SmithFly Isn't SFD MFG CO. Here's the Difference.

SmithFly and SFD MFG CO get talked about like they were the same company. They weren't. Here's how they actually connected, and what happened.

After the Big Shoals Raft took off, one thing bothered me: the PVC for the rafts was made in China. That was the exact scenario I'd built the whole brand to avoid. I wanted to make the tubes in the USA, not just the frames.

We were already building the frames in-house, bending and welding the tubes ourselves, and sourcing nearly every part domestically. Building the raft bodies themselves was a different problem. The contractors who could do it were either booked solid or priced out of reach. So I did what I'd always done: set out to figure out how to build the capability ourselves.

While talking to equipment manufacturers about what it would take, one of their sales reps introduced me to the owner of Airskirts, a company making inflatable air tubes with a similar problem to mine. He asked if I could replicate what his China supplier was making, exactly. We proved we could, and he sent $2M in purchase orders.

That gave me something real to bring back to the table. A group involved with the Colorado Outdoors project in Montrose had been trying to get SmithFly to relocate there entirely, with investment contingent on making the full move. Relocating all of SmithFly wasn't realistic. But a new, separate manufacturing operation, built specifically to produce tubes for SmithFly and for Airskirts, was. That became SFD MFG CO, named after SmithFly's own Coast Guard hull ID serial number.

SFD MFG CO applied for and received a $750,000 grant from the state's OEDIT program to help build out the space. It was its own entity from day one: its own bank accounts, its own books, its own customers. SmithFly was one of those customers. Every boat that shipped, SmithFly got invoiced for it, the same as any other client.

The plan on paper made real logistical sense. The original Ohio metal fab shop was good at what it did, good enough that it didn't need much day-to-day oversight from me anymore, so the idea was for it to keep operating exactly as it always had. Boats are big, heavy, and awkward to ship, so splitting the country in two made sense: for orders east of the Mississippi, raft bodies would ship to Ohio, get matched up with a frame, and go out together from there. For orders west of the Mississippi, the raft body would drop-ship directly from SFD MFG CO in Montrose via parcel carrier, with the frame shipped separately in a smaller crate. Two facilities, one in the east and one in the west, both meant to operate permanently, splitting the shipping burden in half. It was a genuinely good idea. It just didn't get the chance to prove itself out.

For a while, it worked well. SFD MFG CO could build about two boats a week, and the Airskirts and SmithFly production schedules complemented each other almost perfectly, the slow cure-and-fit-up time on a raft left room for the welder to keep working Airskirts tubes, and Airskirts' busy season landed right as raft season wound down. On paper, it was close to $1M a year in combined business.

What it didn't have was growth capital. The equity investment that was supposed to come with the Montrose move never materialized. SFD MFG CO took on a loan through the Region 10 economic development office to buy equipment, but the business still needed steady income to operate month to month, and for the first year, the early Airskirts orders were just enough to make that work.

Then two things broke at once. When Airskirts' first larger payment came due, the company said it was being sold and froze its books, cutting off the income that had been carrying the operation. Around the same time, the landlord on the building, who had promised two years of free rent as part of the deal, reversed course and started demanding rent on space that had never been budgeted for. SFD MFG CO had to exit that space quickly, and losing the workspace meant losing the Airskirts relationship too. Airskirts' new owners weren't interested in USA-made production.

Back at SmithFly, customers were understandably getting anxious about delayed orders. Rumors moved fast through a Facebook group, and a wave of customers told their card companies the charges were fraudulent, which they weren't. In the span of a couple of weeks, a significant amount of operating capital was pulled out of the business through disputed charges.

I moved everything from Ohio to a new space in Montrose, working with people who said they understood the situation and wanted to help. That didn't hold up either. After about nine months of trying to keep building and shipping boats with no new capital coming in, there was nothing left to keep going with. No new orders, no cash, and no way to fund the next batch.

At every step, I made the decision that made sense with what I knew at the time. Twelve years of work ended anyway. That's the honest version of what happened.