By Peter Granata, president, Granata Design and the Marine Design Resource Alliance — This morning I was scouring the newspapers and came across what’s wrong with a lot of business. Read more >>
Tags: Solutions
By Jeff Scherer, Associate Partner, Callbutton LLC — It was good to hear Liz’s recent comment confirming that first-time buyers are returning to the showrooms. It also stirred some thoughts for me about taking the present pulse of showroom traffic, so I called a few of my industry and dealer friends to get a state of the union. Read more >>
By Peter Granata, president, Granata Design and the Marine Design Resource Alliance — If you’re a boat dealer and you’ve managed to survive this downturn, now is the time to consider what you must do to thrive. One question you will have to ask yourself is, “Do I, and will I, have the right product at the right price?” Read more >>
Tags: Guest Blog, small business, Solutions
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 >>
