Sometimes business ideas are meticulously thought up – other times, they’re born from wild adventures.
The latter is the case for Steve Smith, 50, and Dan Platt, 42, who own ORCA – a Canadian canoe building business based in Pooley Bridge.
ORCA – which stands for open river canoe adventures – first launched around 15 years ago, after Dan met Steve while he was working in outdoor education.
Dan said: “It all started after Steve and his girlfriend went on a trip on the Orange River in Africa in canoes they’d built themselves and I ended up meeting his girlfriend while she was working in an outdoor centre.
“She asked me what I was doing over the winter and I said I didn’t know but she then told me they were planning to paddle up New Zealand in canoes they were going to build. She asked if I wanted to come and I said yes.
“So we went and built these canoes in about two or three weeks and paddled up the coast of New Zealand. It sounds bizarre, but it’s easier to build canoes in these countries than it is to source canoes and send them over.
“But just telling people about it on our journey, we started thinking we should run canoe building workshops and teach people how to do it, so we did, because there was none doing anything like it at the time.”
The trio also went on to paddle Lake Malawi in Africa and put their canoes to the test when they faced wild situations including being chased by hippos, stalked by an 18ft crocodile and getting caught in a choking lake fly swarm.
Dan added: “We’ve had a lot of out there crazy stuff that has happened to us with canoeing in mind.
“When we tried to research paddling on Lake Malawi and researched it the internet didn’t give us a lot of information back then. So it was trying to find out what the lake was like, if it was dangerous and using Google earth to see the terrain.
“But we like to share the stories with clients, it gives them an idea of what we’ve done with our canoes and shows that we’ve put them through their paces.”
Initially, Steve and Dan worked together offering bushcraft canoe expeditions in Scotland and the Lakes before they turned their attention to building canoes as their main business model.
They now also employ outdoor instructor Justin Kyme-Oliver, who helps out with building and separately runs his own outdoor business Mountain Memories, where he offers experiences like sunset canoe trips in the Lake District.
Dan added: “We branched out from doing the trips into running workshops, where people come to build canoes and take them home and it was so popular, that’s what we do now.
“We never really planned it, we just started doing it and every year there seems to be a demand for people wanting to build canoes.
“We’re both quite practical, but the process of actually building the canoes was something we were never taught to do.
“I did a product design degree and Steve has always whittled away and done woodworky stuff, but we never trained in it, we just kind of figured it out as we went along.
“We went through a lot of trial and error and all after all these years we’ve managed to refine it and see what works well. We’ve even had some clients give us ideas too.”
Dan added that his very first canoe took weeks to build – but now the team can build canoes with clients in just a few days.
He said: “Back in the day we used to run four day builds which were really long days, and now we’ve got it down to two and a half days.
“It’s a flat pack, so everything is pre-cut and we do that by hand ourselves and everything is attached to pre-made jigs.
“We use epoxy resin to glue it together. It’s similar to a stitch and tape, because normally folk would join the planks with cable ties, pull it tight and that’s the stitching but we use string clamming, which is like tying shoelaces together
“It pulls everything together and gets rid of drilling, so it speeds everything up. The last thing you do is the fibreglass tape and epoxy resin, so it joins it all together and you then wait for it to set, which takes around six hours.
“On the final day you can take the strings off, put the gunnel rails on the side of the canoe and fit the seats. We call it a string and glue technique, which people are very interested in, especially people who have done a bit of woodworking.
“The process is very hybrid and I haven’t seen people do it quite like we do. I haven’t seen anyone get it down to two and a half days.
“I think that’s because we’ve been doing it for so long and the techniques take less and less time. But that’s what folk want, they want a canoe and they want it fast.”
While Steve and Dan used to offer three different sizes of canoe, they now offer one to keep their preparation process streamlined.
Dan said: “We used to have people ringing in with massive families or wanting solo canoes but it got out of control as people would turn up and wouldn’t know what canoe they wanted to build.
“So we took a leaf out of Aldi’s book and thought we’d focus on the one product. Our main canoe is called the Lakelander and it’s about 15ft and very wide.
“It’s the widest on the market, but that’s what we find folk want. I think it does surprise people, but wide means stable.
“We used to offer smaller, more technical canoes, but people kept falling out of them. But they’re so light they’re good to paddle on your own and can fit up to two people.
“Once the canoe is done, it’s up to the clients if they want to give it a colour. Sometimes they start painting here, but going down the painting route is a rabbit hole.
“We do get artists turn up who have ideas for designs and kids love to paint them, but they are really great canvas’. I always say you can spend more time painting them them building them, it is a lovely process, but our job is to get them to that point.”
While the pair do sell canoes pre-made on platforms like Ebay – Dan said people are more interested in building their own canoe with the support of a professional.
Canoe workshops at ORCA cost £685 and there are options to upgrade the seating if clients want to.
Dan said: “We do have a few canoes we try and sell, but it’s hard to sell them. The issue with it is that you never really properly get your money back, so it’s not a good business model.
“Because we keep the cost competitive even with if you were buying second hand, people prefer the idea of building their own canoe in the Lakes rather than just having a canoe.
“The Lakes has that X factor and people really love that. The workshop is next to the lake in Pooley Bridge and it’s very rustic and I think all that makes people go for us more than just building to sell online.
“I remember the first time I made a canoe, it took me weeks because I didn’t know what I was doing. But with the workshops everyone that comes wants to be there and they’re well up for it and it’s great because I get to remember that buzz of making your first canoe.
“They don’t have to face the issues I did of it going wrong doing it on your own. I’ve seen just about everything that can go wrong from planks cut in half to resin not setting or canoes being dropped and smashed in half.
“Even if these things do happen, we can fix them. But it’s really nice seeing getting people involved and keeping them on track and I’m always amazed that within just two days we’ve got a canoe, I actually can’t believe it myself when we do it.”
Dan added that he feels the business also has a special draw for clients looking to make memories.
He said: “We’re a bit of a bucket list business, we do get people say they fancied it randomly, but most of our clients are people who say they’ve been thinking about doing it for years.
“We had a guy the other day who said he’d been waiting 15 years to do it. He’s booked onto our very first course but had been unable to do it and then had kids, and he’d been waiting to do it since.
“A lot of this kind of thing is how far do you actually want to go with things like Dragons’ Den. A lot of people want to put their life and soul into the product, but we’ve done the opposite, we don’t do any advertisement other than Instagram and online.
“But people just keep finding us somehow. I think we’re a bit of a one-off product and word of mouth and people chatting is what really helps us.”
