Cover Story
Keeping their business afloat
The owners of Jet Dock Systems Inc. lived the classic threadbare existence of start-up entrepreneurs. Now they hope their success leads them to the leisurely life many of their customers live.
By Daniel G. Jacobs
Smart Business Cleveland | July 2000
There is a beautiful symmetry in the products created by Jet Dock Systems Inc. and the story of the founding of the company.
JDS creates modular, dry-docking apparatuses that float on the surface of the water. It took several years of 18-hour days, seven days a week, under a hot Florida sun, to perfect the system and to keep the company afloat.
“It wasn’t easy,” recalls Allan Eva, vice president of the 7-year-old company. “It was penny to penny, nickel to nickel, dime to dime, customer to customer. We would pre-sell to customers. In many cases, we had them pay us in advance for orders on a discount just to keep the blood flowing, just to pay our bills.”
But with a good economy and an ever-burgeoning marine pleasure craft industry, the owners of Jet Dock found their niche. The clientele — wealthy people living near the water — can easily afford the $3,000 to $5,000 cost for the product, a floating docking system that allows any craft up to 30 feet in length to drive up from the water. A mechanically assisted system accommodates crafts up to 50 feet long.
“It would only take maybe 10 or 20 customers to really have a successful week or two,” Eva says. “You have to find them, you have to sell them and you have to deliver a quality product, because they’ll tear you shreds if you don’t, and so will the sea. But that’s how we did it, inch by inch. We borrowed a friend’s condo in Florida in the off season. He let us stay there for free.”
The challenge he and partner David T. Faber, president of the company, faced was not lost on them. The pair began their business by leaving their homes and heading for the Sunshine State in an old Jeep with $1,750 in borrowed capital. Many of their first prototypes sank dismally into Florida waters.
Eventually, the pair created a viable product, then faced a new challenge — getting someone to buy it.
“The mom-and-pop businesses, and growing the business from your garage, that is such a lost art,” Eva says. “It is almost impossible to get past those couple years and not have it just be John and Sally’s Pet Shop. You’re capitalizing yourself. Whoever you were from a personality point of view, to get it started is rarely the person who can have it succeed into the future, because it’s totally two separate hats.
“For the first three years, we wore ripped shorts and baseball caps and sun block and ate a lot of macaroni and cheese.”
And they endured grueling days.
“At that time, it was 18 hours a day of blood, sweat and tears, literally outside cutting your hands trying to make it work,” he says. “Usually somebody who’s good at that is not the same person who’s good at the office and the people and the papers and the paperwork and the staff and accountants and lawyers and all those sorts of things. We feel very fortunate that we were able to succeed in the first part of it, because the second part of it we felt pretty confident about.”
By 1995, the pair hired their first employee. Since then, they have built the company to nearly two dozen employees. Faber and Eva have partnered with 30 dealers worldwide who sell exclusively the Jet Dock product.
The company has offices in Cleveland and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. How to reach: Jet Dock Systems Inc., (216) 661-7707
Daniel G. Jacobs (djacobs@sbnnet.com) is senior editor of SBN Cleveland.
