Inside SOTW Mag: The Jason Amaral Interview

When Jason Amaral joined Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats as the Bristol, R.I., company’s operations manager almost a year-and-a-half-ago under new sole owner Brian McLaughlin, he had several mission-critical tasks to accomplish. Chief among them? Restore faith in the company for both its loyal customers and longtime employees.

(From left) Jason and Melissa Amaral welcomed Åsa Wahlström and Carl-fredrik Söderberg of Sweden to the 2019 Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats Factory Fun Run. Photo by Halsey Fulto copyright Outerlimits/speedonthewater.com.

With the deaths of founder Mike Fiore in 2014 and company president Joe Sgro just four years later, the company had been anything but stable—its future anything but certain.

But Amaral knew that in addition to those groups, he had two key assets to work with—a well-heeled backer who wasn’t going anywhere and a simply sensational array of products.

With all that in place, Amaral, who is 38 years old, married and has a one-year-old and a two- year-old at home, and the Outerlimits team including in-house sales manager Dan Kleitz, started the next chapter of the company’s history.

And so far, it’s been one hell of a read.

When you arrived at Outerlimits, what was your primary focus for improvement?

Well, there was a lot of uncertainty after the tragedy of Joe Sgro’s death. The guys needed a breath of fresh air. They needed to know that everything was OK, that we will be fine. We needed to get that kind of ‘secure’ mindset going.

The talent inside this building is tremendous—I’m confident that the guys and gals here could go head to head with any crew in the industry. Coming from a production management standpoint from other businesses I have owned, I looked at departments in the company where things were taking too long. We streamlined things. It was important to gain the confidence of the people who work here. Most of these folks have been here a long, long time.

With a new center console and sport catamaran coming, as well as an outboard-powered version of the SV 29 sportboat, Outerlimits has a lot going on. That’s for sure, and we’re moving at a pretty quick rate. We just hung the outboards on the SV 29. The catamaran molds are scheduled to show up soon. We are ramping up to get one of those together by the end of year.

To read the entire interview with Jason Amaral of Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats and more, subscribe to Speed On The Water digital magazine by clicking here.

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