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TR: At one point the whole Furrer family was working here — Werner Sr., Erich, Werner Jr. and Bruce. Bruce is still our president and sole owner, but the new family is what you see in this video. We are the ones now bringing Werner paddles to life and keeping the Werner family alive.
JM: How big is that family now? How many people do you have on payroll?
TR: Right now, we’re hovering right around 70. We have more women working here than men, and it’s a very diverse group of people.
JM: Hiring has been incredibly difficult during this pandemic, and that’s true whether you’re running a restaurant or a paddle factory. It’s no secret that Werner had some real challenges with staffing at the height of the pandemic. How are you working through that?
TR: There’s really no way to sugarcoat it. It was tough. And geographically we are in a hotbed of big business — we have Boeing, Amazon, Microsoft. So the hiring environment here is very difficult. We’ve really tried to sell our Werner family culture. We have a great benefits program, we offer competitive pay, and we’re continuing to adjust and listen to our employees.
JM: Did you have to raise wages and add benefits in order to re-staff after the first wave of the pandemic?
TR: We’ve always had amazing benefits. My wife is a teacher and I have a better health and dental plan than she gets. So we’ve always had good benefits and we continue to adjust as the labor market adjusts. You have to right now. If you don’t, you’re going to be left in the dust.
[ See all Werner paddles in the Paddling Buyer’s Guide ]
JM: To that end, is the film a recruitment video to a certain extent?
TR: The idea was always to pay tribute to the people behind the paddles. When we started the project there was no labor shortage, so it wasn’t necessarily intended to become a recruiting video. I think it works as a good brand video, though. It really humanizes the handcrafted aspect of our paddles, and brings the location to life.
JM: For almost everyone in paddlesports, the last couple of years have been both feast and famine at the same time: everybody wants to buy your stuff, and you just can’t make enough to meet the demand. Tell me how that played out for Werner.
TR: From a strategic position, integrity is everything. And one thing we did not want to do is get in a position of overpromising and not delivering. I would rather be upfront and not get into a position where our partners and their customers are waiting on an empty promise.
One of the other constraints is sourcing materials. It’s always in the back of your mind, and it’s something that you sometimes have no control over.
JM: In the film there’s a scene where a woman says she’s packing 400 paddles a day. Are you back up to pre-COVID production levels?
TR: I should pass on this question, because I don’t have the numbers in front of me and so much has changed. It’s really hard to compare to last year, and even more difficult to compare to 2019.