next one. Fair wins.

Amanda Haley: It wins.

Larry: Thank you guys,