curved frame for style
Pontoon Bimini Tops with Flare for Style
Spotlight On Grill Covers
Best time of the year hands down. Fall. The nights are cool, the days are warm, the sky seems a little more blue, and the beer is amazing. There is a misconception about this time of year though – that it is time to put the grill away for the winter. Put the grill away? Why would anyone do that? Perhaps it is because you don’t have a cover to keep the snow off of it. Maybe you do have a grill cover but it has more holes in it than swiss cheese. Damn it man put a decent cover on it so you can grill all fall and winter! Don’t tell me the snow is a factor either. Grills get hot. Heat melts snow. Get your grill on! Sure you may need to keep a shovel at the back door to shovel a path to the grill but that is a small price to pay to keep the taste of summer going all year long! Trust me it will warm your soul.
Not just any grill cover will do. Oh no – it must be able to stand up to the elements all year long. If only there were some sort of outdoor fabric meant to stand up to the elements….let me think…Sunbrella! If you aren’t familiar with sunbrella fabric let me give you a quick introduction. It is made my Glen Raven Mills which has been making fabric and material since the ice cream cone debuted and Theodore Roosevelt was president in 1904. Sunbrella is a solution dyed acrylic fabric meant to be outside. It is widely used in the marine industry and outdoor living industry. It carries a 10 year warranty for goodness sakes! I think it will hold up quite nicely as an all year grill cover. Sunbrella carries a wide range of colors. We use the marine grade sunbrella to make our grill covers and you can choose whichever color you want. In fact, choose two if you like. Pick a couple of colors to accent your home, or of your favorite sports team. We have a grill cover to fit your needs. If not we will custom build one for you.
These are designed and made in Toledo, Ohio and we are sure you will love the way it looks, fits, and protects.
Who Makes the Best Boat Top?
Working in this industry I see a lot of sites and blogs that like to compare products and spotlight different products. While most are worth reading it is rare to find any comparisons on what allows us to stay on the water in the hot blistering sun – the bimini top. Without the bimini top keeping us out of the sun, our time on the water will be cut short due to blistering sun burns, dehydration, and perhaps death. OK maybe not death, at least not right away.
Boat builders they are the first to say they need to offer bimini tops with their boats, but they end up putting the cheapest thing on it they can find just to say they offer it. Not all of them do it but a significant amount do. Boat manufacturers pour money into research and development to offer new amenities and new ways to make their boat look good and be comfortable on the inside. Guess what? No one can see the inside of your boat from across the lake. What they can see is you put a shabby looking top that is worth about 150.00 on a 50,000.00 pontoon boat. If you are willing to do that most won’t believe you are willing to put a lot of money anywhere else on your boat.
As a consumer you continue to scan the horizon looking for something better. Without a doubt the bimini top is the first thing most see out on the water on any given day. Poorly made bimini tops tend to lead people to believe the boat may not be all that well made either. A well built bimini top will compliment the boat which in turn will cause people to search you out on the water to compliment you, your boat, and your bimini top. They may even ask where you got it. Chances are you didn’t buy it with the boat – chances are you bought it from us.
We take exceptional pride in our work, our workforce, and ulitmately our products. Regardless of whether it is our bimini tops, or our grill covers, we take the extra steps to ensure your satisfaction with your purchase. I wish I had a nickel for every time a customer has recommended us to a friend or family member. Even better I wish I had a dime for every recommended customer that has told me they saw our bimini top on a boat on the lake and asked that boat owner where they got such a great looking top. Then I tell them how reasonable the prices are — mind blown. Yup add up all those dimes and nickles and I’d be writing this from a cabana in Key West.
Best Quality Pontoon Boat Bimini Top
I was surfing the net today to see what the competiton was up to. When I do that sort of thing I try really hard to put myself in the shoes of a consumer – you know, someone who is looking to buy a bimini top. I try to keep an open mind…I really do. Sometimes it is difficult though to keep a straight face. Here are a few things I “learned” today:
If your bimini top hasn’t faded in 5 years it probably won’t fade in another 5 years.
90% of all pontoon boats are 8′ wide.
People that sell on ebay are typically college students selling out of their dorm room
Wow…there were more great lines but to keep this from dragging on and on lets just leave it at these three. As someone that has been around different fabrics my whole life I can tell you the first line is a bit off. I was going to email the website and ask if they believed that statement will they give me a 10 year warranty on their 5 year fabric?
90% of all pontoon boats are 8′ wide. If it were the year 1999 I’d agree a little more but not completely. Most are 8’6″ wide in 2014.
I have bought and sold quite a bit on ebay. I have never had the impression the seller was in a dorm room. I have never sold anything from a dorm room.
As a consumer I feel a bit lost when it comes to who is saying what online. Bimini tops are not cheap. If I dig into this topic online far enough I am going to get more and more confused. I would want to call someone who can help. Call Northstar Products – we are here to help. We will answer all questions honestly. We won’t pressure you into upgrades or try to sell you something that may or may not fit correctly. Doing business with us is like doing business with a family member or friend. We will treat you fair and help you pick out the right top for you and your boat. We are not a one size fits all sort of business. If you want your bimini frame and top to be 92″ wide we are not going to make you buy an 8′ wide frame and push it into a 92″ wide boat. We will build it 92″ wide for you. No extra charge to do it either. Remember you are working with a friend here.
5 best pieces of advice that helped grow Northstar Products Inc.
The landscape was different in the fall of 2007. The boating industry was living large and everyone seemed to be doing well. The housing industry was going crazy and people were buying boats faster than they could be built. Champagne was falling from the sky and everyone got lucky on a friday night. Okay maybe it wasn’t THAT great but times were pretty good.
Then it happened. It stopped. The country stopped. The housing industry collapsed. Financial institutions went belly up left and right. So did boat dealers and boat builders. It was in that time I began a company called Northstar Products Inc. My mission was to provide a high quality bimini top for a pontoon boat at a fair price. Simple game plan. We went from an idea in 2007 to reality a few months later in January of 2008. 6 years later a lot has changed. Some things though….the important things…have stayed the same.
I received a lot of advice from a lot of people on what to do and how to run a successful online company that is selling a high dollar item sight unseen. Here are the top 5 pieces of advice I took – and I’m glad I did.
5. Fifth place. You can’t please everyone all of the time. No matter how hard you try there are just some people out there that aren’t happy unless they are miserable. They will try to make you miserable too. Do everything within reason to accomodate your customers. Key words – within reason. If you have a customer asking you to do something unreasonable chances are there is nothing you will be able to do to satisfy them. Don’t be unprofessional about it, just explain your reasons clearly and if it isn’t good enough then congrats, you just ran into that customer you can’t please. Let it go.
4. Fourth place – just out of medal contention – Don’t compete on price. You will lose. There is always someone out there that can buy raw materials in larger quantities and cheaper. They can produce cheaper and sell cheaper. Identify the market you are after. Try to go after different market segments within reason. We developed a three tier system – entry level, mid level, high level bimini tops. Our entry level top is no the cheapest out there. It’s not the most expensive either. It doesn’t make sense to sell a product you aren’t making money on. That is a great recipe to go out of business. Know your expenses and price accordingly. Make less on entry level items and more on high level items by adding value as well as price to upgrade your products.
3. Third place – the bronze medal – Use quality parts/raw materials. Don’t skimp on this part. I know companies that will buy second quality fabric and pass it off as first quality stuff. It cheapens your product and your name. Take the high road – it will pay off. Cheap parts will only cause your phone to ring off the hook with angry customers. My goal is to spend my time on the phone taking orders, not explaining why the zippers just fell off the bimini top.
2. Second place – the runner up is….Every “problem” is a chance to excel. Sometimes I feel the best feedback we get is from how we handle a problem or issue a customer has with one of our products. We don’t walk on water so mistakes happen. Customers will have problems from time to time. Perhaps the frame is scratched up, or there is missing hardware. The top is the wrong color or the wrong size, or the wrong fabric. What are you going to do to fix it? Do whatever it takes. Go beyond what the customer expects or asks for. The extra effort and money you put into it will directly lead to more sales. Your customer will be so impressed with how you handled the problem or error they will go out and tell all their friends or anyone they run into how you fixed the problem.
1. First place. The Gold medal – Service, Service, Service. This is lacking big time all over. Not just online but really everywhere you go. From the bad service at seemingly every restaurant you go to all the way to the car dealership that you just have this bad feeling about. Bad service is everywhere. Not at Northstar Products though. We believe in working just as hard to make sure our product goes on your boat the way you intended as we did to secure the sale. We work hard to answer emails quickly and honestly. If we can’t make something for you we will let you know so we don’t waste your time. We will even give you an idea of where to go if we can’t help. I can’t stress enough that our service is most responsible for our growth.
There are a lot of places to buy bimini tops for boats out there. Our service is second to none. Come see for yourself.
