In 2012, Taylor Strout was a long way away from his native Maine. He had recently taken a job working on a 150-foot midwater trawler, catching pollock on the Bering Sea. For Taylor, this meant temporarily leaving Maine, and his family, for weeks at a time to work out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. While the landscape and the fishery were foreign to Taylor, who had spent his youth working with his family in its generational lobster business, these weren’t the differences that were most apparent. Instead, upon arriving in Alaska, Taylor immediately noticed that the fishermen all donned apparel that proudly identified the fisheries for which they worked.
“I could tell their shirts came from a place of pride,” Taylor explained, “fishing on the Bering Sea is a big deal, and their apparel was a way for fishermen to be recognized onshore for the physically laborious and dangerous work that they do.” This type of industry branding was not something that existed in Maine.
One evening, while Taylor was on a four-hour watch on the trawler, he decided he needed to design something for the fishing industry back in Maine. With Maine’s fisheries facing increasing pressure in the forms of environmental change, legislative enactments restricting fishing zones, and the jeopardization of the working waterfront due to commercial development, Taylor wanted to create a way to unite the fisheries and give Maine fishermen a means of being recognized.
That cold evening on the Bering Sea, Taylor created one of his first designs for what would be his wildly popular brand – Rugged Seas.
Life on the Water: The Inspiration for Rugged Seas
Taylor Strout hails from a long line of fishermen. He chucked as he recounted that his grandmother was actually one of the toughest fishermen he knew:
“My grandmother used to row my father and uncle out in the bay to haul lobster traps by hand,” Taylor explained, “except, at first, she would hand-haul their traps because they weren’t yet strong enough.”
Taylor recounted stories of how the family had a lobster pound at their house, operated the boat together, and even would take turns delivering food to the lightkeeper on Ram’s Island in Casco Bay.
Taylor grew up lobstering with his father, a life-long fisherman in Portland. During high school, Taylor would go sternman for his father and cousin on their lobster boats. He eventually began hand-hauling lobster traps from a 1972 17-foot Boston Whaler he inherited from his father. Taylor always hoped that someday he could earn a living working on the water.
Taylor met his future wife-to-be, Nikki, while they were both growing up in Maine. Nikki too hailed from a long-line of fishermen. After completing high school, Taylor made the decision to pursue college in Colorado, and graduated in 2009. Missing life on the water, Taylor moved back to Maine. In 2012, Taylor and Nikki married, and have gone on to have three young boys, who enjoy being on the water with their parents.
Taylor returned to Maine during the uncertainty of the recession, when finding work was problematic. Furthermore, at that time, the lobster market was flooded, and the price made sterning even more difficult. Taylor eventually began working at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland.
Taylor recounted that one morning while at work, he received a telephone call from Nikki’s uncle, a fishing captain based out of Dutch Harbor.
“He asked me if I wanted to come to Alaska for a few weeks and do some fishing, and I told him I needed to check-in with my better-half. I asked him when he was expecting me to start, and he told me he needed me on a flight out of Boston the next morning,” Taylor laughed out.
Nikki interjected, “I told him he absolutely had to go try out the opportunity-- it was something he always wanted to do.”
Within minutes of the offer, Taylor had received the seal of approval from his wife, and advised his supervisor at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute of the opportunity. The next morning, he was on that flight to Alaska. This would be the fateful trip in which Rugged Seas was born.
Since 2012, Taylor has fished out of Dutch Harbor, has worked on tugboats from the Mississippi River to the Eastern Seaboard, and has worked on off-shore supply vessels out of the Gulf of Mexico. During that time, Taylor also enrolled in classes to obtain his merchant mariner’s license. Nikki was also working full-time, and pursuing her Master’s Degree to become a nurse practitioner. While commercial fishing was providing for the couple and their three children, both Taylor and Nikki knew they needed another way to diversify their income as their family grew.
Support Through Awareness and Recognition: The Mission Behind Rugged Seas
The Rugged Seas brand is meant to be a tribute to Maine’s fishing heritage and the working waterfront. The goal is to create products with aesthetics that immediately invoke the Maine fishing industry, while educating the consumer about the background of Maine fisheries and some of the challenges they face.
There are many towns dotting up-and-down the Maine coastline whose only industry is fishing. However, environmental factors have put untoward stresses on the industry. Lobsters are migrating further offshore, and lifelong fishermen have to decide whether to make a hefty financial investment in a boat that can handle the ruggedness of fishing offshore, or diversify their income some other way. Furthermore, while increasing development and commercialization of Maine’s bigger cities provides its advantages from economic and tourism perspectives, the effect on the fishing industry and Maine’s working waterfront has been less optimistic. Taylor explained:
“I feel like our working waterfront has been put in jeopardy, and I wanted to do my part to highlight our fisherman, and the community that depends on the work that they do.” Taylor noted that many products sold with embellishments reading “Maine” or “Maine Fishermen” really do nothing to support the fishing industry, nor do these products educate purchasers, many of whom are tourists, about the struggles the fishing industry is currently undergoing.
“I wanted to create a product that people could take home with them, but there was also something that would be left for the fishermen.” Taylor created a model by which a portion of all of Rugged Seas sales would be donated to the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) and Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association (MCFA). His goal is to expand his sales model to add in additional organizations to receive donations, and allow customers the option of choosing to which fishery group to donate.
Developing the Signature Look: A Local Effort
Taylor designed his first Gulf of Maine Fisherman sweatshirt back in 2012, and has been adding a new design to the collection every year. In 2018, Taylor and Nikki made the decision to expand the Rugged Seas shop beyond sweatshirts.
“We were looking to design a product that would clearly represent the fishing industry, but go beyond a t-shirt or sweatshirt,” Nikki explained. “We realized that hauling bibs were something that existed in every fishing industry – from commercial fishing to aquaculture. It’s an easily-recognized material symbolic of the industry.”
Taylor and Nikki realized that everyone who worked in the fishing industry had a pair of hauling bibs. Most hauling bibs worn by fishermen are 100% waterproof made, and stretchable for an active fit. Typically, when the bibs ripped or were over-worn, they were simply discarded. The Rugged Seas duo wondered whether old fishing bibs could be recycled and repurposed into backpacks and tote bags.
Rugged Seas paired with Hamilton Marine, a well-known marine supply store frequented by fishermen, to place collection boxes, where fishermen could donate their old hauling bibs. The bib collection has been instrumental in helping the Rugged Seas duo acquire materials to create their signature-look backpacks and tote bags. Nikki shared that she has even begun receiving telephone calls from fishermen in different regions of the country, asking if they could send Rugged Seas their old bibs for use.
“We’ve received donated fishing bibs from New Jersey to the West Coast, it is just unimaginable how our business has grown, and all the people who are working to contribute.”
Taylor and Nikki initially began washing the recycled fishing bibs at their home. After realizing it wasn’t feasible, they paired with Pratt Abbott, a local Maine dry-cleaning service to restore the bibs. Taylor explained:
“I went in and spoke with one of the owners of Pratt Abbott, and I was worried he was going to think my idea of restoring the hauling bibs was crazy. But his response was just the opposite – he loved our business idea, and the mission behind it, and was fully on-board to help.”
Rugged Seas next enlisted the help of Rogue Wear, a family-owned business in Lewiston Maine specializing in custom-made sport gear bags. The folks at Rogue Wear lay-out, cut, and sew the hauling bib material to create the Rugged Sea bags.
Taylor and Nikki were able to get in touch with the United States CEO of the France-based company Guy Cotten, a fifty-year producer of foul-weather gear sold worldwide. Guy Cotten is an environmentally-conscious company, and goes to great lengths to not waste any products during the production process. Taylor and Nikki were able to partner with Guy Cotten to obtain remnant materials to use in the production of their bibpacks.
These partnerships have enabled Rugged Seas to bring its model full circle and recycle the bib materials all while keeping the business in Maine.
“We work hard with a handful of local companies to keep our products made in Maine. The recycling process starts and finishes with the fishermen by the purchase and return of their bibs to local stores,” Taylor explained.
Nikki added “We have had so much success in our sales because people realize we are a fishing family who are working to offer any support we can to the industry, and we are not trying to create a knock off on fishermen.”
The Future of Rugged Seas
Taylor and Nikki are working to continually expand Rugged Seas. In the long run, they would love to begin making apparel and bags that feature Maine’s different fisheries individually – from lobstermen, to salmon farmers, to oyster farmers. They have received interests from fishing families in other states about possibly expanding their business model to other areas where there are working waterfronts. The Rugged Seas duo is also working on new product designs using different materials in the fishing industry—from cold water immersion suits to mesh netting.
Taylor explained “We would love for our business to continue to grow, and the most important thing for us is to keep Maine’s fishermen in the loop with our expansion so that they feel respected and prioritized.” He added “Rugged Seas isn’t just for the fishermen who work year-round and through all kinds of weather to bring seafood to the table—it’s for all of us who love and respect the ocean and what it does for us.”