LEAN DOWNSTREAM !!: THE WHOLE HISTORY From Beginning To End of The Blue Hole Canoe Company

From out of nowhere in the mid 1970s, river paddlers all of a sudden discovered a new whitewater canoe made from advanced plastic materials and molding processes that simply didn’t exist before. It was the Blue Hole Canoe made somewhere in the mountains of Tennessee. This is the story of where that canoe came from, why it performed so well, and what happened to that company. During the 15 years of the company’s existence, over 20,000 canoes were fabricated. But Blue Hole Canoes are not made any more, nor does that advanced plastic material exist anymore either. What happened? It turns out that the canoe, the company and the author all share a unified 15 years of shared existence. This is the author’s autobiographical history during that time and it turns out to be an excellent study of a complete entrepreneurial effort composed of dreams, realities, positive accomplishments and bad actors; all of which had an effect on the eventual outcome. The writing flows easily and follows the theme that the entire adventure was a grand learning experience.