http://www.witn.com/news/headlines/33760424.html

One of Beaufort County's largest employers is laying off employees.
Fountain Powerboats let 70 people go Friday.
Fountain said they decided to conserve all the cash they could and only built boats that have been pre-sold during the next three months.

Fountain says lower gasoline prices and interest rates dropping should help their industry in the next several months.

Fountain has 270 employees now working at it's plant in Chocowinity.

Chcocwinity, where is that? The plant is in Washington?? I was just there and I estimated that there were 80-90 people working when I went through the plant, twice!

Well, Humm, still doing much better than most boat companies.

WILL

Sucks for all involved. looks like a long cold winter for them.

thanks will keep selling boats!!

"Company president Reggie Fountain tells WITN News that it's traditional this time of year for the marine industry to be slow, regardless of how the economy is doing."

I dont understand. I thought all the BAJA dealers were low on inventory since nothings been built all year. I figured there would be overtime down there with all the new Baja models and inventory shortages.

So much for providing a bunch of new jobs.

fewer dealers,,,fewer orders???

Almost none of the old Baja dealers bought into the Fountain program. Now they are scrambling to find dealers it sounds like. Dealers are going down everyday and they will find it hard to get anyone at this time. A lot of the old inventory is still out there.

After all the bickering about Fountain building a better "Baja," how he was creating more jobs, about how the boats would be faster, how he originally intended to help the Baja workers at Bucyrus and didnt, does anyone else find this amusing? Karma...

I still don't blame Reggie for any of this, but since only Baja models were sold at the dealer meeting just think if the table was turned the other way? There would be many people layed-off at Baja (maybe even myself) but there would be a few boats being built, and the dealer network would probably remain more stable?

XT