Leon Slikkers: Boat Builder

Leon Slikkers loves making boats.

He began life on a farm near Diamond Springs, Michigan. As a young man, he preferred spending his time working with wood than doing chores. So, in 1944, at age 16, he tried to join his brothers Gerald and Dennis at Chris-Craft in Holland. But Chris-Craft wouldn’t hire him. But in 1946, when Leon was 18, they assigned him to the joinery department. There, under the tutelage of Harry Bussker, Leon worked on cabinetry, cabin tops, and floors. He was a natural leader. By 1952 was assistant foreman. But his life changed when his peers went on strike.?

That’s not to say his life wasn’t already changing. Even before the strike, Leon and Jason Petroelje, another Chris-Craft employee, had begun crafting 15-foot wooden “runabouts” in Leon’s two-stall garage behind his and his wife Dolores’ small house at 81 W 35th Street. But the strike encouraged them to accelerate production, which they did by buying scrap mahogany and cutting it into parts for ten boats. So, when the strike ended, they were finishing their fourth boat. Leon decided he had to go back, but Petroelje did not want to. So, the partners divided up the wood and Petroelje launched his own custom boat company which he called Skipper-Craft.?

After Leon returned to Chris-Craft, he soon found himself managing sixty people. Still, he kept building boats in his garage. His dream was to set up a dealer network and develop a national business.

In January 1955, Leon told Herm Volkers, his immediate supervisor, that he was leaving Chris Craft. ?Volkers sent him to the vice president. When the VP heard Leon wanted to leave Chris Craft to start his own boat company, he warned Leon that even Chris-Craft was struggling. He said that if Leon changed his mind, Chris Craft would have a job waiting for him.?

Leon didn’t change his mind. Still working out of his garage, Leon built dual cockpit “runabouts” with mahogany decks and molded plywood hulls. He could sell all the boats he could make, but he didn’t have enough space to make them. That same year he decided he needed space for a factory.

But where would he get money for such a space? ?He suggested to Dolores that they sell their house. Not knowing where she, Leon, and their two young boys, David, and Robert, would live, she noneless agreed. After paying off debts, Leon invested the remaining $5,000 in a building at 791 Washington Avenue (present-day Home Heating and Air Conditioning) and purchased supplies. But where would the family live? Dolores agreed to live in the tiny apartment upstairs, but only for a year. They lived there for eight.?

In his factory at 791 Washington Avenue, Leon made Slick Craft boats. In his first year there, he made 35 of them.?

In 1956 Leon began experimenting with fiberglass, after purchasing a kit from a small company in Minnesota. After meeting an engineer from Canfield Plastics of Zeeland, which was then making fiberglass chairs for Herman Miller, Leon began buying 14-foot fiberglass hulls from Poll Manufacturing Company, owned by Clyde Poll, son of farm implement entrepreneur Henry Poll, who had hired Jason Petroelje to design the molds. To those hulls Leon added wood decks and chrome hardware. He also added upholstered seats from another local company, AutoTop.

In 1958 Slikkers completed his first fiberglass boat, distinguishing them with beautiful, hand-varnished mahogany decks. In 1960 he made his first fiberglass hull and deck boat. That led to a big decision.

By 1962, Slick Craft was building 200 wooden boats and 40 fiberglass boats per year. But Leon knew he could not realize his dream of creating a national business without specializing in one or the other. After prayerful consideration he decided to focus on fiberglass boats and made a big splash when he introduced a black 16-footer with a red interior and white shag carpet at the Chicago Boat Show at McCormick Place.?

Again, Leon needed more manufacturing space. So, Slick Craft opened a facility in an old roller rink at 1145 Washington Avenue. His team, including former Chris Craft employees, continued to grow.?

In 1963 they introduced an inboard/outboard motor option and an 18-foot cabin cruiser. Despite refusing to do business on Sunday (Sabbath for Seventh Day Adventists) because of his religious beliefs, Leon’s business continued to grow rapidly.

In 1964, under the one-word Slickcraft name, Leon and his team introduced the SS 235, a 23-foot foot fiberglass boat, and it became their flagship model. Because they were also building fiberglass boats for the Century Boat Company of Manistee, Michigan, Slickcraft added an addition to the roller-skating rink building on South Washington.?

Then, in 1966, Slickcraft moved into its new headquarters at 500 E 32nd Street (present-day Thermotron). It used the 65,000 square foot facility to manufacture 14-25 foot boats. Two years later, Slickcraft added a larger facility on the other side of Brooks Avenue to manufacture the SS 285 inboard cruiser.?

In 1969, business conglomerate AMF made an offer to purchased Leon’s company. After much prayer, Leon decided to sell the business, reasoning that he could not realize his dream of creating a national business without additional capital.

But after the sale, Leon became restless. ?In 1973 he left AMF to make sailboats. His new venture began in 1974 when, during a world oil embargo, Leon launched S2, a sailboat engineering business, at 13 W Seventh Street (present-day Big Lake Brewing) with his two oldest sons, David and Robert, both avid sailors. ?There the Slikkers not only designed boats, but new processes for manufacturing boats. Two processes are especially worth mentioning: instead of building sailboats in cradles surrounded by scaffolds, the Slikkers’ plan called for putting a recess in the floor so workers could work on boats without climbing on scaffolding. Their plan also called for making boats by inserting a fiberglass hull within a fiberglass hull, and installing windows encased in rubber.?

To assess demand for the boat designs, the Slikkers shipped two prototype boats to the Chicago Boat Show. When they returned to Holland, they constructed a 72,000 square foot plant on 725 E 40th Street to make them.?

Two years later, in 1976, the Slikkers added power boats to their product line; a year later, the added fishing boats. The success of the fishing boat series led to the Pursuit brand. In 1979 the Slikkers introduced a wide body inboard Tiara Power Boat, which became an industry leader.?

Then, the Slikkers teamed up with the racing design team of Graham and Schlageter to create a vertical keel racer. The creation of this sailing boat led to their Grand Slam Series.

Next, the Slikkers entered the saltwater sportfishing powerboat industry. When David thought the company would better serve its customers with a Florida address, Leon agreed and in 1983 the Slikkers constructed a 72,000 square foot facility in Fort Pierce.?

But building large boats is risky. In 1991, Congress passed a ten percent Federal Excise Luxury Tax, and the drop in demand forced S2 Yachts to lay off five hundred of its eight hundred employees. (Congress repealed the tax in 1993.)?

In 1995 S2 Yachts added a third manufacturing facility on an intercoastal waterway in Swansboro, NC. ?After declines in demand following the “dot.com bubble” in 2000 and the terrorist attached in 2001, the Great Recession of 2008 hit S2 Yachts hard, causing it to lay off nine hundred workers, and encouraging S2 Yachts to diversity into wind turbines.

But in 2011 S2 Yachts rebounded when it contracted with a Dutch distributor to make boats in the $2.0 million price range.?

In 2018, S2 Yachts became Tiara Yachts after it divested its Pursuit brand and increased its manufacturing footprint in Holland to 850,000 square feet.

Information for this story comes from Robert Swierenga’s Holland Michigan, https://nautipedia.it/index.php/SLICKCRAFT_STORY, https://www.tradeonlytoday.com/post-type-feature/q-a-with-leon-slikkers, and correspondence with Leon and David Slikkers.

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