[M]ORRISVILLE — Long before she knew she was going to spend her career as an engineer at a family business that makes rowing machines, Judy Geer was a standout in the early days of women’s rowing.
Geer, who grew up in Connecticut, was a swimmer who first started rowing at Smith College in Massachusetts back when it was new there.
“It was proper rowing for young ladies,” said Geer, who later qualified for the Olympics three times. “We weren’t allowed to carry the boats.”
Geer transferred to Dartmouth College just after Title IX passed in 1972. By requiring all federally funded institutions to provide the same athletic opportunities for female athletes as for males, the law brought huge changes for women athletes. Dartmouth had just started a women’s rowing program.
“It took a while to have real equity,” said Geer, who remembers that women’s coaches were paid less than the coaches for men’s team, and the women’s team used hand-me-down boats and oars. But, she said, “I felt like we had an opportunity.”
Geer went on to compete as part of a four-person boat in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, coming in sixth. It was the first Olympics to feature women’s rowing. She qualified to row in the 1980 Olympics in the Soviet Union, but was prevented from going by the U.S. boycott; she later rowed a double scull in the 1984 Olympics, again coming in sixth. Also in those years, she earned a master’s degree in engineering from Dartmouth.
Meanwhile, Olympic rower Dick Dreissigacker had founded Concept2 with his brother Peter in 1976. The two, both engineers, had created an oar reinforced with carbon fiber for a market that relied on wooden oars. Oar-makers were experimenting with stiffer construction materials, such as metal. When the two came out with their composite oar in 1976, it caught on quickly, Geer said.
“It was effective and affordable,” Geer said. They used their new oars when competing in the U.S. Olympic trials.
“They didn’t win the trials, but they realized they could probably do something with oars,” said Geer. “It was bringing new technology to something that had been made for a long time.”
Concept2 oars and rowing machines play a huge role in the rowing world. Geer estimates that between two-thirds and three-quarters of the oars used at the rowing world championships or Olympics nowadays are made by Concept2. Eighty-two percent of the oars used at the 2018 world championships in Bulgaria were made in Morrisville, she said. Their biggest competitor, Croker Oars, is in Australia.
“If you look at the world championships or the Olympics, a lot of the rowers, if not most of them, row with Concept2 oars,” said Albert Leger, the boy’s rowing coach at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. The rowing machines, which the users call ergometers or ergs, are also ubiquitous, he said.
“They are probably the No. 1 rowing machine in the world,” said Leger. “Every club in the world, every university, every high school rowing program, has Concept2 ergs. It’s really fun to have this little Vermont company be the standard all over the world.”
“There’s one machine that’s head and shoulders above the rest: The Concept2,” says Review.com, one of many websites that gives the Concept2 top billing. “The Concept2 D is the best-selling rowing machine in the world for a reason.”
The Dreissigacker brothers were Connecticut natives who had skied at Mount Mansfield as children, and they liked the area. They chose a farm in Morrisville as the location to start their company.
Geer joined the company in 1983 as one of seven employees and married Dick Dreissigacker two years later. As an employee, she worked in computer programming, assembling oars and rowing machines, and then moved to communications and customer support as she raised the couple’s three children.
The company came out with a new, asymmetrical oar in 1992 that was revolutionary at the time; before that, oar blades had been tulip-shaped. The new shape has now been adopted by most oar-makers, said Leger.
Now Concept2 has grown from making oars to also making rowing machines and other equipment, and its rowing machines are commonly described by outdoor writers and retailers as the best-selling in the world.
The company sells products in 90 countries, and has sales and service subsidiaries in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Geer declined to give sales figures, but said Concept2 employs 65 people and does all its manufacturing at its own plant and at one nearby, Manufacturing Solutions Inc. or MSI, that was started by a former employee. Metalwork is done at NSA Industries in Lyndonville.
Concept2 rowing machines came on the market just as the general population was starting to learn that fitness could improve the quality of their lives and extend their years. Rising health care costs and social trends also pushed people toward working out, and now Forbes Magazine estimates that there are about 32,000 health and fitness facilities in the country. The International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association estimates that health club membership was more than 183 million worldwide in 2018, with revenues of $94 billion.
The Dreissigacker brothers had come up with the idea of making a rowing machine in 1981 to keep employees busy in winter, when demand for oars declined, said Geer — and as a way to train for rowing in Vermont’s cold temperatures. There were rowing machines available at the time, but Geer said they were big and clunky. The Concept2, perfected in the Morrisville barn, was the first to use an air-resistance flywheel instead of pistons, she said.
“They took an old bicycle and turned it upside down and nailed it to the floor and got a sliding seat,” Geer said. “Compared to other rowing machines, it felt a lot more like rowing on the water.
“It was a wonderful time of throwing things together and making prototypes.”
The company started selling its rowing machine in 1982. In 2009, Concept2 added a similar machine, based on the flywheel resistance technology, for ski training. Since 1986, their machines had come equipped with an electronic performance monitor; the company now holds online challenges for its users, like its million meter club. Concept2 rowers have also inspired a worldwide indoor rowing championship.
Two years ago, the company added a flywheel workout machine for bicyclists.
Geer and her husband bought the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in 2008 and operate it as a nonprofit, and Geer is on the board of Sterling College and the Nature Conservancy. She said she rows most days on Great Hosmer Pond and runs on dirt roads and trails; she completed a half-marathon, the Craftsbury Beer Run, in June.
“It wasn’t fast or pretty,” she said of the run.
The founders have chosen to stay close to what they know best; the bicycle workout machine is the farthest they have gotten from oars. They briefly ventured into making other products, like ski poles and masts for wind surfers, but decided not to. Instead, they have focused on the evolution of the oar shape and on materials, such as moving from all fiberglass to carbon fiber to make it lighter, and narrowing the shaft to reduce wind resistance.
“We try to keep up with technology and make sure we innovate before someone else does,” she said. “We have enough competition out there that we have to be innovating.”
Dick Dreissigacker, 72, and Pete Dreissigacker, 68, still work at the company, largely focused on the engineering side. Both wives are still involved as well, Geer said. They’ve always referred to themselves as the co-founders.
“We’re not big on titles,” Geer said.
