A Successful Formula

The youngest of five siblings, Ted Porter was 15 years old when he started working part time at his father’s company, Formula Boats. “I started on the production floor, and I was cleaning toilets,” he says. “I decided that this might not be a bad place to work as long as I moved up into different places in the company, which many of us did. That was really helpful through the years.”

He followed in the footsteps of his older brothers, Scott, Grant and Wayne, and his sister, Jean Porter Brune. “I remember folding letters and stuffing envelopes when I was in middle school,” Jean says.

The benefits of the generational approach were twofold: The second generation of the Porter family learned all the aspects of building performance boats and cruisers, and, “It’s [also the] team members on the floor seeing that you’re right there willing to work alongside them, and that goes a long way,” Ted says.

Today, Formula Boats has about 365 employees working at a 575,000-square-foot factory in Decatur, Ind. About 250 boats per year are built here. The company has expanded its offerings over the years from offshore performance models to ever-growing, spacious dayboats. The path the earlier generation created is still working well, some 67 years after it all began.

A Rich History

That hands-on culture was established by Vic Porter, the family patriarch, who purchased Formula and its parent company, Thunderbird Products, in 1976. Through the decades, the company built performance boats, high-end cruisers and premium bowriders. Like the Kucks at Regal, the Meloons at Correct Craft, the Healeys at Viking Yacht Co., and other boatbuilder families, the Porters became known for building excellent boats, providing a friendly work environment and excelling at customer relations. The family members all worked their way up through the ranks and into management positions, alongside their father.

“It’s something over time that develops,” Scott says. “We’re fortunate we don’t have to cater to outside ownership and quarterly reports. Profitability is important for any business, but the decisions we make are to try to figure out how to move things forward collectively.”

He adds, “We grew up in a faith-based Christian background. I think that’s important, too, because you learn to respect everyone.”

Thunderbird Products was founded by Woody Woodson in 1956 near Miami, and Richard C. Cole designed the company’s first models. An 18-foot Thunderbird made the first successful sterndrive crossing from Miami to Nassau in the Bahamas in 1959.

The year before, Vic began building fiberglass runabouts that were popular in the Midwest and Northeast. The boats were marketed under the brand Duo. Starcraft, a larger company, purchased Duo in 1966, and for a time, Vic stayed on as president.

In Miami, Don Aronow founded Formula in 1962. The original 233 deep-vee bottom design was built under his direction and earned many offshore racing victories. In 1961, Alliance Machine and Foundry purchased Thunderbird and followed that up three years later by acquiring Formula.

At the time, Formula and Thunderbird models were built in North Miami. An Atlanta-based conglomerate, Fuqua Industries, acquired the two brands in 1969.

With five business associates, Vic Porter founded the Signa Corp. The company started building tri-hull boats in Decatur, and they became popular in the Midwest and eastern United States. Fuqua Industries purchased Signa in 1973, and Porter was named president of the small-boat division. Three years later, Vic purchased Thunderbird/Formula. The second generation of Porters joined the management team as members graduated college and gained business smarts.

Tri-hulls were discontinued in 1979, and the company focused on deep-vee offshore Formula models. They were being built in California through 1981, and in March 1988, Thunderbird/Formula left South Florida. The Porter family moved all operations and construction to its hometown of Decatur. The factory grew to 345,000 square feet and eventually expanded, adding another 143,500 square feet in 2000. That number was bumped again in 2006 with another 85,000 square feet. Corporate offices, sales and production are now housed under one roof in a 575,000-square-foot facility where about 365 employees work.

Family Time

Even into their later years, Vic and his wife, Kris, made a priority of being at recreational boating’s big events and welcoming people who entered the Formula booth.

Vic died in 2021 after pulling back from day-to-day operations and being named chairman emeritus. Kris, who turned 92 in June, still serves on the board of directors. Eldest son Scott, 70, is president of the company, and his wife, Shelley, works in the IT department and on sales projects. Grant, who is 68, is executive vice president, and 66-year-old Wayne is vice president of sales. Jean Porter Brune, 63, is the vice president of marketing, and Ted, 61, is vice president of human resources. The oldest son, John, is a doctor who holds shares in the company but isn’t active in the business.

The third generation of Porters is also well-represented. Wayne’s son Jeremy is the transportation manager for Formula, and daughter Sarah is the director of marketing promotions. Jean’s son Jason Brune is the project engineering manager. Ted has three sons in the business. Danny is the research and development manager; Chris is a product engineer; and Josh is a CAD/CAM design engineer. The fourth generation is also getting started with summer jobs.

“I started in high school,” Danny says. “We filled Formula Gear orders, and when we went to college, we would come back and work in the summers. It was a guided program in the summers. You’d spend one year working in R&D and work on molds, and next summer is production and engineering, and you’d spend a few weeks or months in a certain area.”

When asked about the difference between Vic the father and Vic the boss, Scott says, “That would depend on the moment for both Vics. He let us do a fair amount, and he had standards he expected us to adhere to.”

Jean says her father encouraged his employees to expand their knowledge and horizons. “He always had a newspaper article or a book that he wanted us to understand and talk about,” she says. “We would be out at the lake, and he would have one of his kids’ corners.”

Adds Jason Brune: “That’s something I remember from porch-swing chats. Vic said, ‘You learn something new every day.’ That was his focus.”

Then there is the extended family that includes John Adams, who has been Formula’s exclusive designer since 1971. “He’s been with us a long time,” Scott says. “After the Miami show a couple seasons ago, we brought in a designer, Michael Young, who is studying under John and does three-dimensional modeling.”

Other partners include Latham Marine, which has made many custom products for the company, and Ilmor Marine, which supplies sterndrive packages to Formula. “That’s the neat part about the industry,” Scott says. “Sometimes, part of your dream requires someone else to be able to dream also.”

When the kids were growing up, the family boated together, so the current management team has been spending time on the water for decades. As the second generation of Porters gained experience, each found his or her specialty within the company. “It was more natural,” Grant says. “I’m a product guy.” The sons and daughter praise Vic for letting the members find their own way.

Decisions are often made as a group. “It depends on the level of the decision,” Scott says. “Once we’re ready to move in a direction, because of the experience of the company, sometimes we just move it on down the line.” For example, all members of the management team attended a product-development meeting in mid-June.

The benefits of working with siblings is the level of synergy, Jean says. “We don’t have to try to understand what makes someone tick. We’ve been together a long time. We try to figure out what we can do for our customer. It’s not about us.”

One Formula tradition that is continuing this year is the company’s annual photo shoot for the coming model year. It takes place in July, and the models are family members.

Decatur has a population of just under 10,000, and Formula is considered a premium employer in the area. Ted says the company offers good pay and benefits, and hasn’t experienced the turnover that some boat manufacturers have.

“They feel secure here,” he says. “The main thing is keeping your team happy so they want to come to work in the morning. We have incentives for that, and we have disincentives, too. They know what they’re getting into it when they come in. Sometimes it’s a team member working beside them encouraging them, and once in a while sticking a boot in their rear end, telling them, ‘You’re here to work. We’re all on the same team, and the outcome will be great.’ ”

Group leaders get together with employees frequently to communicate about issues and solicit ideas. There are also quarterly plant meetings, and the company has an annual meeting with an employee lunch. This year, a longtime customer who has bought a few boats from the company is helping with the costs for the lunch, to say thank you to the employees. “We want to show our team that we appreciate what they do every day,” Ted says.

Grant adds: “We’re pretty fortunate that we’re from a rural area. Some of the people who work here grew up on farms and know how to work. We’re fortunate that dad started the business here.”

While specific numbers weren’t available, there are also multiple generations of other local families working at Formula.

Crossing Over

Formula started out building offshore performance boats. Some of its most famous models were in the SR1 and LS Series. In 1994, the company unveiled the 280 Sun Sport, an early example of today’s popular dayboats.

The company jumped into the stepped-performance game soon after Adams developed the FAS³Tech stepped-bottom design and engineered structural stringer grid with the 419, 382, 353, 312, 292 and 271 models.

An outgrowth of the FAS³Tech series was a model that would take the industry in a new direction when it was introduced around 2005: the 400 Super Sport. It was the first boat to combine a stepped bottom with a wider beam and a cockpit designed more for entertaining, plus full accommodations below.

In 2012, Formula introduced the 350 Crossover Bowrider, which took the company in a new direction. “We had requests for larger bowriders that came on the tail of the big [market] crash in 2009,” Scott says. “The real true crossover would have been the 350.”

That boat was followed by the 330 CBR. As customers often do, they started asking for bigger boats with forward seating and a more open layout. In 2016, the 430 Super Sport Crossover and All Sport Crossover were designed to be powered by Mercury Racing’s 400-hp Verado 400R outboard. “It allowed us to develop larger, higher-horsepower dayboats,” Grant says. “Along with joysticks that allowed the customers to maneuver the boats more easily.”

The 380 Super Sport Crossover created a niche for boats in the size range. “There’s not a lot of competition at that size,” Jason Brune says. “When we were conceptualizing that boat, it was, ‘Let’s take the 400 Super Sport, combine it with the characteristics of the 350 CBR, and add outboards,’ and it’s been well-accepted by the market.”

Today, Formula has a 50-foot model powered by four 600-hp Mercury V-12 Verados. The company is building about 250 boats per year, which is fewer units than when the boats were smaller than 25 feet, but the dollar volumes are up. The company also changed its business model many years ago, when it started taking preowned boats on trade and reselling them or moving them through wholesalers. “It’s about 20% of our business,” Scott says.

Like many builders, Formula’s regional stronghold is the Southeast, followed closely by Texas. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, there was some business west of the Rocky Mountains, but today it’s mostly in the eastern half of the country.

Moving into larger boats has given the Porters an opportunity to meet an interesting clientele through the years. “With the niche that we’re in, we’re catering to people who have a lot of means, and it makes it interesting,” Scott says.

One program that has evolved over time is Formula Flex, which started after the Great Recession. It lets customers add personal touches to their boats in terms of colors, fabrics, materials and more. “It opened up challenges and the opportunity to have a lot more interactions with our clients,” Scott says. “We encourage them to come to the factory, but not all of them do. Some of these are drawn-out processes.”

That kind of interaction goes back to the core focus Vic Porter had when he got into the business: keeping customers and employees equally happy. “Years from now, when I’m not here, what would bring the greatest satisfaction is knowing not only that we built world-class boats, but that the culture of respect for people is still here,” Scott says.

That won’t be a concern. It runs in the family. 

This article was originally published in the August 2023 issue.