| PQ260SX |
01-18-2012 03:44 PM |
What a morning!!! Yes, Claremont was there. I was a group of people that work for someone who is buying up old boat companies, that's for sure. They certainly did want the boat molds, but had a price cap (many of them weren't really worth anything). It was my impression that Claremont thought they were getting the name Powerquest with all this (according the employee I talked to) but that is not the case. No one there seemed to know who owned the brand name, but I can assure you, it wasn't with the auction...
When I was there, the "claremont" guys were waiting around to find out if "steelhead" was going to come through with the funds. I am not sure claremont really had much interest in everything else if they couldn't get the molds. There was question as to if "steelhead" was legit. When I left around noon, they still hadn't heard from steelhead, and to my knowledge, claremont hadn't completed their transaction. If Steelhead is legit, they really know what they are doing. The molds are really what counted in all of this. If they are in with whomever owns the PQ name, or they ARE there person that owns the PQ name, or they know how to buy the name, the Powerquest line could continue some day down the road. You have to remember that the windshields, bow rails, engines, outdrives, etc where all built by separate vendors and those relationships could be started fresh. If I understood correctly, the claremont people wanted to move everything to Florida, make a few mods, and start marketing boats in the Europe area...
I also had the privilege of speaking with a former Powerquest employee of ten years. It was a blast. I also took a two minute video walk around of the inside of the factory and will be uploading it to Youtube when I get a chance for those who couldn't make it. There were a lot more boats in there than were available for the auction and I suspect (thanks to information provided;) that there are title and lean issues. It sounds like there is a lot of legality issues with some of the stuff.
Some local upholstery/embroidery place got most of the sewing equipment and fabric. They are located behind a Saturn dealer in the area. I tried to track them down to find out if they would have any templates that they could continue to create PQ stuff with, but I couldn't find them after I got stuff down.
Fantastix, it will be great to hear the rest of the story that you can gather when you head over there in the next few days :-)
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