The Joint Archives Quarterly

Fifty Years of Making Fun: The Story of the Slick Craft Boat Company

by Geoffrey D. Reynolds

The history of the boat building industry in Holland, Michigan, is rich with stories of success and failure. S2 Yachts, Inc. is one of the success stories. When the Slick Craft Boat Company was founded in 1955, their founder and leader, Leon Slikkers, made up his mind to build quality boats that were affordable to consumers. In 1974, Slikkers reestablished those same qualities with the formation of S2 Yachts, Inc., the second company under his leadership, with the creation of the Tiara Yachts and Pursuit fishing boat lines. Today those model lines illustrate his desire to continue building classic boats of quality and integrity.

From Farm to Factory

In 1946, 18-year old Leon R. Slikkers left his family farm in Diamond Springs and began working at the Chris-Craft Corporation’s Holland, Michigan, plant. It was not a difficult decision for Slikkers. First of all, he was following in the footsteps of his brothers Gerald and Dennis, at one of Holland’s largest factories, which was built in 1939. In addition, he desired to build things out of wood and not be a farmer. In a 2002 interview Slikkers explained, “I love working with my hands, and making and creating. So when I got a job at Chris-Craft, I really fell in love with it, because it was making things out of wood, which I like best of all.”

Once Slikkers landed a position at Chris-Craft, he was assigned to the joiner department to make cabin tops. As the months went by, he quickly learned and refined his craft with the help of mentors like his first foreman, Herm Volkers, and fellow employee Harry Busscher. “[Harry Busscher] taught me an awful lot… he just was careful of helping me to select the right tools, how to sharpen my tools, how to do the job proficiently with good quality. He was a good craftsman.” Slikkers learned quickly from his mentors, and by the time he reached the age of 24, he had been promoted to assistant foreman of the joiner department. Some of Slikkers’ fellow workers, such as Merle Cook, had noticed his abilities; Slikkers had an uncanny ability to create new designs. “Whenever they engineered a new boat, he was instrumental in a lot of the changes—carrying out and building the mock-ups and cutting the patterns—because he was really skilled,” said Cook in a 2002 interview. Slikkers continued his successful career at Chris-Craft and thought little of changing jobs until the labor strikes of the past returned to the plant.

In 1952, during a company-wide labor strike, Slikkers and fellow Chris-Craft employee Jason Petroelje decided to build their own boats. While the strike lasted, approximately ten runabouts, made of sheet plywood and averaging 15-feet in length, were made under the partnership. The painted hulls and varnished mahogany decked outboard motor boats did not contain a brand name and were sold out of Slikkers’ garage. After the strike ended, the two men decided to end the partnership; Petroelje wanted to leave Chris-Craft to build boats full-time under the Skipper-Craft name, and Slikkers wanted the security of a paycheck from Chris-Craft. Slikkers recalled, “I still kept building some boats from the design we had, and I would sell them and work on the weekends. I started to build contacts and kind of knew of what the industry would be.”

By 1954, Slikkers started thinking more about his future and what he wanted to do next. The periodic work stoppages due to labor strikes and success with his after-hours boat building business finally influenced his move away from Chris-Craft. When asked how much of an impact his years at Chris-Craft had on him, Slikkers thoughtfully remarked, “I often think of those nine years, almost ten years that I worked for them. No doubt it was a beginning of my boat building career. No question about it. If I had not done that, I don’t think I would have ever [gone] into the boat business.”

By January 1955, the 27-year old Slikkers had left the training ground of Chris-Craft and began making boats full-time on his own. His duel cockpit runabouts were made out of mahogany plywood decks and molded plywood hulls purchased from U.S. Molded Shapes, a wholesale supplier of molded hulls located in Grand Rapids. “I paid my bills, and I had $5,000 left… And that was what I started the company with.” Soon after he decided to work on his own, he rented a small building with an upstairs apartment and a vacant space below for making boats. Once he settled his wife and two children into the apartment of the boat factory, Slikkers began building his first official model year of molded plywood runabouts and started experimenting with a new boat building material that had been used to build boats since the 1940s—fiberglass.

During the 1955 model year he built thirty-five boats, which was ambitious for his small company. As the company continued to make boats, Slikkers’ friends, still employed at Chris-Craft and Mac Bay Boat Company, another Holland-area company, frequently visited Slikkers and inquired about his progress as an entrepreneur. Over time, Slikkers hired many of these men and women because they showed a desire to work in a small, family-oriented factory, a place where craftsmen were valued and management endeavored to build and sell quality boats. Slikkers reflected during a 2002 interview:

“I could see that we were making some affordable toys. I looked at Chris-Craft as a person that had lots of money, and I felt that that was their customer. I was looking at them and saying, “If we can build a product here for the next level of society, the blue collar worker that maybe has a good job, has his house paid for and wants another toy, needs another toy…and boating at that time was starting to really be attractive to a lot of people. Water skiing and the outboard engines became a little bigger so you could take it a little more and you could go faster. The larger outboard engine was the key to develop the small boat market. I could see that.”

In 1956, Slikkers contracted with local fiberglass boat builder Clyde Poll to build fifty hulls for his fledgling company. Poll, in turn, had Jason Petroelje design the plug from which a mold would be made. Slikkers received the hulls from Poll a few at a time and had his employees apply paint to them, as colored gel coat was not used by Slikkers. They then added mahogany wood decks, chrome deck hardware, and seats were often produced by local upholstering company, AutoTop. The next year, 1957, Slikkers contracted with Zeeland-based fiberglass manufacturer, Camfield Manufacturing Company, to make between twenty-five and fifty fiberglass hulls and decks. These would integrate color in the gel coat for the first time. Later on, some deck molds were designed to simulate the striped deck look of the wood decked models, except more color choices were available, like black, white, light green, or salmon. The hulls primary color was white, even as Slikkers mixed striped mahogany plywood decks with fiberglass hulls. Following the 1959 model year, Slikkers brought the fiberglass construction phase of the production line under his direct supervision using his own designs and tested techniques. He still made wooden 14-17-foot boats that year, but as the year progressed, Slikkers came to understand that fiberglass boats in the same lengths were the future and that making the boats at his plant was the way to proceed. So, Slikkers started making his own hulls in an off-site facility and transported them to the main factory.

“I started to read about fiberglass, and at that time there was a company in Minnesota that was offering fiberglass liquid that you could buy in quarts and buy the cloth and you’d cover wooden boats with it. Very early stages. The very next year…I had done a few boats with it. Didn’t like the process at all, it just seemed like an awful lot of work. But then I heard that they were molding it with multiple layers, and I said, “Wow, that sounds very interesting.” It intrigued me because we were always trying to bend wood that didn’t want to bend to some of the curves, and so you’d have to saw it out. And I was thinking, if you could just lay this material in, wow, you could really come up with some fantastic shapes that are more conducive to a boat than to have to bend wood—or cut wood or shape wood. Plus the fact is that the talk was that it would last forever. And I knew that the boating business required a lot of personal attention. You know, when I was making wooden boats, the people actually spent more time working with their boats then using their boats. But that was what they enjoyed. [People were craftsmen themselves]; they like to tinker and all that stuff. You know that’s what made that industry—I’m convinced, the small boat industry. The person could take care of the boat themselves.”

In 1962, the need for larger production drove Slikkers to move a few blocks farther south on Washington Avenue to a larger building, once used as skating rink. There, the company introduced its first cabin cruiser model, the 18-foot Royal Express. That model year also brought the last of the historic wood decked models, the 16-foot Premier, which also had a brand new V-hull design. It was, you could say, a kind of transition boat from old styles to new. This new hull design was used again the next year as the company focused exclusively on fiberglass hulled boats.

But the economic recession of 1960-1961 stunted the growth that Slikkers had expected with his salesman. His troubles were indicative of the stressful times in the boat building industry as sales slumped throughout the country. Even the best boats could not be sold in this economic climate.

In the 1962 model year, Slikkers changed the way he sold boats.

“Well, naturally when a company starts out, I was hoping that the product would be so good that it would sell itself. And I think part of that was true at first. But as the company grew, I recognized at times that I would have to go out into the marketplace and set up dealers and work with the dealers and so forth.”

So in 1962, Slikkers hired a new salesman by the name of Robert Egan who had recently left the troubled Pennsylvania based Skee-Craft boat company. “I went to the Chicago [boat] show and I looked around at all the builders. I saw Leon’s boats, and they were very well detailed. Soon after, I started there as an independent representative,” said Egan during a 2002 interview. Slikkers also sought outside help with the designs of his boats when he hired Ed Wennersten away from Chris-Craft with a substantial raise in pay and a promise to play a key role in the research and development area. Egan and Wennersten’s employment also signaled the Slikkers family’s desire to become a bigger seller of boats, while maintaining the family owned atmosphere. Slikkers further solidified family involvement employing his three brothers, Gerald, Paul, and Dennis, to oversee the design and production of the boats.

In 1962, his company introduced three models with the relatively new technology of the inboard/outboard motor. With this new technology and the proven outboard line of boats, company production grew, and the business soon expanded beyond Holland. Grew Boats Limited, located in Penetanguishene, Ontario, Canada contracted with Slick Craft to produce SlickCraft boats in 1964. In 1969, a similar arrangement was made with Vator Oy in Helsinki, Finland. These two companies produced a limited line of outboards from molds designed by the Slick Craft Boat Company and they also carried the SlickCraft name. In November 1966, growth once again caused Slikkers to expand his company, and he decided to build a 65,000 square foot factory designed for boat building at 500 East 32nd Street, in Holland's industrial park. For the construction of the larger cabin cruiser models, Slikkers later bought another building just down 32nd Street. By 1968, SlickCraft boats were so well respected that the Century Boat Company, located in Manistee, contracted with Slikkers to build their first fiberglass boats, as Century struggled to hold on to their classic wooden boat designs, but also catch up with the fiberglass trend that had started 20 years before.

SlickCraft Division of AMF Corporation

As the SlickCraft name became synonymous with quality and affordability, it also attracted the attention of conglomerates interested in acquiring small boat building companies in attempts to diversify their holdings and attract potential stock holders. After much thought and prayer, the Slikkers family decided to sell the company to the AMF Corporation in September 1969. As part of the sale agreement, Slikkers would stay on as president of the SlickCraft Division of AMF. A further stipulation required Slikkers not to build powerboats for five years from the date of the sale, should he leave AMF. After only a short time with AMF, Slikkers began to see that the new company did not plan on using the same quality materials in their SlickCraft boats that he had. A little over four years later, he left AMF and immediately began experimenting with a fiberglass sailboat design that would not violate his non-compete clause with AMF.

After Slikkers left AMF, he implemented his plan to begin a new Slikkers family boat building company. On February 18, 1974, S2 Yachts, Inc. was born. Along with the new name came longtime employees, like Ed Wennersten, whose creative mind helped propel the company to new heights in design and him to vice president of engineering. Robert Egan also returned to help Slikkers with sales as vice president of marketing. With the help of these men and others, Slikkers began a new chapter of success that year that continues today.