By Mike Davin, Online Editor, Boating Industry — The news coming out of Fountain Powerboats hasn’t been good for a while, but this week it got a little worse when the company filed for bankruptcy. In its heyday, Fountain employed more than 450 workers; today that number has dwindled to about a dozen. Read more >>
Tags: bankruptcy, Recession
I was driving in the car yesterday when a story came on National Public Radio about Columbia, Ky.-based houseboat builder Majestic Yachts. It’s no surprise in this economy that it was a sad story, at least at first. The article began by profiling Faye Womack, a former employee. She was part of a 27-person boat production team until orders stopped coming in last summer and CEO Jim Hadley was forced to lay off every single employee. He and the two other owners spent the winter trying to find odd jobs to pay the factory’s bills, according to NPR. Read more >>
By Peter Granata, President, Granata Design and the Marine Design Resource Alliance — As a kid on summer vacation, there was nothing like the two weeks in which the family would trek into the far north of Wisconsin in search of the best fishing. My grandfather was the proud owner of a Johnson Sea Horse outboard engine, and although he didn’t own a boat, the fishing resort that we would frequent always had a wooden round bottom boat awaiting his motor. I remember the awed anticipation of watching Grandpa lower the motor into the water, set the choke, and adjust the throttle. Read more >>
By Mike Davin, Online Editor, Boating Industry — Mercury Marine was founded in 1939 as the Kiekhaefer Corporation of Cedarburg, Wis. Now, after a vote by workers in Fond du Lac to reject Mercury’s latest contract offer, the company just took a big step toward leaving Wisconsin, where it has been an institution for seven decades. Read more >>
Tags: Mercury
By Erin Skinner, Senior Pay Per Click Analyst, ROI Revolution, Inc — As the years move on, it becomes more and more apparent how big of a part the Internet is going to play in the success of small businesses. In the current economic downturn that we’re all struggling to get through, using the Internet to market your marine business is not only a good idea, it’s a necessity. Read more >>
Tags: Internet
I was recently forwarded an e-mail discussion between two dealers, both of which said that the government’s Cash for Clunkers program was hurting their marine sales. One suggested marine manufacturers look into a similar program that would lure boaters into upgrading to newer models. Read more >>
By Terry Grapentine, Principal at Grapentine Company LLC — In a recent Sunday New York Times’ column (“The Inflection Is Near?” March 8), Pulitzer prize winning author and journalist Thomas L. Friedman suggests that the U.S. economy has finally reached an inflection point in its ability to sustain growth. We have reached a point where we can no longer support the growth that our economy has experienced over the past 50 years at the expense of increased environmental waste, insufficient financial market oversight, and indiscriminate credit lending. “We simply can’t do it anymore,” Friedman says. Read more >>
Tags: Economy, Guest Blog, Marine Dealers
By Peter Granata, President, Granata Design and the Marine Design Resource Alliance — There’s a new bandwagon pulling into town, and if you’re too busy ducking bullets you may not notice it. If you hang around the boating industry long enough, you’re bound to experience a cyclical downturn. This most recent version has to be the worst since 1980, and many agree that this one is the worst, period. Nonetheless, the point is that it is cyclical. The industry will come back, although it’s probably going to look different than it was. Read more >>
After the alarm went off this morning, my husband and I were talking about how fast the summer is going this year. This is an annual conversation, and as usual, I’m reluctant to acknowledge that it’s almost over. The difference this year is that I’m much more satisfied with our summer. Last September, we decided we would devote this summer to family time with our son, Nathan, now four years old. What we couldn’t have anticipated then was that our family’s cabin in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York would be available for so much of the summer. Because the cabin is shared by my mother, her three siblings and their children, we typically make it up there for one week of vacation and two or three other weekends. This year, as of the end of Labor Day weekend, we will have spent 24 days up there. Read more >>
As in the auto industry, where companies like GM are narrowing their focus by eliminating brands and models to help lure customers back – which the New York Times discussed in a story today – Brunswick has made the decision to discontinue its Maxum line, which has been around since 1988. You can read the details here. Read more >>
Tags: Auto Industry, Brunswick
