Like a river staying in its banks, raft manufacturer SOTAR is staying with the family. Founded and previously owned by Glenn Lewman Jr., the senior Lewman recently sold the company to his son, Jeremiah, and his wife Rachel Lewman, who have been managing the company since 2017.
“We’re very excited to now have ownership,” says company COO Jeremiah, who lists his favorite rivers as Oregon’s Illinois and California’s Smith and Pit. “We’ve been running its operations for seven years but now we can work on expanding into new markets while moving forward as the sole owners of SOTAR. We love our jobs and love using our products.”
Other markets, he says, include entering the firefighting market as well as ocean going boats.
Stared by Glenn Lewman in his garage in 1980, SOTAR is a family-run, custom whitewater inflatable boat manufacturer based in Merlin, Oregon, and still flourishing 40 years later. Every boat is built by hand and made one at a time. Its specialty, it maintains, is giving whitewater sports lovers a boat that is custom designed to personal specifications, from color to design specs to fit different rivers, whther it’s a raft, cataraft or inflatable kayak.
With a Master’s degree in Polymer Science, encompasses the processing, design, development and manufacturing of plastic products, Glenn’s son Jeremiah worked in the scientific instruments industry for several years until his passion for what his father started motivated him to return as SOTAR’s COO in 2017 and his wife Rachel taking the helm as CFO, bringing a BS degree in Business Management. Jeremiah’s engineering knowledge of polymer science coupled with SOTAR’s exclusively developed Urethane/Rezcoat, heavy duty, UV and abrasion resistant fabric which allows for welded seams, enables innovation in design and manufacturing in and outside the whitewater industry. Specialized projects the company has completed in the last two years include helicopter water buckets used in firefighting; helicopter fire hoses used in firefighting; floating dry docks for boats and ships; tubes and pontoons for specialty crafts and ocean-going vessels; and manufacturing fuel tanks for use in military applications.
And its whitewater inflatables continue to set the bar for performance. “Over the years we have vetted most of the industry engineering techniques for inflatables,” says Jeremiah of the company’s rafts that are made from Lexatron, its 40-oz. 100 percent urethane material with a 3,000-denier base fabric that is arguably the toughest in the industry. “We’ve pioneered and championed a material that will slip over rocks, hold up to decades of abuse, and quite possibly never require a patch. No other inflatables are made with such personal care and attention. You are a name, not a number; each employee knows your name and stands behind their workmanship.”
Info: www.sotar.com