Q&A with Matt Gruhn on the NMMA summit

In December, the National Marine Manufacturers Association sponsored the Recreational Boating Stakeholders Growth Summit. The event gathered 160 marine industry stakeholders for a two-day summit during which industry leaders sat down to develop new ideas and avenues of growth.

Matt Gruhn, president of the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, was one of the event’s participants. After the summit, we asked him for his thoughts.

What were your objectives and/or expectations going into the summit? Were they accomplished and/or fulfilled?

I didn’t really have expectations going into the summit, and my only objective, really, was to be an active participant. I think it was pretty clear to everyone, even before the summit took place, that the industry needs to come together to create growth opportunities. And with that in mind, I went into this hoping that we could find ways we could do exactly that.

NMMA was successful at pulling together stakeholders from across the boating business and boating community. Why did the summit concept resonate so well?

I think it’s pretty clear to see that we need a new spark to get our industry moving in the right direction again. We’ve had a tough go of it the past few years, and it’s time for us to regroup and begin to find growth again. I think the stakeholders in this industry are tired of the doom and gloom that has been so prevalent the past few years. They’re tired of worrying about whether or not they’ll be able to finance boat buyers. They’re tired of squeezing pennies out of every corner of their business to make a profit. And they’re tired of working so hard, individually, to reverse declining sales. It’s time for us, as an industry, to take control of our future. It’s time for us to recognize where the opportunities lie and what we need to do, collectively, to take advantage of those opportunities. And I think that’s why this summit resonated so well with everyone: it gave us all an understanding that there are actions we can take to remain in control of our future.

Many people expressed a desire for a concrete action plan with measurable objectives to come out of the summit. How do we get from here to there?

I think as business leaders, you go to an event like this and you want to come out of it with an action plan. A to-do list. But it’s just not that simple. The summit participants came up with something like 90 different action items that we could take to begin our path toward growth. I think it’s now a matter of letting those ideas settle, prioritizing them based on the responses from the summit participants and working together to determine a best path forward.

What are your plans for taking what you learned during the summit and bringing it back to MRAA members?

Our staff and board certainly have a number of ideas as to how we can contribute to the efforts, and we’ll continue that conversation as we move forward. Right now, though, it’s still late December, and we really want to wait and see what comes from the summit facilitators, who are preparing a report on the results and some proposed next steps. I think if we all, individually, take off running after individual action items, it really defeats the purpose of this summit and its focus on collaboration. I think we need to wait for those results to come in and then determine a path forward collectively. But you can plan on MRAA playing a significant role in those collaborative efforts.

How do you think your members can participate in the action items that have come out of the summit so far?
Again, until the results and proposed next steps are out, I don’t think it’s wise for us to chase after individual action items that we picked up along the way. Sure, in our day-to-day businesses, I think we should look for opportunities where those action items might fit in, but we should all have a greater sense of collaborating with others so that we can accomplish something that is much larger than we can do on our own. We’ve had a number of such discussions here at the MRAA in just the week or two since I’ve been back. But I’m not sure it’s the right thing for anyone to do to run out and get a jumpstart on one of the discussed action items without a plan of attack being communicated from the summit facilitators or organizers.

Several people remarked on the title of the summit and its similarity to the Grow Boating Initiative. How is the summit and its expected outcome different from what the industry has been pursuing through Grow Boating Inc.?
I think that one thing that I picked up on while I was at the summit is that there is a severe lack of knowledge and understanding of what the Grow Boating Initiative has accomplished. Sure, there were some pain points with it and some disagreements in its funding model and so forth, but many of the recommendations that surfaced from the summit participants about creating greater visibility for boating and creating solid messaging about boating as a recreational pursuit – much of it is already being done. We’ve got a great message: “Welcome to the Water.” And there’s a great plan in place to create action around that messaging. So what that tells me is that we’re on the right track with the Discover Boating messaging. We just need to learn from the first run at this and improve upon the efforts going forward. To me, that means we need better communication about it. We need to better communicate the results and we need to be able to make this something that the industry as a whole can really rally behind. That is a difficult prospect, as we know, now being seven years into the campaign. But it’s an absolute must if we truly want to grow boating.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button