Dr. Bob Foresman, a local Orange County orthodontist and avid sailor, gathered around the kitchen table with his family and invented the first product of what would become an innovative profitable manufacturer nearly 50 years later.
Rancho Santa Margarita-based Forespar Products Corp. started in 1967 with a “whisker pole”—a telescoping pole that was easier to use and store on a sailboat than the standard tool at the time.
Today, Forespar manufactures 95% of its products, which include proprietary inventions for boats, recreational vehicles, and gardening, at its manufacturing facility here. It’s now managed by Foresman’s son Scott and remains a local manufacturing success story that intentionally flies “under the radar.”
The Business Journal’s Kate Schwartz recently met with Scott Foresman to ask about the company’s origins and how it’s built an expanding business. Here’s an edited excerpt of his responses:
Q: How did Forespar start?
A: Forespar started at our dining room table, where my dad designed all of the first products, and he manufactured them in our garage. We lived in Claremont at the time, and our sailboat was in Newport Harbor.
I remember one time my dad needed to heat-cure a rubber mold and used my mom’s oven to do it. It filled the kitchen with a smelly odor, and our food tasted a little funny for a few days.
It started with the idea of making a better product: a whisker pole for sailboats that the user could telescope or collapse to make it easier to use and easier to store.
The products were novel, solved problems for customers, or did new things they liked, and the company grew as a result. It started with a cool product my dad designed, and my mom helped him see he could sell more, design new products, create a catalog, and that it could be turned into a real company.
We have a lot of experience making boating and commercial products that perform well, are lightweight, and resist corrosion.
Q: What were the company’s early days like?
A: We made the telescoping whisker pole in the garage, and as we got busier my dad hired some college students part time to help, then grew to rent a small space in Ontario and hired a full-time person. Over the years, we kept growing and moved four more times into bigger facilities, including Costa Mesa and Irvine, before moving to Rancho Santa Margarita.
Q: How did you become involved in the family business?
A: My dad worked full time as an orthodontist, and I would help him in the evenings with assembling the whisker poles. I was in first grade at the time. Over the years, he would bring piecework home for us to do. I also worked full time in the summers during grammar school, junior high, and high school, and even summers in college.
I went off to business school and started my career on the East Coast and then back to California to lead a few companies needing performance improvement, including Hobie Cat. I had been advising Forespar, and in 2007 my dad asked me to join the company full time. I had the great pleasure to work with my dad for five years until his passing in 2012.
Q: What is a business principle of the company?
A: ‘Products that perform’ is our motto, and every product we develop offers a performance advantage over the competition or are entirely new products.
Another core principle is, ‘You can count on us.’ We offer excellent service to all our customers, for consumers who use our products every day and for our dealers/resellers and our many [original equipment manufacturer] industrial customers.
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
A: Persistence—I have been involved with dozens of businesses over my career, from startups to small and large established companies. Every successful business has a persistent management team that learns from its mistakes and persists through challenges and difficulties.
Advice—look for good, relevant advice from people who have more experience and success than you on important issues, and then follow it effectively.
Build value—building a true business requires you to think clearly about how to build sustainable value independent of the founding team, and that you do this consistently.
Q: How has Forespar grown throughout the generations?
A: We’re in our second generation and will be celebrating our 50th year in 2016. There’s the importance of products that perform and taking care of customers.
I have worked in every area of the business, from production to support to finance to sales and service departments, because I believe an important success factor is to directly understand the business and especially to know the personnel firsthand. This helps the leader understand the strengths and weaknesses of the enterprise and to capitalize on opportunities for improvement. Beyond this, we are a conservative company in managing our expenses, receivables and debt.
Q: What does Forespar focus on now?
A: We have been broadening our business beyond boating for many years. One growth area is lightweight, corrosion-resistant products that use our carbon fiber structures and fiber-reinforced plastics expertise. We make several product families for American Special Forces and Navy SEALs. Another growth area is environmentally responsible maintenance products. This comes out of our boating heritage and concern for the oceans and environment. And this has guided us to some very interesting new products, and we’re putting those into subsidiary companies.
Q: Does Forespar manufacture all of its products?
A: Yes, we manufacture 95% of our own products right here in Rancho Santa Margarita.
Q: How many subsidiary companies or spinoffs have resulted from Forespar?
A: We have three subsidiaries, each one dedicated to innovative, environmentally responsible maintenance products that perform really well. One is EcoTank, which uses organic biostimulants to treat waste and odor in boat toilets, and customers also want it for RV toilets and home septic systems. One is Tea Tree Power, which offers a range of natural air-purifying products that also fight mold and mildew and odors. We started this for boats, and we quickly found that customers also really like Tea Tree Power for home, bathroom and pet odors.
And probably the coolest new product subsidiary is WaterXtender. This enables lawns, flowers and shrubs to use 20% to 40% less water. We boost plants’ natural abilities through organic biostimulants so you can cut watering way down, really extend the benefit of rain, and get more plant with less water.
Q: What are you most looking forward to in business?
A: The next opportunity to grow and strengthen Forespar. The most exciting things for me are new products and markets. We are always developing, plus looking for new ideas and approaches.
Q: Was there ever a time when you were worried or unsure about the future of the company?
A: The economic meltdown of 2008, which for our industry started in mid-2007, was very trying. And to a significant extent, the industry still has not recovered. Some leading companies have been severely hurt. For a number of years before 2007, we had been diversifying our core boating business to cover more product areas and more markets, including international. As a result, along with careful management, we did not have to lay off any staff, weathered the storms, and have emerged stronger.
Q: How did you turn your passion into your profession? How do you manage to separate the two? If you don’t think you do separate them, is that a struggle for you?
A: It is not a struggle because I enjoy boating. In fact, I would like to do more, but my schedule does not allow this right now. As a company, we believe it is important to have first-hand knowledge of how our products are used and how they perform. I had the same experience with Hobie Cat. This allows us to provide even better support to our end-use customers and design better products.
Q: Why have you remained in Orange County?
A: This is a great place to live and work. I grew up here, and so did pretty much everyone else in the company. Many of our employees have been with the company for 15, 20, and 30 years. We have been around for almost 50 years, so I guess we like it here.
Q: What are the challenges of doing business here?
A: The traffic and cost of living are the two biggest challenges. To help with the traffic, we adjusted our production hours to 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The cost of living is a bit tougher, and a good number of our employees over the years have had to move out of the immediate area to other communities, like Riverside.
Q: It’s often said that domestic manufacturing, especially local California manufacturing, is dwindling. What are your thoughts on the health of the local manufacturing community?
A: California is not manufacturing-friendly, which is why so many manufacturing jobs have left the state and the community is dwindling. This is too bad, because these are higher-value jobs than average. We are fortunate that we have created a clean, quiet operation, and many visitors are surprised that we are a manufacturer.
Q: Why is local manufacturing important?
A: One is jobs. Manufacturers with skilled workers offer higher-value jobs than average, and this is good for the local economy. Another is responsiveness. Local manufacturing allows us to deliver products without long lead times or waiting for overseas deliveries. We can also change the designs and improve our products more responsively because we have local control and don’t need to wait for anyone else.
