By JON MOHR
The Beige Book’s outlook
At the Marine Dealer Conference & Expo last November, Brunswick CEO Dusty McCoy said [and I'm paraphrasing here] that while many of the recessions the U.S. economy has endured in the past are V-shaped (the economy drops quickly, bottoms out, then rebounds steeply as well) he expects our current recession will be more U-shaped – meaning we won’t experience that quick bounce back. McCoy also said at the time that the economy was still on the left-hand side of the “U” and had not yet bottomed out. Where the economy stands today, some five months later, is a matter open for debate (if you would like to weigh in, please post a comment below), but if the latest Beige Book report issued the U.S. Federal Reserve is any indication, there are signs the economic freefall we’ve been in seems to be slowing, at least in some parts of the country. Read more >>
My four-year-old son broke his arm playing in the yard last week. While he was incredibly brave in the hours and days that followed, it has changed him. As the pain has receded, he’s begun thinking out loud about how he’ll avoid breaking something else, as have his father and I. We want him to go back to having fun like he used to, but none of us wants to go back to the hospital anytime soon. The boating industry is in a similar situation. While I’m not sure the pain is receding yet, we know it will, at least to some degree. And we’ve all been thinking, whether to ourselves or out loud, about how we and our businesses will change as the industry rebounds. 
A month and a half ago, when I spoke at the Marine Trades Association of New Jersey annual conference, I touched on the growing number of marine businesses participating in social networking, as did the person who followed me, Sam Natello of Dot Com Design Studio. This is a subject that holds particular interest for me as our team has been developing a social networking strategy for Boating Industry in recent weeks. In the question and answer period after the presentations, a member of the audience shared his concern that launching a page on Facebook or another social networking site would give any customers with a bone to pick with his dealership the chance to ruin its reputation. 
I offended a dealer in one of my last magazine columns. This dealer, or former dealer as it may be, recounted the unprecedented conditions of the economy and, more specifically, the marine industry when he outlined how his business has succumbed to external pressures. He noted the drought boaters and businesses face in his home state of Georgia; $4-a-gallon gas; the housing bubble that burst; banks that won’t lend (and severe interest rate hikes by those who remain), and the ever-present doom and gloom found throughout politics and media as a culmination of forces that his business could not withstand. This, despite focus his business on providing value and customer service and reinvesting more than $1 million into his business in recent years. 