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Steve Murray An Interview By Bill Mattson It would be tough to find a Hobie sailor who has not heard of Murray's Marine. The California based company sells parts and accessories to sailors worldwide, at a current annual volume of $2,000,000. For Frank and I, it's almost a recreation to spend time looking through the new Murray's catalogue. Whenever I have some extra money, and feel like treating myself, I get out the Post-It notes and start marking pages. I recently spent part of an afternoon talking with the founder of Murray's Marine, Steve Murray. At 53, Steve is married with 2 children, and when sailing, is usually on a Hobie 18. He also spends time on a Hobie 20 with his friend Ron Bishow. While he enjoys either sailing with crew, or as crew, he occasionally sails a Hobie 17 solo. "Better to sail alone on the 17 than to not sail at all." I've visited Steve at his business in Carpinteria a few times in the past, and always find him wearing the same office attire: T-shirt, shorts and sandals. While his warehouse and workshop are relatively orderly, his personal office is a bit organizationally challenged. Well... It's a mess, actually. Now, my office is pretty much a mess too, but this is the first one I've seen that actually rivals it. But this seems to work for Steve, since he does a lot of business and works with a huge inventory of merchandise covering sailing, windsurfing, paddlesports, and snowboarding. He satisfies mny happy customers in different sports, and probably not one of them gives a hoot about what Steve's desk looks like. |
| To meet Steve is to meet someone who really enjoys what he does. There's always a pleasant smile on Steve's face. When you discuss any new products or modifications you are considering for your boat, you get a sense of knowledgeable empathy from him. You may feel compelled to explain to him exactly what you need, but all the while you get that slight smile and look that says "I've been there. I've seen it. I already know what you're looking |
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for." Don't get me wrong:
It's not at all patronizing. He listens intently, but that slight smile tells you that he understands.
His been there, done that, and still enjoys hearing it again. Sort of like the Dad listening to his
son's experience in his first baseball game.
When you ask about any of his new products, there's a controlled, yet genuine enthusiasm about the new innovative stuff he offers. He took some time showing me the new Pro Harness, describing all the really nice features. He never mentioned how many he expects to sell, or how much of a profit he plans on making. What he did explain was how unique the product was, how well it is made, and most importantly: how well it works. This is one of those products that has been worked, and reworked, until it has reached its fullest potential. You get a sense of Steve's dedication to value and innovation when he describes this kind of stuff. It's good stuff and he wants to make every sailors life easier with it. He's a kid in a candy store, and the candy is so good, he wants to tell every other kid in the world about it. So you went in to business in the late sixties? Bought the first boat, a Hobie 14 in 1968, from a little trade show, probably down at the Pan Pacific Auditorium, There was this crowd of people around this little mini backlit 16mm movie projector, the precursor to the video tape players. There was this crowd around this thing, and I figured I'd come back and see what these people are interested in later. Anyway, this arm reaches out to me and pulls me in. "Steve... Take a look at this." It was a college friend of mine named Rick Taylor. "You gotta see this." It was the film "Sailing in The Surf" with Sandy Banks. You can buy the film today from the Hobie Film Festival. We sell it today. It's got Sandy, Wayne Schafer, and Ronda Banks, all at the beach at Capistrano, talking about how and why they developed the Hobie 14. Neat little film. It definitely drew a big crowd. Rick told me later that he was the sail maker for Hobie, and that he was building the sails and the trampolines. And he said "Get one!". So I did. A little while later I after I had gotten one, I found the need for center sheeting traveler system. At the time, there was only a V-cleat at each end of the rear cross bar. So you'd release one V-Cleat and pull it across to the other one. Or maybe you can set them with a little slack and it would self adjust, by slamming from one side to the other. But you couldn't, with a single line, control its position across the back. So we worked that out. Basically it was something to hold the cleat. There was another friend of mine was a in school to become a tool maker. So he made this aluminum form to make this one part. I put them in paper bags, brown paper bags at that, and wrote "Super Traveler" on them and started to take them around to the local dealers. To my delight they ordered 5 or 10 at time, these little lunch bags. So with that launch, I said "Okay... What can we do next?". Well, Rick not only was doing the sails but he had these ideas on how to make better harnesses than what Hobie was providing. So with "Super Travelers" and tailored harness, Murray's was in business. So that was in 69? Probably the harnesses might have come in 70, but yeah, right about then. That was out here in California? Yeah. It was in West Los Angeles Is that were you're from? Yeah, I was born in Lancaster, but grew up in West L.A. By the time we were into the Catamarans we had a place on Gateway and Barington, which is really right near the intersections of the Santa Monica and San Diego Freeways. So you got into the business right after you got out of college? When I first got into it, I was probably still in college. And I got into teaching and got married. Both my wife and I taught, and we had swimming school and a ski shop at that location. so we were into busy times. You had a business established already? Right... A family business. I would use, rent free, one the rooms, which had been leased out at other times. So I did use it with my brother's support for some time, with the ski shop and swimming school. When did you establish business out here in Carpenteria? Well... we got so that we had basically outgrown the space that we had in West L.A. And I told my wife that we could live anywhere where there was UPS delivery. It didn't make any difference. Also at that time Stan Cowel, my wife's brother, was living here at rincon and commuting to L.A. to work with me. Well... he was living at his parents house at rincon point, and when we were about to have our second child, Janie wanted to be a little bit closer to a support group... family. So we started looking up here to see if we could find a place to live. For the most part you're a marketer of parts. Have you also sold boats? Sold boats sporadically during the time, but we let someone else sell the razors and we will sell the blades. We're so deep into blades that razors just don't fit into our scheme. It takes too much time and space, and we've had to become very efficient at this and we just don't have anybody to spend the time to get people going on boats. What's your sales volume? Around 2 million dollars, right now. It had been up to nearly 3 at the height. The height being probably around the early 80s? The early 80s... right. Of course, I don't know what Hobie's volume is right now, but they've diversified into new products, and new owners for that matter. They had shrunk done to something on the order of maybe, in the wide range of 10 to 20 percent of what they once were doing. In other words, an 80 to 90 percent shrink. Our total shrinkage has been about 33%. There's a difference since many of the old boats Hobie made are still there. We are now starting to see the end of the cycle of many of those earlier boats. They are starting to disappear, either by export or... they've gotten so tired that they just aren't fixable anymore. Now you offer parts for Nacras and Prindles as well? Right, right. But the bulk of the fleet is Hobie, though. You've diversified as well into other sports, such as snowboarding? The first diversification was windsurfing. Of course, Hobie tried the same thing a couple of years later. We showed windsurfers, sailboards actually, at a Hobie dealers meeting, and within a season or two Hobie was hooked up with O'Brian, though the Coleman marriage I guess. So, we've all been trying to diversify. More recently, getting out of the water sports, we've been working with snowboards. This was a relationship which grew out of windsurfing, since the company that builds our boards also builds does our windsurfing masts. We're also getting into paddle sports, which has been pretty good for us, but been really good for Hobie I understand. Talking to the people at the factory.... this is what they are really excited about now. Was it tough getting started? No. It was just fun. It was not entirely important. Nothing depended upon it, we were just making our toys work a little bit better. Everybody was doing this. But instead of just doing it once for ourselves, we just kept doing it for everybody. Is there a core philosophy or set of core values that you run your company upon? Running the business and staying in it for pushing 30 years has certainly helped us hone a set of values if they didn't exist in the beginning. In the beginning we didn't even think about it. There was a set of values, but nothing you could write on a wall. But the values have never changed. It all involves treating people fairly. You want to have fun. And part of that is everybody being happy. And your not being happy if you either feel cheated or get the comebacks from someone else who feels cheated. So, giving people good value and good service and products that do what they hope to have done. It's a tight little circle and it's win/win. You learn not be overly optimistic. The real temptation early on is to tell people what you think they want to hear. That can come back to sting you. It's a lot better that if it can't be done, to face up to it in the beginning so everyone knows where you stand. Just treat people fairly and honestly, and deal with people who are so similar if you possibly can. There's a note in the introduction of your catalogue where you write " I don't waste my time looking for the lowest cost alternative". Does this leave you at a disadvantage to those who might undercut you on price? Price is really important to some people. Many businesses are just run on price, such as Cosco and The Price Club where there are just commodity things. But you wind up with fewer and fewer choices of things being produced in a mass and efficient way. This is not really compatible with what we are doing. I would say that catamaraning and many of our other toys will just never fit into that system. They're just not popular enough. But then again, what are some of your favorite things? They're probably not the ones that came out of that type of an environment: The cheapest thing you could buy from a mass merchant that can't tell you anything about it. That's never been my standard. I want to have the value and the quality. That's important. Okay..... For example, I found a connection in the far east to do my wet suits. I could go 2 routes with it: I could make them really cheap by using every trick in the book, plus use the low cost labor. Or.... let's use the advantage of the lower cost labor... that's okay.... and consider what we can add to the suit. Not just a bell and whistle, but something to really put value in the suit. To do the best job we can do. I had the choice, and I chose to make it the best suit it could be rather than one that costs less. Many of your products are "cutting edge" and incorporate some neat ideas. Is this something you enjoy? I love toys. And I can't really claim to put anything on the cutting edge myself, but I am attracted to people with ideas. Many of the people I seem to get hooked up with have more ideas than money. I'm willing to take a risk with a good idea. But you should see what comes in here. I mean, it's just amazing. This is because I leave my self open to new ideas. So I have to do a lot of sifting through stuff that never makes it into the catalogue. Any new items around the corner that you are particularly excited about? Actually, I've got some new items that are already in the pipe which I'm really excited about. They haven't really been discovered yet, even though they may appear in the catalogue. It may be a matter of us not making the information as prominent as it should be. I think we've made good incremental development in the harnesses. The race harness, I think, is a giant step up the road from the freedom harness, yet the freedom harness is still outselling it. Because of inertia. The dealers have been selling it, the customers have been relatively happy, the dealers look at their sales records and they reorder it. They haven't really discovered the racing harness yet. The sales are getting close, but they don't reflect the best product. The support and seat system are much more comfortable on the racing harness, I'm just so sure it shows that well on the rack. We've gone on to something called the Pro Harness, which has an exoskeleton around the back. It has great support on the back, flexibility forward, very comfortable and has a great suspension system. I was out in it at Lake Huntington. I settled back in the harness. If it was any more comfortable, I wouldn't want to come in off of a tack. The other thing that really goes with the harnesses, that it not clear to everybody, it that you have to have a really smooth surface underneath it. I see people wearing them over dry suits, where it's going to slide around. You can't put the harness in the right position, or at least have it stay there. It's not going to be as comfortable as it can be. Now, I'm not going to suggest that people where a wet suit over a drysuit. But there is a new life jacket called the Solution, which is partially made out of neoprene and fits really close. It's very light and soft, and made of foam from Switzerland. It's expensive. But I put that down underneath my harness, which keeps the harness and place. People have been asking for a lifejacket and harness combination. There was a company that did one for a while, but this is better than that ever was. Another thing is the technology in wetsuits. Using these super plyable rubbers, and putting stretch panels where they've never been before. Opening up the sleeves so that you arms stay comfortable after your arms pump up from working the main sheet. One of the downsides to our old wet suits was that the sleeves would hold your arms too tight and take away your strength. The windsurfers discovered that. They couldn't use the surfer wet suits cause the strength would be sapped from there arms. Using the new windsurfer type wetsuits on a catamaran has many advantages. There's reduced windage, they're far more comfortable, the harness stays in place, they're much less expensive, and they're very warm. Besides, there's been many articles supporting the use of wetsuits instead of dry suits. There has been incidents where sailors end up in the water and can't catch their boats. You can't swim as fast in a baggy suit. And it doesn't have any buoyancy unless you inflate it. But then your the Goodyear man. It might be a good survival suit, and your going to need it if you can't catch your boat. Rick Bliss, who I think came in second in the Worrel, was one of the only guys wearing a wet suit, but he was wearing the new stuff. The Barz glasses is another great product. And the antifog on them is just amazing. This stuff just will not fog. So if your out doing The Wild Thing on the leeward side of a Hobie 20 with a blast of water in your face, you can still see. If you're in a Kayak in whitewater, doing rolls, you can still see. There was a guy who kayaks in ocean whitewater told me that he could see so well that it was distracting, since he had learned to surf by feel. And they're wonderful for snowboarding and skiing. I know that I'm about one year in front of this technology being readily used by other manufacturers. The antifog, along with the goggles that fit with gaskets on your face, is two things that nobody else has. I'm pumped about that. There was a little note about the goggles recently in Outside magazine. Man, what that did to our phones. For a while, over half the calls came in were about the goggles. You want to be ahead of the curve or behind the curve. You try and lead people to where you think they ought to go, or be there to offer what they have already figured out that they want to have. That's always the challenge. In the beginning, all we had to do was fill in the niches that Hobie left behind. Asking, "What does it need?" When the design had an obvious deficiency, you fill it in and everybody's happy. But now, we push the envelope, and it takes a discouragingly long amount of time to get the information out on what advances are available to them. Do you think the small catamarans are going to be around a while? I sure hope so. There are some exciting new developments in the 20' catamaran. The Hobie Miracle is a real nice boat. Nacra is coming out with a boat designed by Melvin and Morelli, a 20 footer, 8 1/2 ft wide. The same design team has designed, or maybe has sold the design, to a gentleman in Colorado whose putting together an all carbon kit boat for about around $15,000. This boat will be 20' long, but weigh about as much as a Hobie 16. A very, very high performance boat. Larry Hartec is sailing the Nacra-Prindle version, which I believe in Europe is called the Formula 18. And this is an interesting thing.... In Europe, there's Hobie, Dart, Nacra and probably others that are all building boats to the same formula. And their selling piles of ‘em. In Europe. And there's maybe one or two boats... well, ok... they did the Alter Cup last year with the Nacra version of the boat, without spinnakers. Everybody in Europe was flying spinnakers on that boat, but they figured that the U.S. guys just didn't have the experience with the spinnakers. Now Nacra has now stretched that boat, which is a Melvin and Morelli design, by 2 feet. And there now working out the bugs. Larry Hartec sailed it in the Texel race in Holland, which is probably the biggest annual catamaran races since it pulls about 600 boats. Anyway, there is a number of boats coming out. I'm not sure who is going to buy them. The Hobie 20 is definitely stealing from the Hobie 18 and the Hobie 17. The Hobie 16 seems to be holding up, but we can see defections there as well. We're just feeding on ourselves. We're not bringing in the new people on the new boats. The new people are buying the buying the old Hobie 16s and Hobie 18s. That's where the new people are coming from. I think we've hurt ourselves tremendously by exporting so many of these old boats before their time. Because the new boats are not good starter boats for the people here. So you feel that many new people buy old boats, then eventually buy new ones later on? Oh yes, once they get into it. People are still buying Hobie 16s new, but they are usually already into the boats. I had someone tell me today that they had a customer, who was new to the sport, buy a new Hobie 16. That was shocking news to me. I would think to myself: Why? You could have a great boat for $1000 to get started on. But I guess that's bad thinking on my part. If I were a boat dealer I suppose I should encourage people to spend 7 or 8 thousand dollars on a new Hobie 16. Maybe that's why I just do the parts. Getting back to your business operations, Murrays now has an internet site? Right. It took six months to get it going, and I thought it was an awful lot of work for I'm not sure what. But we try and ask everybody who calls us, who doesn't have an account, "Okay... How'd you find us?". The Internet is definitely a player. We haven't actually tallied it, but I suspect that 10 to 15 percent of the calls are from people who have actually found us on the Internet. Number 1 is word of mouth. So Murray's is going to be around a while? Yeah.... We're going to be around a while. It's all about fun. We buy from places around the world, and we sell to places around the world. And it's all about toys. So the people you deal with are happy, and are having fun buying their toys. That's the best part. It's all about fun. Bill Mattson mattson@earthlink.net You can visit Murray's on the web at www.murrays.com, or give them a call at (805)684-8393. Special Thanks to Steve Murray for his time as well as his invaluable service to the sailing community over the past 28 years. Back to Features |