Blogs

Walt Disney World jokingly, I think, refers to Space Mountain – one of the signature rides at its Magic Kingdom theme park – as the largest “mountain” in Florida. The 180-foot high, indoor roller coaster, built in 1975, is meant to evoke thoughts of space travel as riders are plunged, largely in the dark, through an obstacle course of twists and turns. A good number of the 700 marine industry professionals that will begin gathering over the next few days in the shadow of Space Mountain for the Marine Dealer Conference & Expo – which starts Monday in Orlando – must feel as though they’ve been on that ride for the last many months.

We've been sharing thoughts, opinions, and personal stories about the marine industry for months now. So have many of you, and we thank all of you who've reached out, through comments and tweets and posts. Now we'd like to continue the conversation in person.

There’s no more effective method of education than learning from your peers. You can read about an idea, be taught a strategy in a classroom or take a course online, but it’s not the same as learning about it from the person who thought it up and put it to work in their business.  That’s why most of the best ...

When we ask dealers to write about their employee relations strategies in Boating Industry’s Top 100 Dealer Application, many talk about the “family” atmosphere they try to create. Of course, a good percentage of dealerships are literally family-run operations, so that’s no surprise. But the “family” philosophy has also been adopted by lots of companies without a single blood relative ...

What keeps me in this industry are people like Bing Fishman, people with a passion for boating who want nothing more than to share it with others.

It's really important to understand that the Traditional Marketing Methods are not what Social Media Marketing is all about.

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.

As an industry we have but a few reasons anyone would be enticed to buy our products.

The closing of Boaters’ World has left millions of dollars on the table for independent dealers who could use the additional sales, profit and cash flow to weather the current storm and prosper going forward.

The Boating Industry editorial team just finished evaluating this year’s Top 100 Dealer applications, and we were invigorated to learn that several have acquired competitors or land for future expansion, and all have continued to invest in improving their current operation.