A Pier that's as easy as it gets
By Dick Ellis
Like anyone who owns or maintains a pier, Carl Surges faced problems when putting in and taking out his parents ‘ pier in Conover twice each year; damaged framing and deteriorating decking , rusted hardware escalated from outdoor storage, or the time-consuming transportation of pier sections and accessories to and from the lake and over-winter storage were all too familiar companions. In Wisconsin, ice often magnifies the aggravations or flat out reaps havoc on permanent structures.
It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention. When professional skills and personal passion include product design and development, perhaps mother calls a bit louder and with a bit more urgency. From the roots of his own calling as a sculptor and designer, Surges’s very nature inspires him to improve on the already-established, or to design and create what may never have been thought of before.
Raised in northern Wisconsin, Surges was sculpting his entire life and turned professional in 1979. Partnering with a friend, his career took off in California from 1979 through 1990including a focus on sculptural work for numerous movie projects, and gift companies, which included Universal Studios Tours, Knott’s Berry Farm and others.
Back in Wisconsin by 1991 Surges said his idea of developing a better pier design was already in its infancy. In the summer of 2002 he took a break from sculpting and started experimenting with the flexibility of brass tubing and coupling mechanisms to determine how each could be used in pier design. His design in part needed to have uncompromising strength, require no bolts or other hardware to fasten, no tools even when lowering or raising the structure in the water, guarantee one-person installation and removal, and offer easy storage virtually immune to the elements.
“After putting in and taking out my parent’s pier for years and watching people with their own piers I thought there had to be a way to carry the sections upside down from a position in the middle of the frame like carrying a pair of nicely balanced buckets of water,” he said. “The legs would be folded when carrying and part of the frame. It’s all just logical.”
Each section, in his inventor’s vision, would be tilted down by the installer with swiveling hooks meeting and coupling with the previous section already in the water, then simply flipped over to take its place in line. He also wanted to develop a way to drag each section from the water that would ultimately prove even easier than installation and to make “T’ or “L” extensions to the pier as easy as the rest for the purchaser.
“I had questions during the design process,” he said. “Had these things been tried? Could I ask the opinion of anyone? I was investing time not knowing if any of these ideas could be patented or were they already patented. I remember asking a pier expert about dragging out each section on tilted pier pads that would work like skis rather than pulling the sections straight up. He said it wouldn’t work. The expert was simply wrong. Taking the pier out for one person, without getting wet, is even easier than putting it in.”
The fundamental design was completed and incorporated in a miniature working model by the summer of 2002. Surges used the model to try and find investors among friends. About that time, he presented the model to an intellectual property firm specializing in patents, Kinney & Lange in Minnesota, which embarked on an exhaustive patent search.
Waiting for the report which would tell Surges whether his design was already patented or not, he wrote a business plan, learned a computer drafting program to refine his designs and began to introduce the product to the public. He introduced the pier at the Milwaukee Boat Show in a 10 x 10 foot booth, the smallest booth he could rent.
“The response was good,” he said. “One guy wanted to invest in the pier and ultimately did. The prototype was tack-welded and not meant to be walked on. The investor walked out on it and it collapsed.”
“The patent report came back free and clear,” said Surges. “Everything in our design is so logical. Why wasn’t it done before? There was some give and take with the patent office. They said we had to break our design down into five or six different patents. I was flattered but concerned because of the multiple costs. We argued that they should have brought that up earlier and they ultimately issued one patent that gave us everything we wanted.”
Pier of d Nort was officially born. Surges launched his company in a garage in Conover in the summer of 2003 and by the winter of 2004 his first design was completed as a working prototype. The original design was what the patent was based on and worked fine, but we had to significantly modify design,” he said. “It has not significantly changed since then.”
The pier offers standard welded aluminum frame sections of 4-feet by 8-feet with dual-braced folding legs on one end and swiveling hooks on the other. There is no bolting or unbolting between seasons. Each frame is topped with two 4x4 foot deck panels of optional color and material. Simple one person installation and removal is guaranteed.
Height adjustment is also simple and reliable. If the consumer wants to raise the pier, he lifts the pier and steps down on the footpad designed by Surges. “The secret is a one-way cam,” he said. “The leg can slip one way but not the other. We mount the cam so that it holds the pier up rather than the other way around. Oddly, it just worked better that way. When you lower the pier all it takes is a quarter turn of the wrench to loosen the cam mechanism. When you let go of the wrench, the pier stays.”
Surges also said that storing and caring for the pier is just as easy. Frames are stored upside down with folded legs without leg-caps removed and can be stacked as high as the owner likes. Panels are stacked vertically top-surface to top-surface and bottom to bottom.
“We’ve weight-tested our pier,” Surges said. “The more weight you put on our pier the more secure it is. Each 4 by 8-foot section will hold over 7,000 pounds. That’s about 40 people. If you do get that many people on one section of our pier, send us a photo. We’ll send it to the Guinness Book.”
In the fall of 2004, Pier of d Nort moved the company and started making piers in a small abandoned car garage in the middle of Slinger. Late in the fall the location already needed more space to meet the growing needs and the company moved to Hartford. With seven fulltime employees, Pier of d Nort began building piers targeted for sale in 2005.
“We had a pretty good season,” Surges said. “In 2004 we sold 10 piers and in 2005 we sold five times that many. By 2006 our investor wanted to get involved in other ventures, and offered to sell back his shares of the company. We moved the company back to St. Germain and I bought him out with a deal based on future royalties.”
Pier of D North has grown by a minimum of 25 percent each year since then, including maintaining that growth right through the current recession. The company has sold 1800 to 2000 piers all over the USA including Alaska, Canada, and Europe. Several Pier of d Nort piers are on the Great Lakes, several on Lake Winnebago and several have been sold for use in salt water locations.
Currently, 14 employees work for Pier of d Nort. Surges puns that his employees feel bad for the employees of Google, famously known as an extraordinary place to work.
“This is the best crew, a sharp crew and a fun place to work. Everyone understands how the pier works. Had great support from my brother Neil who worked with me in the sculpting business. When I started the pier business Neil was ready for other challenges. He joined us. I wouldn’t be able to do this without his dedication. Another brother Bruce, recently retired from a tool & die career. Bruce began making tooling for all the various elements that went into the pier. Without his expertise and generosity we might never have succeeded."
 |
 |
He said that one of his best decisions was to not sell through dealers, which would have increased cost by 25-30 percent. “If we can put that money into the pier instead of the dealer’s pocket, well it was a no-brainer,” he said. “It was a scary decision. Once you go down that road, you can’t go back. Once you go through dealers, you can’t go back to direct sales either. It was a really good decision.”
Persons interested in the product send their inquiries by e-mail and discuss needs directly with staff. When they purchase, Pier of d Nort arranges to ship the pier. Most consumers find the instruction so informative that they don’t need to look at the additional supporting material that is available. Depending on conditions, a seven-section pier is likely to take less than two hours the first time and considerably less time with experience.
“We have several piers owned by women and they also put their own piers in,” Surges said. “We don’t operate on a huge profit margin. What people pay for in the product, mostly goes in to the product. There are lots of conditions, special things that need to be taken into account, including high water and soft bottom requiring larger footpads which are problems for any pier.
“Sometimes we say, ‘Don’t buy our pier’,” said Surges. “If the customer is on 20 feet of ocean water with no break water and a soft bottom I tell them to look somewhere else. On a protected ocean side our pier does offer advantages. A hurricane doesn’t care if it is a permanent structure. At least our pier can be taken out quickly.”
To emphasize the structural integrity of his pier, the Surges miniature sculpture “Pierre” was supersized and brought to the Milwaukee Sport Show in 2012. Surges wanted a monstrous attention-getter of his own design sitting on a pier of his own design to draw thousands to his booth. That happened.
“Nothing on our website is exaggerated or untrue,” Surges said. “People with piers are sophisticated; they live on lakes, they’re doing well, they’re smart. To put things on the website that are untrue would be counter-productive. We understate the quality of our piers. To have customers discover that it’s even better than they expected leads to more referrals than the other way around.”
“We’ll let the product speak for itself,” he said.