2019 Editor’s Choice: Pasadena Boat Works
By Adam Quandt
Managing Editor
Pasadena Boat Works
Pasadena, Md.
Tucked in a dealer-saturated area of the Chesapeake Bay, Pasadena Boat Works continuously strives to provide its customers with the best of the best, while making boating a reality for all.
Since opening its doors in 2015, the dealership has quickly grown from one small location to three large facilities including a main service center on a major highway, a three-acre storage yard that offers setup as an outdoor showroom and service center, and a partnership with the Pasadena Yacht Yard that allows access to a six-acre, on-the-water, full-service marine center.
With 50 years of customer service expertise, Pasadena Boat Works co-owner Rick Levin pushes employees to always provide the best possible experience to each and every person walking through the dealership’s doors, which helps Pasadena Boat Works maintain perfect CSI scores.
“In the retail industry, whether you’re a boat dealership or a retail shoe store, the area most lacking is customer service,” Levin said. “Pasadena Boat Works has made the boating customer our No. 1 priority.”
This has especially taken center stage as the dealership consistently pushes to get boaters on the water and keep them happy no matter what.
“We want to show them that boating isn’t only fun out on the water, but also easy if you keep up with a few small things along the way,” operations manager Nick Doetsch said. “If we spend the time to show them what they thought was the way isn’t true, it creates a life-long and happy boater.”
In order to further enhance the customer experience, Pasadena Boat Works places a large emphasis on presentation. From an almost theme park-like on-land marina at it’s new three-acre storage yard and outdoor showroom, to the friendly atmosphere of the dealership’s original location, not one detail has gone overlooked.
“In 2018, our company took a hard look at our competition and noticed the easiest weakness to see was often the most overlooked, and that was presentation,” Doetsch said.
Pasadena Boat Works looks at the process as if boats were sold in a shopping mall; Shoppers will go into the store with the most exciting storefront, window and inventory presentation first. Doetsch said with that in mind, Pasadena Boat Works takes the approach of “the more you show, the more you sell.”
“Our presentation allows customers to make boat to boat comparisons easily unlike many other dealerships,” Doetsch said.
At the base of everything, Pasadena Boat Works is all about making boat ownership realistic to potential customers.
“We want to show our customers that boating isn’t some big never-attainable dream, that we can make that dream a reality relatively easily,” Doetsch said. “It’s all about being upfront and honest about everything right off the bat and working with the customer one-on-one.”
Along with that, the team at Pasadena Boat Works places a large effort to bring in more and more first-time boat buyers.
Operating under the slogan “Pasadena Boat Works — The way boating should be,” Doetsch said from the top down and bottom up, the dealership aims to promote the message that no one should be excluded from boating.
The mentality of upfront and openness isn’t just for the customers at Pasadena Boat Works. Both Doetsch and Levin work hard to instill a sense of full transparency and inclusiveness in the business.
“We certainly aim to create something all-inviting for everyone,” Doetsch said. “At the end of the day, it’s not just one person or employee, it’s Pasadena Boat Works.”
With this mentality, despite a smaller staff compared to many dealerships, Pasadena Boat Works continues to find success and move forward.
All in all, despite the dealership’s younger age, Pasadena Boat Works refuses to slow down, with goals and new ideas coming down the pipeline for the future both near and far.
“Setting goals for any company is vital to its success,” Doetsch said. “We at Pasadena Boat Works are constantly work to set, build, monitor and achieve our goals.”
