During the first quarter, a trend toward more strategic partnerships seems to have emerged in the marine industry. In the past several months, several big players, including MarineMax, Volvo Penta, Yamaha and Garmin have announced high-profile alliances. While not necessarily partnerships in the legal sense — where companies are legally bound to one another — these joint ventures represent another ...

Yamaha and Volvo Penta have developed expertise in two different segments of the engine market. Can you discuss the advantages you think a shared knowledge base between the two companies can create? The shared knowledge base certainly plays a role where product development is involved, but our collaboration isn’t just about product development. It is also about finding synergies between ...

After several years of development, Singleton Marine Group launched a new service for boaters this fall that puts a licensed captain on their boat every week to do a 65-point inspection. The service, called BoatMate, was the brainchild of Managing Partner Scott Cunningham. “I’ve had the idea for many years,” Cunningham says. “But I didn’t want to start until we ...

The winter boat show season is an early — if imperfect — indicator of the year ahead, and as the industry exits the downturn and looks for business to begin to improve in 2011, this year’s shows are being watched more closely than ever. Below we’ve gathered attendance numbers from around the country to provide perspective on how the industry ...

This winter, Boating Industry magazine hosted a regular series of webinars focused on various issues facing dealerships today. The monthly events, sponsored by Boat Trader, covered dealership traffic, social media, reputation management, and most recently inventory management. Each webinar assembles a panel of experts who present on the topic and then answer questions from the audience. The inventory management webinar, ...