Whenever you start a new business, you always have to make some assumptions before you start. Things like who your customers will be, what will the customers want, what is the best way to deliver it . . . The questions tend to be the same, regardless of the type of business. When I started Smith Marine Design I made some assumptions as well. It turns out they have been mostly wrong so far, but in a good way.

By nature, I tend to be a bit pessimistic which leads to caution. Not a good trait when you are an artist or inventor trying to live on the cutting edge. But when you are designing vehicles, like boats, that caution can mean the difference between life and death. In my case, it led me to make somewhat pessimistic assumptions as to how many customers I would have and how much time I could devote to various things. The good news was that I assumed I would have a very difficult time finding clients. Fortunately, I was wrong. So far my biggest problem has been keeping up with them all!

The bad news is that the time I thought I would have to devote to creating stock plans (as well as maintaining this website) has not materialized, and doesn't look likely to anytime soon! I really thought that I would have time to work on projects like the Crystal River 15' Skiff, but it just hasn't been possible. I also started work not too long ago on an outboard version of the Finesse 27. I had gotten enough of the design done to get excited about it, then ran out of time again. It is still at the top of my list of things to work on in my "free time", after the 6-8 boats I am currently working on for paying customers. I did find enough time to get the 25' Cuddy added to the Dreamboats section. I haven't added Study Plans for it though, as there aren't enough nice drawings done yet to create a package.

I have removed the Crystal River 15' Skiff from my Stock Plans page for the above mentioned reason. But there is more to this than design time. I have also had to re-evaluate what projects make sense from a financial standpoint. When I look at the time it takes to package up the drawings and put them in the mail, not to mention arranging for payment, running to the post office, making copies, buying mailing tubes (I hate folded drawings) . . . basically all the little things that are sometimes overlooked as part of the project, it starts to make me wonder if it is profitable to sell plans for a small boat.

By their nature, small boat plans can not command high prices. Most people wanting to build small boats don't have large wads of cash sitting under their mattress, so they are not ready to part with a few hundred dollars for a set of plans for a $1,000 boat. The market price for such a design seems to be in the $25 - $40 range. If it takes me an hour accumulated time to deal with sending the plan and maybe answering some questions during construction, I would have been better off not selling the plan at all and using that time to work on a clients project. And I haven't even factored in how many sets of plans I have to sell in order to re-coup the time it took to actually create them in the first place.

That being said, when times are tougher and clients fewer and further between, I'll be wishing I had a bunch of customers lined up for those $40.00 plans! The trick is finding the right way to package and send the drawings and still make a profit. My former employer, Jay Benford, decided that the best way for him to do this was to package all his small boat plans into a book called Small Craft Plans. These are marketed through his publishing company, Tiller Publishing. The purchaser, for the price of one book, gets plans for a number of boats that they can build. Packaging the books for mailing is relatively simple, although financing the printing of a couple thousand books can be daunting. As I don't have the time to put together the plans, nonetheless a book, this probably isn't the best solution for me!

Other companies specialize in this type of plan. They have developed economies of scale over many years of hard work that have enabled them to make a living selling stock plans for small boats. Although I haven't decided yet, it may be that I have to leave this market to those companies and focus on other areas for my stock plans. In the meantime, if you are interested in a small custom design and aren't in a big hurry, contact me and we'll see if we can work something out.

Another assumption that didn't work out was the idea that I could wait until year 2 to buy a plotter. A plotter is basically a large printer that you use to print out drawings from a CAD program. Unlike other printers, plotters have not come down substantially in price. After a few attempts to get drawings printed through my local plotting service, it became obvious that my computer/CAD program did not like their plotter at all. Nothing that a $1000.00 printer couldn't solve!

I also thought I could wait a couple years before upgrading my CAD package to something that does surfaces and solids. While I could have put it off a little longer, when the accountant told me I hadn't made enough money to owe any taxes, I was able to use the money in my tax account for an upgrade to my CAD arsenal. I have now purchased Ashlar-Vellum Argon, which works well with my existing Ashlar-Vellum Graphite. This will allow me to create surfaced files that can be carved by computer controlled routers in order to make a plug for a mold. Argon also does photo-realistic rendering and virtual fly-through's/fly-by's which should prove handy for presentations of new designs. Now, if I could only find the time to learn how to use it . . .

Timm Smith
July 21, 2004