I will let you guys know who we are working with when they give me the quote and deliver the windows, until then I am not going to pass along anything, because the usual recommended sources have not done anything spectacular and their prices were gold plated. These new guys show great promise and if they don't get greedy will wind up with a lot of business. They currently have about a 6-8 week back log. I am in manufacturing myself, and I wish I could get the markup I know they are getting for items in the yacht industry. Believe me, we purchase aluminum, stainless, fiberglass, carbon fiber, nylon, etc and I know materials and labor costs. Our products have about a 30% margin. Some these guys are getting 300% markups so it pays to shop. My shipwright contacted a window manufacturer that supplies the OEM yacht manufacturers with windows to find the aluminum extrusion we needed to repair the existing windows, at first they were willing to sell him some 20 foot lengths at $4-$7.50 a foot depending upon which extrusion, then when he actually ordered it, they changed their policy and would only sell complete windows. He sent them the dimensions and their quote came back at close to $20k. We had figured out the cost to have them fabbed locally, and with new glass was going to be right at $5k plus anodizing costs, based upon the aluminum extrusion cost they first quoted. There is a local guy here in NC that does windows, which is great if you only need to replace a couple of windows, but a whole boat gets too expensive quickly. He has to charge more because of low volume and he has to pay a premium for materials. If I just needed a few windows I would just use him, but I am re-doing a whole boat. I have turned my shipwright on to several new sources for materials and he has gotten price reductions of 40-70% on most of the materials he uses. This lets him give better prices to his customers, which I am one of them. He has already saved me $30K on materials with the new sources of supply used on Boss Lady.
