Profiles in Leadership: Ken Clinton

By Wanda Kenton-Smith

A major shockwave in recent industry news was the unexpected departure of longstanding Intrepid executive Ken Clinton, whose epic rise within the marine manufacturing ranks over 34 years was the stuff of legends.

Affectionately nicknamed #Boatgoat by loyal customers, Clinton paid his dues at Intrepid, from his start as a scrappy, entry-level boat builder to a station and line supervisor, followed by a promotion to plant manager and then to VP of manufacturing. In 2009, he was named president and CEO – a post he lived, breathed and championed for 15 years. Over time, Clinton became the face and heartbeat of the iconic Intrepid brand he built.

Despite the adversity of finding himself abruptly unemployed, Clinton exuded his typical upbeat persona in his search for new opportunities. He was recently named CEO of Rec Boat Holdings, with responsibility for all aspects of the brands manufactured in North America for Groupe Beneteau, including Wellcraft, Four Winns, Scarab and Glastron. In this pivotal new role, he reports to Gianguido Girotti, deputy CEO of Groupe Beneteau and CEO of the Boat Division.

Over a whirlwind few weeks, Clinton packed up his life and Tampa home to relocate to Traverse City, Michigan, where he now oversees the Groupe Beneteau’s Rec Boat Holdings brands and their respective manufacturing operations in Cadillac, Michigan.

Boating Industry (BI): Prior to your marine industry career, what did you do?

Ken Clinton (KC): I was a first class outside machinist at General Dynamics (Electric Boat Division) in Groton, Connecticut, building Trident 688 class and Seawolf nuclear submarines. Prior to that, I worked at several machine shops running CNC mills and lathes.

BI: What led to a career in boat building?

KC: It was February, and I was on my honeymoon in Busch Gardens, Tampa, after leaving Providence airport with about of foot of snow. I remember looking at my wife and saying … “It’s 80 degrees and the grass is green in February!” After asking locals lots of questions, I remember asking my wife on the flight home why we needed to wait until we were too old to enjoy this weather, or to wait and retire in Florida like everyone else. We packed up and moved to St. Petersburg and the job hunt began.

It was the 80s, and I’d been making over $13 an hour… I fi gured I’d fi nd a job at $10 or $11 in Florida… after several interviews and off ers, I went home to my wife and told her I thought we’d really screwed up – the best off er I’d seen was $6 an hour. I broadened my search into other areas and ended up at my first job in the marine industry at Triumph Yachts. The gentleman that conducted the interview asked me, “Son, what makes you think you can build boats?” I replied, “I built submarines. I’ll do everything opposite and it will float instead of sink.” He laughed and offered me the job.

BI: How was the transition from submarines to boats?

KC: I started working in Station 1 where the hull first came into the assembly building, and we did all the hull prep. They were 34-foot inboard sedans, so I was installing rudders, shafts, V-drives, 454 Mercury and Crusader engines, fuel tanks, fresh water and raw water systems, all the below deck pumps, fuel systems, etc.

Though I had not built boats before, I was very mechanically inclined and had a knack for understanding how things worked and how to do things more efficiently. They didn’t have any jigs, fixtures, or splashes, and everything was being done with plumb bobs, angle finders, and string. If everything, for the most part, repeated, why couldn’t we create jigs, fixtures and splashes to locate everything instead of the ‘shoot from the hip’ way they were doing it? I suggested it a couple of times and was told, “This is how they want us to do it, so just do it this way.”

The lamination shop was building the hulls faster than we could rig them and they began to stack up in our area. I asked if I could drop back to an empty hull to get going on the next one. I precisely documented everything in my notebook because they really didn’t have any blueprints; I figured this was my chance to prove my theory. I created splashes, jigs, and fixtures to locate all the underwater gear. When we dropped back to the next boat and I showed my supervisor what I did… we literally reduced the build time in my station by almost 50 percent.

BI: Did being a bit of a maverick help your career?

KC: Triumph was a Genmar-owned company, so they decided to consolidate boat factories and lay everyone off at Triumph, kept the managers and transferred Triumph to the larger sister-company, Wellcraft, in Sarasota.

I transferred with the project and we didn’t hit it off very well. I remember getting my first hull from their lamination department and not being happy with the quality. I told the lamination manager, “This isn’t how we built Triumphs,” and showed him what I wanted done. I told him to call me over so I could accept it before it was released. I was called into the office and told I was now in “their house” and shouldn’t rock the boat.

I expressed how hard I’d worked to raise the quality of the boats we were building. I was a proud and stubborn young man, and I bucked their system for a couple of months with similar issues. They eventually called me into the office and said that, because of the continued demise of our industry, they had to lay me off. It was a nice way to let me go because I was a bit of a thorn in their side.

BI: Your next stop was Intrepid?

KC: Yes, I joined Intrepid in March 1991, just a few weeks after being let go from Wellcraft. The owner of Intrepid was a Japanese businessman, Yoshiro Katami. He saw the opportunity with a bunch of experienced, unemployed boat builders in the area and a fully functional facility that had been abandoned by Viking/Gulfstar due to the luxury tax; they had consolidated all operations to New Jersey.

BI: As you reflect on 30 years at Intrepid and a string of promotions from the ground floor to the president’s office, what allowed you to rise through the ranks?

KC: First, I truly cared and was extremely proud of the work I did… and as I climbed the ranks, I was just as proud of the teams I led. I learned early on that no matter how good I was, I was only as good as the people I surrounded myself with… I understood I had to personally invest in them, or my future success would be limited.

The best part about that process is, over time, it becomes more than just about the boats. You become family. You share everything together and trust is earned on both sides. That’s when the magic happens!

BI: What major achievements gave you the greatest satisfaction?

KC: We innovated so many firsts in the industry. My teams gave me the strength to go against the odds and take chances because they believed in me, and I, in turn, believed in them.

Like when we did the first ever hull side dive door in 1994, or when we started painting outboard engines white to match the boats, against the push-back from the engine manufacturers. Or when we told them we were doing bigger boats and needed 35-inch shaft lower units or larger outboard engines and they told us there was no market for it. We created our own 35-inch lower units with Bob Latham… I teamed up with the Davis family to create and debut the largest outboards in the world at 557 hp at the Miami International Boat Show in 2011 at the Intrepid booth. And now… painted engines, 35-inch shafts, and a whole new generation of large outboards exist because of it.

A customer had a wife who got seasick easily and told me, “Happy wife, happy life,” so we were the first to do a gyro in an outboard boat by putting the smallest Seakeeper at the time onboard.

Another customer asked me to create a proper head compartment in a center console so his wife would allow him to buy the fishing boat he wanted instead of a cabin cruiser… we were the first to create a head inside of the console of a center console boat.

There was the customer who had horrible wind/current behind his house and couldn’t dock well… and asked if we could put a bow thruster in his boat.

The most recent was the high/low helm sole, which allows the shorter helmsperson to raise the sole four inches for better visibility. We were also the first to do backrests on the aft side of forward seating in a center console and then took it up a level by electrically actuating them.

I never put patents on any of it. I liked the back pressure of knowing that everyone was copying the last thing we did. I used to tell my team, “While they are copying that, we’ll be releasing this. Let them keep chasing us! When they’re not chasing is when we need to worry.”

People tell me all the time that I’m one of the best designers/builders in the world and while the team and I must figure out how to do it, the customers are the true designers. Too often, builders think they know more than their customers; they don’t listen.

BI: How do you listen to customers?

KC: When we go to boat shows, it’s up to my sales team to sell boats. For me, it’s an opportunity to mine data from my customers. What did they like that we did? What didn’t they like? What do they wish we had done? How do they use their boat? I take the data back to help plan future design. It’s also a combination of build and design sessions, plant tours, and social media correspondence. You just learn so much by asking the right questions… and listening!

BI: Speaking of social media, you’ve built a powerful presence … 5000 friends on Facebook, 350k Instagram and 14k LinkedIn followers. Both your custom t-shirt posts and educational videos generate buzz. What’s the story?

KC: The t-shirt thing was never something I thought would become a “thing,” but it really grew arms and legs. It all started during the pandemic. The news was so depressing throughout the world… in the beginning, our industry was devastated when we couldn’t get materials, engines, etc. Employees were scared. All this negativity was driving me crazy, so I bought a few t-shirts with positive sayings and started posting pictures online and wore them with a big smile and told people to have a great day and a great week.

I got such positive and upbeat responses with people thanking me for doing it, which made me feel compelled to keep doing it. After several months, I figured that the novelty had worn off, so I stopped… and had a bunch of posts on my social media pages and DM’s like, “We all need our inspirational quote for this week – where is it?”

Most of my videos are unplanned. For Saturday posts, I often had no idea what I was going to talk about and just walked around the factory until I found something I thought people might find interesting. During the week, I might do a short post about something cool we’d just finished and wanted to share it with those who love boats, too.

BI: To wrap things up, what’s one word that best describes you?

KC: Tenacious.