Corporations: New Course for Chris-Craft

How does a company that has grown fat with long success recover its youthful thrust and vigor? For Chris-Craft Corp., the world’s largest manufacturer of motorboats, the answer to this question was to be found last week in boatyards in Michigan and Florida. There, hidden under tarpaulins, lay the sleek 2j-H. aluminum cabin cruisers that Chris-Craft plans to put on the market next month, as well as prototypes of a racy fiber-glass runabout that the company may include in its 1962 line.

In its 39-year existence. Chris-Craft has consistently outdistanced its competitors by combining innovation with craftsmanship (TIME cover, May 18, 1959). As one of the chief instigators, and as the prime beneficiary of the U.S. boating boom, Chris-Craft has averaged 14% growth every year since 1946. But by the late 19505. Chris-Craft, though still on top was not in tiptop shape. Run almost singlehanded by Chairman Harsen Smith with occasional advice from 53 other Smiths, the family-owned corporation was in visible -danger of losing its position as the company that made the right moves first. Says one top Chris-Craft executive: “We had gotten so we didn’t pay attention to the market trends. The philosophy was: Let the pioneers get the arrows in their behinds.”

The New Order. The turning point for Chris-Craft came in early 1960 when Harsen Smith, beset by family disagreements, sold out for $40 million to NAFI Corp., a Wall Street-run venture company controlled by famed Yachtsman Cornelius Shields. 66. and his investment banker brother Paul. To replace Smith as chief executive officer, the Shieldses installed bluff, chunky President Harry Coll, 52. who had been with Chris-Craft since 1939. Even before the Shields brothers took over. Coll had sent his close friend. Sales Vice President Charles R. Burgess, 51. off to survey the company’s dealer organization. “Time and again,” recalls Burgess. ;a dealer would tell me, ‘You’re the first Chris-Craft s.o.b. that has visited my place in 20 years.’ ” When the survey was done, Coll and Burgess lopped off 180 nonproductive dealers, assured the remaining 600 that the company was receptive to dealer advice on the kind of boats that it should build.

Pile & Picture Windows. Given a free hand by the Shields brothers. Coll himself took a pencil to Chris-Craft’s blueprints. A mechanical engineer with a flair for design, he slimmed the bulging bow line, streamlined the superstructure to give the boats a racier silhouette. To please lady sailors, he installed molded fiber-glass vanities and washbowls in the heads, put pile carpets in the cabins, and picture windows in the galleys. As a result of the new look, Chris-Craft is once again, according to Coll, “at least two years in front of its competitors—and I intend to keep it there.”

With a new emphasis on research, Chris-Craft is building at its Pompano Beach (Fla.) headquarters a $250,000 laboratory to evaluate the data it gathers in ocean-testing its new models. Chris-Craft engineers are experimenting with jet engines for boats. They are also testing a new “outmount” drive unit that combines the best features of an inboard engine (lower center of gravity, less fuel consumption) with the good points of an outboard (the drive shaft kicks up if it strikes an obstruction, can be raised for beaching and loading aboard a trailer).

Sails on the Horizon. Though the U.S. boating industry is currently in the throes of a major shakeout—sales this year are 25% below the 1960 level—Chris-Craft is faring relatively well. Coll expects that sales for the fiscal year ending Aug. 31 will reach $43 million, a decline of 8% from the previous year. Chris-Craft has opened a sales subsidiary in Lausanne. Switzerland. With its exports to Europe running 56% ahead of last year’s, the company plans to set up its own European factory, possibly in Italy.

Under the friendly prodding of expert sailor “Corny” Shields, Chris-Craft, which has confined itself exclusively to “stinkpots,” is considering going into the sailboat business. The leading U.S. naval architects, Sparkman & Stephens, have designed for Chris-Craft a 34-ft. fiberglass motor sailer. The new sailboat would give Chris-Craft an entry into a market even larger than the cabin cruiser trade.