Inlet Fisheries: catching success in Kenai.

• Author: Phelps, Jack E.
• Position: Alaska

Ignoring gloom and doom, this fish processor keeps looking for new markets to conquer.

Inlet Fisheries has a secret weapon in its quest for dominance in Alaska's seafood processing industry. Since 1987, Inlet has risen steadily from a modest start with a single site in Kenai. It is now the largest 100 percent Alaska-owned, Alaska-based salmon company. Inlet's secret weapon is a man named Vincent Goddard.

Goddard is the company's founder and president, and the force behind its constant innovation and expansion. "The man is a genius," says Jim Gonzales, Inlet's manager for domestic and European sales. "When it comes to knowing the fish business, he's a very exciting entrepreneur."

Gonzales came to Inlet from Jonah Brands, where he was vice president of sales. He's delighted to be working for Inlet because the company "has a lot of foresight. It's a pretty innovative company providing a constant array of new challenges. Vince always thinks of new things we can do," he says.

Inlet Fisheries' uniqueness is due in part to Goddard's background. Leadership of most fishing companies comes from people in the production end of the business. Goddard's experience is in marketing. He first came to Alaska in 1974 while working for Ito Yokado, the Japanese supermarket chain. At the time, he was based in San Francisco, buying American food products for Ito. Those products included buying Alaska fish, so Goddard came to Alaska to "look at the production of fish we were buying."

After leaving Ito in 1977, Goddard continued in marketing work, but couldn't stay away from Alaska. In 1980, he started his first Alaska business in the Bristol Bay fishery. The company didn't survive, but Goddard says, "I learned a lot from the experience." Finally, in 1987, he saw his opportunity in Cook Inlet, and started Inlet Fisheries.

A CORNERSTONE IN KENAI

The Fisherman's Packing Plant in Kenai was in the bankruptcy courts at the time, and Goddard made a bid on it. "Basically, I bought it for debts that were owed," he says, which turned out to be a two-year, $1.1 million lease on the Kenai plant. Goddard's new company assumed the lease.

"It was a big obligation," Goddard says, "but we were lucky to hit some real good years in Cook Inlet from 1987 on."

In 1988, Inlet established a second location on the Kenai Peninsula, a processing plant at Kasilof. This operates as a satellite to the original Kenai plant, enabling the company to adjust its primary processing capacity to the...