It was garbage left behind by careless paddlers on the Slate Islands in Lake Superior that planted the seed for an innovative idea in an entrepreneurial Terrace Bay couple.
Shawn and Brenda Whitney are making a big splash with the spring launch of a new kayaking accessory. The owners of Enviro Wilderness Pod Inc. are taking their Kayak Kaboose to market after six years of research and development.
“I’m glad it’s finally getting off the ground,” said Shawn, an ex-navy man and former mill worker at Terrace Bay Pulp.
Together with Brenda, also a former mill worker, the couple have personally invested almost $100,000 in testing prototypes and hitches for a light-weight craft that can be towed behind a kayak, canoe or Jet Ski.
“It’s been a pretty expensive venture with five prototypes and six hitches until we finally got it right,” said Shawn.
The Whitneys envision their all-plastic, two-metre long carrier will appeal to families and hard-core kayakers wanting to extend their long distance excursions from days to weeks. As a paddler, Shawn knew kayaks have limited storage space so he came up with some rudimentary drawings on a towed craft that could carry extra gear. A key component was designing the hitch.
Through a contact at Rudnicki Industrial in Thunder Bay, they came up with a simple design using a guide tube hooked up to a zig-zag cleat on the side of the kayak cockpit. A rope acts as a swivel. If either the kayak or carrier flips, the other craft will stay upright.
Skip Izon, a Grand Bend, Ont. master boat builder of Olympic racing skulls, designed their first model, a cedar strip prototype, before the Whitneys switched to a plastic hull for its reduced weight, durability and affordability.
The Kayak Kaboose weighs seven kilograms. The waterproof container can carry 69 kilograms of camping gear. The Whitneys briefly showcased their product last year at a Thunder Bay film festival and at an outdoor sports show in February. It sells for $849.99 at Ostrom Outdoors in Thunder Bay and online through the Whitneys' website (www.kayakkaboose.com).
To bring the idea from grassroots to an advanced stage, they solicited advice from many people. Some extreme kayakers water-tested the craft, but the Whitneys also sought marketing and business advice from people like Bill Ostrom, the retailer of kayaks and canoes, as well as staff at the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre.
Innovation Centre manager Judy Sander remembers Shawn first coming in with a crude sketch of a prototype. He had entered their annual Idea Factory Challenge a few years ago and finished as a runner-up.
“The nice thing about Shawn and Brenda is they didn’t give up. The perseverance was there and that’s part of the success.”
The centre assisted them with business planning, market research, sourcing suppliers and technical help, filing their U.S. patent, and securing funding through IRAP (Industrial Research Assistance Program).
Both Shawn and Brenda said it’s been a “great partnership” with the Innovation Centre who steered them to the right people.
One connection they made was with Waveform Plastics Technology Inc. of South River, who is their exclusive manufacturer.
The family-owned company has produced 25 hulls for the Whitneys so far, with plans for a second run of 25 coming this spring, said sales and project manager Len Hodder.
The plastic fabricating company specializes in making canoe and kayak seats, decks and cockpit rims.
The Kayak Kaboose uses standard ABS plastic with an acrylic cap, material favoured by every kayak manufacturer, said Hodder.
“We’ve been able to draw on our experience in this industry and we’ve sourced some standard tried-and-true materials.”
The company provided some technical advice on the prototypes and performed some strength and water tightness tests using computer simulation software.
We went through a couple of iterations to get the right material,” said Hodder. “(Shawn) was pretty picky about it but it made good sense.
“The one thing I would say is he really knows what he wants and made sure he got what we wanted. He really worked to get the design right and wasn’t satisfied with anything that wasn’t exactly what it needed to be.”
The Whitneys held a February press conference in Thunder Bay to officially unveil the Kayak Kaboose and their website registered 18,000 hits in one week.
Beginning in April, their plans are to hit kayak symposiums from South Carolina to Oregon, as well as show it to outfitters around the Lake Superior loop.
“There’s nothing like this in the world,” said Shawn.
Once they finish with the trade show circuit, the Whitneys have future plans for other craft designs.
“We have a lot of ideas but one thing at a time,” said Brenda.
