Family starts with buoys and add the rest

By Sam Harvey
Staff Reporter

	Coastal Point • SAM HARVEY Jason, Tina and Hugh McBride outside their shop, Float-ors.

And that set the McBride family on the path that led to the opening of the Fenwick Float-ors shop, three miles west of Fenwick Island. An unusual name, but it fits, because the idea had to do with floats — or, more specifically, buoys.

McBride, a construction overseer by trade, had built the family a summer home west of Fenwick in the late 1960s. He spent time motoring around the bays when he came down, and the proliferation of plastic milk jugs and bleach bottles (crabpot markers) chafed him.

Around work sites, McBride has built a reputation as an enforcer. If he finds an empty soda bottle laying around, he doesn’t just throw it away — he goes looking for the worker who left it.

According to his wife, he’s a bit of a “neatnik.” As McBride added, “People always talk about crabpots getting lost all the time, and I used to envision all these milk bottles just sinking and covering the bottom of the bay.”

He was determined to replace the potential environmental hazards with the more traditional New England-style crab- and lobsterpot buoys. He found a wholesaler in Maine and, once he figured out how to get the paint to stick, he started turning out three varieties of brightly colored buoy.

The McBrides were ready — with their young son, Jason, they stood poised to change the face of the local crabbing industry.

They took the buoys to a show in Rehoboth Beach and had a great time doing that, McBride recalled, and then took them to a show in Fenwick Island and completely sold out.

However, things didn’t work out precisely as planned — the buoys never made it into the bays. “Little did we know, people were going to take the buoys home with them instead,” McBride smiled.

So the McBrides took another look at the buoys and asked themselves, were they floats…or decorative art? The answer was yes. They were float-ors.

McBride called it the sort of business you either got into or got out of, and they went for it. His wife expanded their color schemes and started painting more elaborate designs, they were traveling the Maine to Florida craft circuit.

In 1992, they bought some acreage across Route 54 from the Roxana Volunteer Fire Company substation and started work on what would become the Fenwick Float-ors shop.

They opened in 1994 and at that time, it was strictly the floats, or buoys, or whatever you care to call them, in one small retail space, maybe 20 by 30 feet. However, with McBride’s considerable experience in the building trades and design, it was just a matter of time before he and his son started work on an addition, and then another.

Jason McBride picked up a patent for his own signature crab mallet holder (made from a buoy), in 1997, so they added those, and then some of the unique items the McBrides had stumbled upon during their days on the craft circuit (they still go in search of new additions from time to time).

Since the 1990s they’ve roughly quadrupled their floor space to showcase all theses goodies, with expansions east and west and upward to a second story.

There’s a room set aside for enameled copper and framed prints, a room filled with Irish fashions (Lilly Pulitzer, Claire Murray) and various collectible displays (Byers’ Choice Carolers, Swarovski Crystal, Waterford) scattered here and there.

There are beachy furnishings and lamps, pottery and kitchen items, bath and body products (Lady Primrose, Caswell Massey) and out on the porch, garden sculptures and weathervanes.

There’s even a “gourmet room,” with various homemade fudge and cheese spread offerings.

“We’re growing everyday,” McBride pointed out. “It’s the perfect location, with room to expand — a little off the beach, but if you do quality, people will hear about it and they’ll come.

“And it all started with a buoy,” McBride said, seeming a little amazed himself by the transformation that has taken place at Fenwick Float-ors.

To learn more, call the shop at (302)-436-5953 or visit the Web site, www.fenwickfloators.com.