From an idea to a waiting list
A lifetime spent working with wood, one gap in the market, and — today — a small team who share the same obsession with getting it right.
A gap in the market
On one side of the market, wood-strip canoes are stunning — but expensive and heavy, being all timber. On the other, plastic-gunwale canoes are brilliant workhorses, but not much to look at. I saw space for something in between: a fibreglass hull for strength and weight, paired with proper hand-finished timber for the gunwales, yoke, seat and decks — and a traditional, curved bow and stern instead of the flat profiles most modern canoes use.
Built in a scout hut
I'd had the idea for years, but lockdown is what actually got it made. My work as a business coach dried up almost overnight when clients across the world stopped travelling, and I thought: there's never going to be a better time. I hired the unused boat shed at a local scout hut and spent six months getting the design right — binning more timber than I'd like to admit. I put the first canoe on Facebook Marketplace just to see if anyone else liked it as much as I did. It sold within the hour.
Where it's led
I built the next one, designed the logo, built the website, and Campbell Canoes was properly under way. Within a few months we had a waiting list, and an enquiry from a customer in Perth, Australia asking if we could ship one out to him. Since then we've grown into a small, dedicated team — a skilled fibreglasser shapes every hull, and a couple of specialist woodworkers help me hand-finish the gunwales, seats and decks. Every canoe is still put together and finished by me personally before it leaves the workshop, one at a time, by hand.
