Pro-business strategies needed: allure of US tempting for those looking to relocate, expand. (North Bay).

Carl Crewson's grandfather warned him long ago he may be making a big mistake getting into the marine supply business.

After all, he was told, who has that kind of leisure time to be messing around with boats and outboard motors?

Raised amid humble upbringings on his grandparents' farm near Dorset, Crewson, a self-taught mechanic and salesman, began his career in the marine industry in the 1950s working his first summer job at a marina in the tourism hotbed of Lake of Bays near Huntsville.

Undeterred, Crewson followed his instincts, learning all aspects of running a business by working for, and eventually buying, Young's Marine in North Bay in the 1960s and '70s.

He made some deft moves along the way, picking up some struggling companies and created a conglomerate of North Bay companies that ship recreational watercraft all over the world from their Progress Court factory.

Past business decisions are showing profits in 2002. With more people contemplating staying closer to home for their vacations since the Sept. 11 attacks, sales for watercraft and accessories are up 15 per cent this year.

Today his grouping of independent companies - which includes Bay Distributors, Plastitech Products and Sportspal Product employs about 70 people in a North Bay industrial park.

Bay Distributors, formerly Baywood Marine, his original company, is now a marketing and, distribution company which represents their own marine products, as well as other companies' marine, home and garden product lines.

Plastitech Products was a Quebec-based pedal boat manufacturer, which he acquired in 1987 and relocated to North Bay. He added more pedal boat lines and dove headfirst into the white-hot kayak market and now ships product all over North America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan.

Sportspal was a down-and-out Callander-based canoe manufacturer he bought in 1985 and later relocated to North Bay. He then introduced the manufacturing of trailers for boats, personal watercraft, snowmobiles and all-terrain utility vehicles.

A fourth entity, Hawkeye Leisure Trailers, which employs 100 people in Humboldt, Iowa was another company he salvaged from bankruptcy.

"Businesses survive or fail based on the people who drive the company and (whether or not they) are open to new suggestions, directions, (and people) who modernize as they go and keep up with what's going on in the current world."

As a new member of North Bay's economic development commission, Crewson has a few ideas to stimulate investment in the North and foster business growth.

The federal and provincial governments could play a monumental role in economic development if only they would adopt some fundamental development strategies, he says.

A good start would be four-laning the highways between major regional centres such as North Bay, Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, he says.

Crewson shows a clipping file of brochures he regularly receives from development agencies and financial institutions from Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York State offering tax incentives, interest-free loans and easy financing for office and warehouse construction if only he would relocate his business south of the border.

Crewson admits those offers were going through his mind when constructing his new 27,000-square-metre expansion for Plastitech, which took a year of permit approvals before having to blast through tons of rock to prepare the site.

"We're just going to have to bite the bullet and do what the States are doing."

www.bwmarineproducts.com