It’s what we do. It’s where our heart is. We took a little time off, looked at other things, did other things, but our heart kept coming back to this industry. We like to build stuff — we like to build good stuff. The [boat] market continues to shape up to where a play like this works for us, for independent dealers and for customers who like the experience of a quality product and exceptional service.

We wanted to wait long enough to be sure of what we believe, that there’s a market for [the boats they want to produce] and us doing it. Our business is built around independent dealers and avid customers, and as we see more and more consolidations within the industry…there’s always opportunity for the innovator.

Secondly, there’s a pretty good market out there — the economy’s pretty good, and [several boat companies have] supply issues…which has not really been the case since the recession of 2008-10. So it’s a pretty good time to be in this industry.

Finally, high school and collegiate fishing, and the tailwind behind that, reinforces our desire to do it. [The rise of that market is] a testimony to the efforts of a whole lot of people….

What does the name Vexus come from?

[Keith told me it comes from a Zydeco band he was in called “Vertical Entry Xylophone Under Stairs, but I said no one would believe that so….]

We came to it after a lot of trial and error finding names we could own outright in all segments we plan to be in…. We just like it. What it means the day it starts calling itself that isn’t really what’s important — it’s what it means years into it. Plus it’s easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and I think it’ll look good on a nice boat.

Certain people might think we’re coming out with a Ferrari. We want to build a product that we aren’t afraid to sell, and a customer’s not ashamed to spend his hard-earned money to buy. Generally that means the top end of the segment…high resale values, and the boat the stands the test of time better.

We’ll introduce the product at the Classic, but they’ll be prototypes that were not built on a production line. We’ll have a production line soon thereafter. The product will evolve…to new models throughout calendar year 2018.

It certainly won’t be the cheapest in the marketplace, but I think it will be one of the better values. …new technologies, quality, things we will reinforce behind the product….

Yes. We will build aluminum and fiberglass outboard-powered fishing boats.

It’s a privately-owned company that we’re a very big part of. We’re a small group of local people. We’ve worked with some great people through the years who have helped us and taught us a lot, but the opportunity to do something on our own is very appealing.

It’s a real exciting time for us…just a real unique situation. It feels like there’s a fresh energy about what’s happening and we’e glad to be a part of it.

> Dad and I made one last outing of the year Sunday on the Missouri River (Lewis and Clark Lake). The middle part of the river near Springfield, SD is best described as a corn maze but with cattails and really tall grass. The sediment build-up funnels the current and cuts little winding channels through silt and sand-filled chutes. This makes for some rather interesting navigational challenges. To throw an extra curveball in, they dropped water levels almost 10″ on Sunday from the time we arrived to the time we left.

> At the end of the day on the route back I knew we were going to have to stay on pad to make it over a couple spots in this one particular chute. Long story short I was not zoomed in far enough on my Lowrance GPS and 5 yards makes a big difference! Went left when we should have stayed right….