Leon Slikkers realized his dream of building a national business — twice.

In 1964, under the one-word Slickcraft name, he built a 23-foot fiberglass boat — the SS 235 — which became a flagship model for the company. Because he was also manufacturing fiberglass boats for the Century Boat Company of Manistee, Michigan, and both were selling well, he decided he needed more space.

More:Leon Slikkers, founder of S2 Yachts, is a lifelong inventor

He twice expanded the roller-skating rink building on South Washington.

Then, in 1966, Slikkers established a new headquarters for Slickcraft at 500 E. 32nd St. — where Thermotron is today — and designed a 65,000-square-foot facility to manufacture boats from 14 to 25 feet in length. Two years later, he designed and built a larger facility on the other side of Brooks Avenue for the SS 285 inboard cruiser.

In 1969, business conglomerate AMF came knocking. After much thought and prayer, Slikkers decided to sell the business, reasoning he couldn't turn Slickcraft into a national brand without additional capital.

But after a while, Slikkers became restless. He resigned from AMF in 1973 and, because his sales agreement with AMF forbade him from making powerboats for five years, turned his attention to sailboats. In early 1974, during a world oil embargo, Slikkers launched a sailboat engineering business with his two oldest sons, David and Robert, both avid sailors.

He called it S2. Then, at 13 W. Seventh Street — where Big Lake Brewing is today — Slikkers not only designed boats, but processes for making boats. Instead of building sailboats in cradles surrounded by scaffolds, Slikkers put a recess in the floor so workers could work on boats without climbing on scaffolding. He also invented a way to make boats by inserting a fiberglass hull within a fiberglass hull, and a way to install windows encased in rubber, thereby reducing leakage.

He also assessed demand for two prototype boats by bringing them to the Chicago Boat Show. When he returned to Holland, he constructed a 72,000-square-foot plant at 725 E. 40th St.

Two years later, in 1976, Slikkers added power boats. A year after that, because the salmon and offshore fishing industries were growing rapidly, he added fishing boats. In 1979, he came out with a wide body inboard Tiara Power Boat, which shocked the industry. The success of the fishing boat series encouraged him to launch the brand Pursuit Fishing Boats.

Then, to enhance the reputation of the S2 Yachts, Slikkers teamed up with Graham and Schlageter, a racing design team out of Chicago, to create a vertical keel racer — which became part of a new line of boats called the Grand Slam Series. Meanwhile, he was building larger power boats.

When a friend in Florida, a fishing buff, suggested he investigate saltwater sportfishing powerboats, Slikkers was all in. When his son, David, suggested the company would fare better with a Florida address, he agreed. So, in 1983, he constructed a 72,000-square-foot facility in Fort Pierce, Florida.

But building bigger boats had a downside. It was a volatile business. In 1991, Congress passed a 10 percent Federal Excise Luxury Tax. It hit S2 Yachts hard, forcing the layoff of 500 employees. Fortunately, Congress repealed the tax in 1993.

In 1995, S2 Yachts added a third manufacturing facility on an intercoastal waterway in Swansboro, North Carolina. This location made water delivery of the larger Tiara Yachts possible.

But between the bursting of the “dot.com bubble” in 2000, the terrorist attacks in 2001, and the Great Recession of 2008, there were severe repercussions for the boating industry. In 2008-2009 alone, S2 Yachts laid off 900 workers. The Great Recession also forced S2 Yachts to diversify into wind turbines.

Then came the rebound. In 2011, S2 Yachts contracted with a Dutch distributor to make boats in the $2 million price range.

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In 2018, S2 Yachts divested its Pursuit brand and increased its manufacturing footprint in Holland to 850,000 square feet. It became Tiara Yachts in 2019, which remains under the S2 Yachts umbrella.

Meanwhile, Leon Slikkers became an avid cyclist, riding over 4,000 miles a season and, for a time, co-owning Velo City Cycles. Still today, at the age of 94, Slikkers bikes, on average, 75 miles a week.

Information for this story comes from Robert Swierenga’s "Holland, Michigan," Nautipedia, Trade Only Today and correspondence with Leon and David Slikkers.

— Community Columnist Steve VanderVeen is a resident of Holland. Contact him through start-upacademeinc.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Steve VanderVeen: Leon Slikkers made his dreams come true