T&T: Semco...the real story...

[Jeffrey Siegel]

I had the opportunity to talk with Larry Serra yesterday.  He returned a
message that I left at Semco.  He is the owner and has been the owner for
the past 15 years.  We talked for about 10 minutes and he cleared up a
number of erroneous things that I was told via T&T (public and private)
about their company.  I felt that in order to present as many facts as
possible, I'd relay Larry's comments to everyone:

- The company has never been purchased.  Thirty years ago, Larry's father
started the company.  When he passed away 15 years ago, Larry took it over.
That is the entire story of the ownership.

- There has been no change in the production of their products.

- West Marine continues to sell their products both on their web site and
via custom orders through individual stores.  Many stores carry some Semco
products in stock.  West Marine doesn't carry their "honeytone" product
because it can be obtained by mixing the two products that they do carry in
a 50/50 mixture.

- The reason it has been hard to obtain their products recently
(www.shipstore.com, etc.) is that they've been on vacation.  They're a small
company and told their major web re-sellers that they wouldn't be able to
fulfill orders for a couple of weeks.  THAT is the reason that Shipstore put
their products on "Delayed Shipment" status.  Had my investigation happened
2 weeks ago or 2 weeks from now, I would have never noticed that there was
something funny about the shipment status.


I've decided to purchase their products from Shipstore.  I have about 1/3rd
of my cap rail prep'd and will clean and apply 1-2 coats of the sealer when
I get it (probably by the end of next week).  I'll post a report about my
findings.


...Jeff

================
Jeffrey Siegel
M/V aCappella
DeFever 53PH
W1ACA/WDB4350
Castine, Maine