For Wilmington-based Dry Corp, coming up with new product lines has become an essential part of the growing business, a company leader said Monday.

The maker of the Dry Case for cell phones and other waterproof items, Dry Corp officially launched a new product, the Snow’s Cut Soft Cooler, at the Wilmington Boat Show held over the weekend.

“We went to our dealers and asked them what would they would like to see for our next product to be, and they basically said this sort of high-end soft cooler is getting popular, but some of the premium brands out there are extremely expensive,” said Corey Heim, COO of Dry Corp.

The company started with a small production run, much of which was bought by local Anheuser Busch representatives who put the company’s logo on the coolers.

“The boat show was our next production run. We actually had some inventory we could sell and get out there to the general public,” Heim said. “It was pretty good timing for us and turned out to be a good show.”

Distinguishing features of the Snow’s Cut Soft Cooler, he said, include a clear waterproof side pocket, a side cooler pocket jokingly referred to as the “ham sandwich pocket” among Dry Corp employees and removable toe and shoulder straps.

The cooler retails for $199 for the gray color and $249 for mossy oak camouflage, Heim said.

He said the company tries to line up new product introductions with large industry trade shows or seasonal events. Heim said the company sold out of the coolers taken to the boat show, which was one of the largest such shows ever staged in Wilmington and was put together by JBM & Associates out of Greenville, South Carolina.

“It’s been essential for us to come up with new stuff, and the cooler is a pretty interesting shift because it’s still under the Dry Case brand, and it’s essentially a dry bag as well as a cooler. But it really is a new category for us, getting into the insulated cooler market,” Heim said. “And from this we’re going to spin off new products.”

Those products include an insulated cooler backpack for a shorter trip than the 40-liter Snow’s Cut Soft Cooler and the introduction of collegiate colors.

“We know it’s a great market, and it’s going to be exciting to start to explore that,” Heim said.

Currently, the Snow's Cut Soft Cooler can be found at Redix, Marine Warehouse Center and Hook, Line and Paddle, in addition to the company's Dry Case website. Over the next couple of months, Heim said, the coolers will be rolled out to others in Dry Corp's dealer network of 1,000 independent shops.