Slow Ride | Orange County Business Journal
12/20/10 10:40 AM
Slow Ride
Duffy Boats Are Way of Life; Prius of Newport Harbor
Duffield: “The hybrid -car has been the
biggest helper for us to be acceptable or
credible”
By Sherri Cruz
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Marshall “Duffy” Duffield set out to be a famous sailboat designer. Instead, he invented the Duffy.
“I never knew I’d be known for the world’s slowest boat,” Duffield said.
Duffield’s Duffy Electric Boat Co., started in Newport Beach 40 years ago, makes small electric pleasure boats that top out at about 5 miles per hour.
The boats are designed for people who live on lakes or near waterways with restrictions on boat size or noise.
They’re a fixture of Newport Harbor, where residents use them to shuttle between private slips and yacht clubs and restaurants, or for harbor pleasure cruises.
They’re dubbed the “cocktail cruiser.”
Duffys range in length from 14 feet to 22 feet. Their small size and canvas canopy makes them sort of cute.
The boats are sold all over the world to resorts, homeowners and others through dealers and four of Duffy Electric Boat’s own stores on Pacific Coast Highway
in Newport Beach, in Huntington Beach, Oxnard and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
They cost $13,000 to $60,000.
There are about 2,200 Duffys in Newport Beach, where the boats are a way of life.
At the Bluewater Grill waterfront restaurant in Newport Beach, Duffy boaters pull up dockside and pick up seafood platters.
On a busy weekend, the restaurant serves about 20 platters a day for Duffy boaters, said Brian Hirsty, executive chef.
Newport Dunes Waterfront RV Resort & Marina owns a Duffy fleet that it rents to guests.
Duffy owners also live in Huntington Harbour, Lake Mission Viejo and on other waterways in the county.
Lake Mission Viejo and two man-made lakes in neighboring Lake Forest “only allow electric boats,” Duffy said.
“It’s much easier to sell homes when it’s quiet,” he said.
Duffys are quiet because of their electric engines. They go about seven hours on one charge.
Duffy designed a model especially for people who live lakeside, the M160, which costs $30,000.
Owners “like it to be tied up to their house as an extension of their patio,” he said. “You don’t even have to untie it and go anywhere. It just becomes giant
patio furniture.”
The company makes 200 to 250 boats a year at a 30,000-square-foot factory in Adelanto in the Inland Empire. At capacity, the company can make 1,000 boats
a year.
Duffy employs about 200 people.
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Slow Ride | Orange County Business Journal
12/20/10 10:40 AM
The company doesn’t disclose annual sales. The Business Journal estimates Duffy Electric Boat at a ballpark $10 million in yearly sales.
Downturn, Recent Pickup
The economic downturn has slowed sales, according to Duffield.
“The last two years have been awful,” he said. “We make something that you absolutely don’t need.”
But Duffield said he’s seen a recent uptick. He called the past six months “extraordinary.”
Boat rentals have helped the company in the downturn.
Duffield reluctantly started renting Duffys 15 years ago.
“My thinking—and wrongly so—was if you could rent one, why would you buy one?” he said.
But rentals generate revenue and sometimes lead to sales, according to Duffield.
And rentals see the biggest profits, he said.
Duffy charges $90 an hour to rent.
“We make the boats, so we get our cost back on the boat lickety-split,” Duffield said.
The Prius, Toyota Motor Corp.’s hybrid electric car, has been a boost to the company, according to Duffield.
“The hybrid car has been the biggest helper for us to be acceptable or credible,” he said.
Prior to the Prius, many people thought electric engines were unreliable, Duffield said.
Eventually, Duffield said he’d like to sell his company to another boat maker or perhaps a boutique electric car maker.
“We’re waiting out the economy,” he said.
Duffield grew up in a waterfront home in Newport Beach in the 1950s and ’60s. His dad always had boats that needed fixing.
“I would go hang and watch,” he said.
He liked to draw boats, something his father and his Newport Harbor High School drafting teacher noticed and encouraged.
His teacher led him to books on ship design and helped get him a job as a draftsman at a boat maker after school.
That was when Costa Mesa was the biggest boat making hub in the U.S.
Boat building since has shifted to Florida, mostly due to rising property values and stricter air quality regulations here.
In Duffield’s early 20s, he honed his design skills when he set out to build a sailboat and compete in the Transpacific Yacht Race to Hawaii.
Duffield’s grand plan was to win and then mass produce his sailboat.
He enlisted seven friends to help build it.
Once the hull was done, they each put up $1,000 and called in a banker, who gave them a $60,000 loan.
They finished the 50-foot boat in four months and named it Native Son.
The crew raced in the Transpacific a couple of times.
“No one died,” he said. “Nothing broke.”
The boat won third in its class the first time out. But people don’t buy boats that place third, Duffield said.
“We thought we were going to win,” he said. “When you’re that age, you think you’re invincible.”
Looking back, Duffield called it “a moral victory.”
“It gave me a lot of self-confidence,” he said.
Five years ago, Duffield and his engineering partner redesigned the Duffy’s propulsion system to make it more difficult to copy.
The new engine is smaller, which made the interior space bigger.
“The old engine took up a lot of the interior,” he said.
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Slow Ride | Orange County Business Journal
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The late Roy Disney, a well known yachter and nephew of Walt Disney, was the inspiration for Duffy’s 14-foot Shamrock, the company’s smallest model.
Duffy named the boat after Disney’s Burbank-based investment company, Shamrock Holdings Inc.
Disney had asked Duffield to build him a smaller boat for one of his lakefront houses that only allowed small boats, Duffield said.
Duffield never made a boat that small, so he first made a prototype.
He sawed two feet out of the middle of a 16-foot Duffy and glued it together to see how it would look.
“It looked like something you put on your charm bracelet,” Duffield said.
He decided to add the boat to his lineup. He surprised Disney with the finished boat.
“He was so happy,” Duffield said.
But Duffield would rather see people buy one of his bigger boats.
“If we sold (a Shamrock) every day it would be great,” he said. “But to make that, it’s the same human beings, the same parts and you get a lot less money.”
Duffy just came out with a 22-foot Bay Island model. It has a new luxury—a head (a toilet, in boating parlance) with a pull around curtain.
Duffield said he hopes to sell the Bay Island in Florida, the largest boat market.
Floridians are older and they wanted a bathroom, he said.
“The hardest market to crack has been Florida,” Duffield said.
Duffy has more competition there.
Some of his competitors include larger boat makers as well as upstarts, including Westlake Village-based ElectraCraft Inc., American Beauty Boats Inc. in
Oxnard and Lear Baylor Inc. in Newport Beach
Desert Factory
Duffield moved his boat factory from Costa Mesa to Adelanto, near Victorville, in 1998.
It became too expensive to make boats here, and neighbors didn’t like the smell.
“We used to have to put vanilla scent in the resin—it smelled like a bakery,” he said. “I never wanted to move to the desert. It was a huge hardship.”
There is an upside.
“All of my workers own a home,” Duffield said.
They have $400 monthly mortgages and live in neighborhoods, he said.
“It’s a little hot, it’s a little windy, it’s a little cold,” Duffield said. “But they’ve put down a stake in the ground and it’s home sweet home.”
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