Down East lobster tank and bait box company expands with help from UMaine
Transcript
We custom fabricate, mostly from polyethylene, a lot of tanks and a lot of things for fishermen and for the aquaculture industry.
The beginning of the business was all about the tanks for the lobstermen to put on their boats, and bait boxes. I realized very quickly you can’t depend on that. It’s too seasonal, and I had all my eggs in one basket. The idea is I need to get out and try to figure out how to make this business go in a different direction.
The university wound up being a big part of that. They were the ones that introduced the Blackstone Group and the Intern Program. An intern spent his time working on the website, and it changed everything for us, literally. The hits I get now on the website, two, three, four a week — and we used to get two or three in six months sometimes. That program through the university really helped us, and it made it so that I was just able to hire an employee.
I do work with the university, I do work for the fishermen. I think the part I like is being able to invent and help people solve problems. You tell me what the function needs to be, and then my job is to figure out how to turn that plastic into the thing that meets your needs.