|
|
|
|
June 2003 - NC Marine TradeWinds Newsletter
SBTDC NC Marine Trades Services
·
Hurricane
Preparedness – Our Old Check List … Still a Good Check List
·
IBEX U Regional In
Greenville for Boatbuilders – September 23 – 24, 2003
·
Sponsors
Carrying the Load - Progress
Energy, ElectriCities and NC Electric Cooperatives
·
NC Marine
Activity – Over 500 New Jobs and a Lot of New & Expanding Businesses
·
New Coastal Boating Guide Coming Your Way for 2003/2004
·
Marketing Audit
– First Five Businesses - Call to Win
·
NCwaterways.com
Stats – Lots of Lookers and Businesses Networking for NC Products and Services
Hurricane
Preparedness – Our Old Check List … Still a Good Check List
No one wants to think about it, but it isn’t a bad time to dust off our marina and boatyard hurricane checklist. It offers eight page of items, including checklists of equipment to have on hand, yearly and monthly inspections, a table for specific names and phone numbers needed by your business for recovery and reestablishing operational status, and then a series of actions to take prior to, during, and following any major storm. It also contains a customer checklist for your boaters. You can see this list and download it from our website by typing in this address http://www.ncwaterways.com/BusinessAssistance/Regulatory/Waterfront/HurricanePrepPlan.pdf.
IBEX U
Regional In Greenville – September 23 – 24, 2003
Workshops, seminars and more – all at your backdoor. This first-for-NC-event will give our NC (and neighboring state) boat building / restoration employees a chance to get a taste of IBEX without traveling to Florida. For a number of them, it will be a taste of the big show that will take place in Miami this October. Be sure to visit our NCwaterways booth, grab some peanuts and talk to us. Here is a summary of the seminars. Get registration and full information at http://66.155.126.9/ibexmain/ibexu2003/. You can also find the site from our website’s front page. For exhibit info, call Anne Dunbar 716-662-4708.
Core Repair - repair techniques for core materials, including how to complete and document your repair work.
Case Study – What happens when two boat companies decide to work together in one production facility?
Vacuum-Infusion Processes – A thorough introduction to the many available processes, including pre-pregs, vacuum-compression molding, vacuum-assisted resin-transfer molding (VARTM), resin infusion, and resin-film infusion (RFI).
Stray Current and Corrosion – Learn how AC & DC stray current relates to corrosion on boats. The term "stray current" is widely misused; it is not the same as galvanic corrosion.
Personnel: Its About the People – Building a boat is a hands-on, labor-intensive activity. Learn ideas and methods for dealing with the unpredictable resource -- the people.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning – How to check for CO problems onboard, overviews of marine CO detectors, update of the latest work from ABYC, the USCG, and NIOSH on this subject.
Boatyard Estimating – A primer on working with insurance claims, as well as navigating through the bidding and estimating processes, including how to estimate payroll, materials, and supplies and how to incorporate indirect costs and general overhead into final proposal.
Troubleshooting Composite Details – Designer and surveyor provide points of view on good and bad designs, hull-to-deck joints, stringers, engine girders, propulsion-shaft support, bulkhead landings, transoms, through-hulls, and deck-hardware attachment.
Closed-Molding Processes in the Production Shop – Discussion of key elements of transitioning from open to closed molding in a production shop.
Sportfishing Boat Design – A look at local problems, such as transom doors and transom designs for backing-down, and at global conditions, such as designing and engineering the boat stability and good control at ever higher running speed.
Re-thinking Survey Reports – A look at preparing quality reports, including content, format, style, and economics. Also a discussion on how current technology can help you to produce better reports including gathering information in the field; producing a thorough report, and even transmitting and storing your work.
MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) – How EPA evaluates products and processes, MACT record-keeping and reporting, and the "how-to" of complying with the MACT requirements.
More registration information will be available in the next NC Marine TradeWinds and at our site, www.NCwaterways.com.
Sponsors Carrying the Load - Progress Energy, ElectriCities and NC Electric Cooperatives
Thanks to 2003 funding from three of the state’s utility companies, our primary economic development programs – new/expanding business initiatives, business-to-business buying, and the www.NCwaterways.com – will continue as components to the state-funded SBTDC NC Marine Trades Services. Support from these corporations (and the 2002 Golden LEAF Foundation award) allows us to market and promote North Carolina as a state with an aggressive and helpful marine business environment.
The funding specifically allows us to exhibit at tradeshows, advertise North Carolina in national maritime media and administer and grow our maritime business and tourism website. We work through these sponsor’s economic development divisions when we assist new and expanding businesses with site and expansion support.
NC Marine Trades Activity – Over 500 New Jobs and a Lot of New & Expanding Businesses
North Carolina is the only state with a dedicated state program providing confidential contact for non-NC marine companies interested in the state, and for existing marine business owners with expansion plans and who need assistance with the maze of hurtles related to business and job growth. These efforts have started to pay off, with well over new 500 jobs and considerable tax-based real property growth in the past 12 months. Most of the out-of-state business contacts resulted from our exhibit participation in one or more of the seven tradeshows we attended. In-state expansion requests came from business owners finding us at these same trade events or through our statewide network of over 70 business counselors working through the 17 SBTDC offices (www.SBTDC.org)
2003/2004 North Carolina’s Coastal Boating Guide Coming Your Way
Just like the Harry Potter books, the wait has increased the demand. The new – larger size, new format, and new look – boating guide and coastal road map is at the printers and about to come to a marina, marine business and tourist site near you. If you were sent the maps in the past, the DOT will likely send you the new maps. If not, you will soon be able to order them though our “Order Free Boating Guides” link on the Home Page of our site. To see what the map side will look like (that’s right, the entire map will be on one side of the Guide), go to our Home Page and click on the scroll in the lower right corner (or click here: DOT map link. (There are options to download two very large files - a GIF and a pdf file. Waiting for the map to come out in print may take less time).
Marketing
Audit – First Five Businesses to Call, Win
We have developed a marketing audit designed initially for boat and product manufacturing businesses that employ 35 to 150 workers and have a marketing department or division. If your business fits and you want to call us, we can offer about five companies this service starting in August. It involves employees you select answering (anonymously) eight sets of 10 questions, with yes/no and then ranking how important that item is to your company’s marketing efforts. We view and plot the answers (colors – no names) and then meet with the team that took the audit, providing feedback on the marketing issues. This is all done confidentially and at no cost to your company. Two or more experienced professional business counselors will provide the feedback and you will keep the results. Call Mike Bradley at (252) 728–2144 if you are interested. First five – anywhere in the state.
NCwaterways.com Stats – Lots of Lookers and Businesses Networking for NC Products and Services
The viewer activity has been steadily growing from our involvement in tradeshows and from ads placed in national trade magazines. The site now averages over 40,000 “hits” per month, 25,000 page views, 300 visitors per day, and 5,000 unique visitors per month. These numbers reflect increasing NC marine businesses activity in efforts to find NC products and services. And it represents a lot of people looking up where to spend their tourism dollars along our coastal and inland waterways and lakes.
We are finalizing a new data entry format on the website allowing companies to more easily input new company information and update existing company information. Be sure to search for your company first, before adding it as a new company. This is available only to in-state North Carolina companies.
In addition, over 40,000 DOT Coastal Boating Guides have been mailed to individuals requesting the map – 5,000 through this website and over 35,000 fed through the www.NCCoastalGuide.com site during this period.
The Marine Trades Services is a program of the Small Business Technology Development Center (SBTDC). The SBTDC is a business development service of The University of North Carolina operated in partnership with the US Small Business Administration.