Jonathan Sweet

If you’re one of the best boat dealers in North America, you deserve to be honored for your success. Top 100 dealers will be recognized in the January issue of Boating Industry, on BoatingIndustry.com and at a gala on December 8, the final evening of the Marine Dealer Conference & Expo in Orlando. Why apply for the Top 100? Beyond ...

Those in the industry like to describe boating as a middle class activity and the struggles of that group have hindered a full recovery for the boating industry. (I would make the argument that while boating remains a middle class activity, boat buying has increasingly become an upper class activity — but that’s a subject for another blog.) With that ...

The 2015 Recreational Boating Statistics report, released last week by the U.S. Coast Guard, showed some positive momentum for boating safety but also some setbacks. Most notably, deaths increased from 610 in 2014 to 626 in 2015, a 2.6 percent increase and the total number of accidents increased from 4,064 to 4,158, a 2.3 percent increase. Overall, injuries decreased from 2,678 ...

If you read many articles about management — especially managing Millennials — you’ve probably stumbled upon the common tip that you need to ply them with free pizza, Red Bull and table tennis to keep them happy at work. That seems to be a misconception, though, according to a new study from Gallup reported in the Washington Post: What that rising ...

I think most of us can agree that threatening your customers to stop them from giving you a poor review is a bad idea. But in case you’re not so sure, a new bill in the U.S. House, the Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016, should give you pause. The bill, introduced by Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, D-Mass., and ...

Now in it’s 12th year, the Boating Industry Top 100 program recognizes the best boat dealers in North America for their customer service, marketing, overall business acumen and the way they further the boating industry. While it is certainly the great dealers in this industry that make it go, the Top 100 wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of ...

There’s been a lot of talk the last few years about trying to grow boating in the Hispanic community. It’s a fast-growing, increasingly well-educated and, as a recent Pew Center study reinforces, young population. This relative youth is important for a number of reasons, pointing not only to the families-with-children that should find boating attractive, but also to their future ...

Stateline is out with an interesting look at where and why people are moving these days. Their conclusion? The cost of housing is one of the biggest drivers, along with the availability of jobs. Mobility has plunged to near-record lows during the recession, but has been ticking up in recent years as the job market improved. Those two factors, of ...

Jim Lane, the president of Chaparral & Robalo, lost his battle with leukemia last weekend. I had intended to write this post earlier in the week, but got caught up working on our news article about Jim. Still, I wanted to share my own thoughts as well. I knew he had been ill, but the news still hit me hard ...

For our April issue, I wrote an article on customer service and creating raving fans. One of the people I talked to for that article was Johnny Padgett at Modern Marine, which has won Chaparral’s No. 1 CSI award for the last nine years. During that interview, something we talked about that didn’t make into the article was his “Driveway ...