Yarmouth, ME: When someone starts a business the first thought they should have is..."What problem am I solving for people?". Our business is based on the premise that for a certain segment of fisherman and mariners they would like/need a boat that can take a beating better than anything on the market, a boat that takes little or no maintenance while providing a great platform for fishing or work. We like the idea of this premise because the way we use our own boats makes us buyers for our own product!! We recently replaced two of our business trucks with 2005 Toyota Tundra Pick-ups. These well engineered vehicles have a great reputation for both longevity and low cost per mile. I was happy that we were upgrading our capital equipment and would have good, reliable trucks for boat moving, delivery, etc... ...but a few days after buying the trucks someone in a parking lot must have backed-up into the front bumper of one of the trucks which until then I had not noticed is plastic. This very small mishap put a large crack in the bumper, broke a plastic piece around the headlight and put a ding (dime sized) in the leading edge of the hood..... $2500! This truck is going to be used hard for work but when an old man in a Buick taps the front end one gets a $2500 ding in the plastic! This is the problem we solve for the fisherman/boater. When someone does something to one of our boats you are not ruining the darn thing, you are simply using it!! Boats are very much the same - what does it take to get a nasty scar in a boat's gelcoat? How hard does a boat have to come down on it's rubrail to dislodge it? What happens when your sixteen year old drops a dive tank on the deck? A bit of a ramble here but I know that I would buy a truck that I could back into something without thousands of dollars to repair, a truck that I could run through the woods without worrying about branches scratching the pretty paint, a truck that I could stand on the hood with muddy boots to limb a tree. The same goes for boats. We sell boats that a hard user does not feel as if the are destroying by using hard and beating on....sorry for the rant! Also today - Very nice gent from north of Boston was here for a demo ride. He's an avid ground fisherman going out to Jeffries, etc and wanted to check on our boats seaworthiness and seakindliness - went out for a couple of hours - not much in the way of seas but came back to the office where he ordered a V23 with a hardtop. He's going to power it with a big Suzuki 4-stroke. We are lucky to have such nice people as customers... Jay Black Lab Marine, Inc. 72 Lafayette Street Yarmouth, Maine, USA 04096 Email: info@blacklabmarine.com Phone: 207-400-7404