Sue’s Blog – Confluence Boat Production in China

Given it is a touchy and often misunderstood issue, I wanted to share some perspective on our composite boat product offering that is manufactured in China (affecting Wilderness Systems Tempest PRO, Zephyr PRO, and Tsunami PRO). Just back from a visit to our production facility in China last week and was very pleased with the overall commitment to quality.

Fact: Confluence Watersports manufactures 99.6% of its total boat production in Easley, South Carolina.

Fact: Confluence eliminated NO jobs as a result of moving composite production to China.

Fact: Confluence employees develop and oversee the entire production and quality process.

Fact: Confluence was one of the last, if not the last, to execute a composite production program in China.

Fact: This new product is now lighter, less expensive and higher quality than we would have previously been able to offer—something that benefits our consumers as well as our retailers.

Fact: If we did not pursue manufacturing these particular composite sea kayaks at lower labor rates, we would have had no choice but to discontinue the product offering. This would have a negative impact on the organization (lost business), employees (potential lost jobs) our retailers (smaller product offering) and our brand loyal consumers (no product offered in this category).

While I do not support moving manufacturing to other countries as a matter of course, it’s important to realize that in our case it was done out of necessity. We take great pride in offering high quality, high performance products. We did not want to discontinue our composite program as it is an important part of our overall Wilderness Systems product offering.

In order to ensure that our product met expectations, we also sent our team to China to set up the production process, materials sourcing and quality standards. In addition to having a direct employee located in China to overseeing the facility, we continue to have our US based team intimately involved to ensure our process and standards are maintained.

Most things aren’t ever quite what they seem. While I can not speak for the many organizations that have made decisions to move jobs to other countries, I can say that we did it for the overall benefit of all of our stakeholders—consumers, employees, retail partners and shareholders. Our composite sales are on a dramatic rise, our business has benefited from a more fiscally appropriate program, and we now have the ability to further invest in our brands and our organization as a result of this success.

Sue Rechner

CEO Confluence Watersports