By Mike Davin, online editor, Boating Industry magazine — We highlighted an interesting article from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in our e-newsletter the other day. The article reported on the difficult decision facing Florida’s Manatee Technical Institute, which is weighing whether to cut its boat-building curriculum. Read more >>
My husband and I have been married for more than 10 years, and despite the happy life we’ve created for our growing family, we still have problems. Take, for instance, our mail problem. Like most people out there, we get a ton of mail, most of it junk. And yet since I – the bill payer in the family – have yet to get with the times and pay my bills online, we also get important mail, like our mortgage and car payment coupons, as well as mail we enjoy, like the handful of magazines we subscribe to and a certain percentage of the catalogs we receive. Read more >>
Jeff Scherer, Associate Partner, Callbutton LLC – My 11-year-old son has grown up in a much different environment than I did. Ever since he could talk, he’s had access to a computer screen and mouse of some sort. He’s a gadget freak (OK, so is his dad), and is constantly indulged in PS3, PSP, MP3, DVD, LCD, HD, and all other acronyms electronic. Something surprising has happened to him in the past couple months, however. He has become very interested and (re)attached to his Legos. Aside from Lincoln Logs and maybe those cardboard bricks that they used to have in kindergarten, Legos might be the simplest toys ever made. I wondered what the sales and marketing discussions were in the Lego camps when the video game and Internet assaults started focusing on our kids a few years ago. I decided to take a look. Read more >>
Tags: Solutions
Three years ago, our team here at Boating Industry had an identity crisis. We had assembled a collection of editors, sales people, a publisher and a production team that sought to revitalize a brand that had, for the most part, lost its way. Read more >>
Tags: MDCE, Solutions, trade show
By Bob McCann, Director of Client Education, ARI Network Services & Channel Blade — When we started Channel Blade years ago, most of the marine dealer Web sites we designed were focused on the lifestyle of boating. Back then, many conversations with dealers often led to a familiar phrase: “We don’t just sell boats … We sell Fun!” Over the last year and a half or so, we have seen more and more dealers shifting their focus from selling “the fun” to selling “the deal” because of huge inventories of aged units in these tough economic conditions. Read more >>
Correct Craft has been getting a lot of press recently for its interest in investing in the marine industry (click here to read part one of a two-part special report on its research and stay tuned for part two, to be published tomorrow). And certainly, it deserves the attention for its formal approach to researching the opportunities available in today’s boating market. However, it isn’t alone in its efforts to invest in our industry’s future. Read more >>
Tags: Solutions, Top 100 Dealers
It’s no secret that consumers are spending less these days and that savings rates are rising. Hidden behind this obvious fact is the lesser-known reality that our industry’s top customers, the 79 million baby boomers who have been buying, trading in and upgrading their boats for years and years, may be saving themselves right out of the boat market. Read more >>
Joe Cavarretta has sat through enough budget meetings to know that it can be tough to live up to numbers that were put to paper months prior. In today’s economy, “tough” can be an understatement of magnificent proportions. But Cavarretta has devised a method, along with fellow managers at Riva Motorsports, a seven-brand powersports dealer in Pompano Beach, Fla., that helps him and Riva’s three-location company unearth valuable information that aids the dealership in improving its business. Read more >>
Tags: Economy, P&L, Powersports, Solutions
Ever since I visited powersports dealership West Hills Honda last month, I’ve been thinking about how vital a company’s culture is to its success, especially in today’s economy. In a recent blog on HarvardBusiness.org, Peter Bregman described a company’s culture as “a complex system with a multitude of interrelated processes and mechanisms that keep it humming along.” “Performance reviews and training programs define the firm’s expectations,” he explained. “Financial reward systems reinforce them. Memos and communications highlight what’s important. And senior leadership actions — promotions for people who toe the line and a dead end career for those who don’t — emphasize the firm’s priorities.” At most businesses, the culture develops unconsciously, says Bergman. But at West Hills Honda, those elements were purposely crafted to create a customer focused environment that would set the business apart from its peers. Read more >>
Tags: Powersports, Solutions
I’ve never been to Seattle, but it’s pretty high up on my list of places to visit. My favorite cities are those where you can be in the thick of what makes them so appealing – the museums, restaurants, shops and marketplaces – and you can look up and see the evidence of the natural world, the water and the mountains, just beyond. But even more attractive is the city’s large and progressive boating business community. Just look at the Northwest Marine Trade Association’s (NMTA) Grow Boating Initiative and particularly its most recent promotion, unveiled yesterday. Read more >>
