EXPERIENCE 185 | Big Boats, Small Business, and High Finance with Tom Trimmer, Co-Founder of Custom Marine Products and Principal of Trimmer Capital Management

The LoCo Experience

Tom Trimmer, Jr. spent his growing up years in the Northern Suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, and was disappointed when his father got rid of the family powerboat (about the time he was old enough to start skiing…) and bought a sailboat instead. The sailboat sparked a love of sailing however, that carries through to today, and spurred Tom’s first significant entrepreneurial venture - Bachelorette Party Boat Tours departing the Chicago Yacht Club. And - love of sailing led into his current business, Custom Marine Products - when he built a website to offer his father’s solar panel on a pole invention to the market - allowing live-on boaters to maximize their solar collection by adjusting the angle of the panel to be always-perpendicular to the sun.

Custom Marine Products has been growing at a 40%+ growth rate for most of its 10-year history, and is beginning to broaden their product offerings beyond highish-end marine solar systems, controllers, and lithium battery systems. They are increasingly developing their camper-van market offerings, and introducing refrigeration systems and more in the seasons to come. It’s an interesting business, with 3 - 6 month lead times for most of their products, and slow inventory turns.

In Tom’s previous chapters, and still today to a lesser extent, Tom has been a finance entrepreneur - sourcing capital for day traders, identifying arbitrage opportunities in foreign exchange markets, and other brainy stuff - and he is also active as an angel investor. Tom’s a brilliant guy, a world explorer, and a very entertaining guest - so please enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Tom Trimmer.

The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/

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Music By: A Brother's Fountain