Marcia Blount isn’t shy about admitting how frightening it was last year when there was little to do in the shipyard she runs with her two sisters, Julie and Nancy.
When the credit crunch and recession had hit in 2008 and 2009, the marine industry, manufacturing and food services had been somewhat insulated. There was work in the pipeline – keels to lay, hulls to construct. But by 2010, the pipeline at Blount Boats Inc. had gone dry and no new orders had come in.
The payroll sank from approximately 50 people to about 30. And those who remained struggled to stay busy with repair work.
“It was a scary feeling,” said Marcia Blount, the family-owned boat-builder’s president and chief financial officer. “And I don’t want to do that again.”
Right now, she needn’t worry.
The shipyard off historic Water Street in Warren is humming. The company is in the midst of assembling four identical, 75-foot passenger boats for the Army. When complete, they’ll be deployed to a base in the South Pacific.
Blount also has won a contract to build a ferry for the Casco Bay Lines in Maine. And Marcia Blount told her sisters recently about another job just awarded to the company, this one a 75-foot shuttle boat for a transit authority in Puerto Rico.
The sisters say they are building on a foundation put in place by their late father, Luther, who started in the boat-building business in 1949 and whose innovations put a stamp on the boat-building industry.
The elder Blount has been credited with designing the first stern trawler in 1962, which changed the fishing industry. Among other things, he invented the controllable-pitch propeller, which improved maneuverability.
“He had a way of looking at a problem and seeing what was needed,” Marcia said.
Luther Blount got into the ship-building business in 1949 while working for his brother, Nelson, at Blount Seafood, according to Julie Blount. When Nelson needed a way to get rid of the foul-smelling clam shells piling up at the Warren business, Luther – ever the tinkerer – designed and constructed a catamaran-style boat with a louvered bottom to dump the shells in Narragansett Bay.
His brother didn’t want it. Luther Blount was able to sell the boat to a company in Belize. Soon after, a call came from someone who had seen the boat. Could he build another one?
“He was off and running,” said Julie Blount, executive vice president of Blount Boats.
The elder Blount had a strong, entrepreneurial spirit. When he noticed relatives and friends were clamoring to accompany the Blounts on overnight family excursions, he saw a business opportunity.
He launched a cruise company in 1966, offering trips on smaller boats with 80 to 90 passengers. “At the time, there was not a single small cruise company in the United States,” said Nancy Blount, who started working at the company in 1979.
Luther Blount returned from a trip to Paris in the early 1970s with another idea: He had seen dinner cruises on the Seine and thought the idea could be a success in the United States.
Special dinner boats were sold to companies at major U.S. port cities, and Blount Boats operated the Bay Queen on Narragansett Bay for years. (After management problems related to a company leasing the two Bay Queen boats, the Blounts ended the cruises and put their two excursion boats up for sale in 2010.)
The pressure was on the Blount sisters when their father passed away in 2006. The company was well-known in the industry largely because of Luther Blount.
“We were watched for a while,” said Marcia.
And when they’d attend national conferences for shipyard executives, the sisters were the only women in attendance. They became known as the “Blount girls.”
Marcia Blount said her father had put off shipyard improvements in his later years. So when the slowdown hit the shipyard in 2010, the Blounts took advantage of the lull. Using a $1.1 million federal grant that was part of the federal government’s stimulus package, the company upgraded its equipment.
Those improvements are paying off now. In a tour of the six-acre shipyard, Julie Blount points to hulls under construction that will bring boats made by the company to 335. And the Blount sisters are confident they soon will be adding to that number. •
COMPANY PROFILE
Blount Boats Inc.
OWNERS: Marcia Blount, president and CEO; Julie Blount, executive vice president; and Nancy Blount, president of Blount Small Ship Adventures
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Boat builder
LOCATION: 461 Water St., Warren
EMPLOYEES: 50
YEAR FOUNDED: 1949
ANNUAL SALES: WND
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