2023 Top 100 Dealer of the Year: Regal & Nautique of Orlando

By Adam Quandt

Climbing up from the No. 14 spot in the rankings and beyond through the years, to winning Dealer of the Year in 2022 is a validation of Regal & Nautique or Orlando’s dedicated commitment to excellence, requiring ongoing focus, hard work and successful achievement of multiple continued improvements throughout all areas its business.

After last year’s No. 1 recognition, Owner Jeff Husby and the team at Regal & Nautique of Orlando didn’t simply take their foot off the gas, they pushed the gas pedal through the floor in 2022.

Adjusting to a new normal

Despite being nudged out of a comfort zone to respond to fast-changing market conditions after post-Covid busyness, Regal & Nautique continued full steam ahead to continue year-over-year growth across the board, all while maintaining some of the highest CSI scores across all of its brands.

Never resting on laurels, Regal & Nautique or Orlando regularly evaluates its strengths and shortcomings and improves on every single one of them. There is nothing but striving for perfection through every sale, every service job and everything in between for Regal & Nautique.

“The year 2022 continued our relentless pursuit of excellence with a laser-sharp focus and mindset to operate and perform our best,” Regal & Nautique of Orlando owner and GM Jeff Husby said. “Our longstanding commitment to ongoing improvements, our inventory controls and strategy, and our continued customer retention initiatives resulted in outstanding profitability matched only by our deep-rooted customer satisfaction strategies which yielded outstanding CSI scores across all brands.”

RNO credits investment over the years in establishing and enforcing proven policies and procedures, along with strong internal communications and focus on teamwork for allowing the organization to successfully navigate and work through challenges. And at the end of the day, team RNO emerged profitable, with greatly satisfied customers despite challenges outside of the dealership’s direct control.

Part of that investment goes directly into building and promoting the strongest team possible at Regal & Nautique of Orlando.

“Team RNO’s management team has truly revolutionized and re-energized our business, shifting it from a sole owner-directed mindset to a more robust, shared dealership objective,” Husby said. “Our focus to empower our managers and our staff has paid dividends in the success and continued growth of our organization.”

In further effort to adjust to a new normal in a post-pandemic world, early on in the year, the team at RNO initiated and held one-on-one meetings with all of its manufacturer partners, with the goal to solidify production restrictions and delivery times so that the team could best communicate expectations to its customers.

All in for the team

Much of Regal & Nautique of Orlando’s success can be attributed to an entire team effort. While the organization celebrates individual success, the focus is certainly on building a team that can bring and celebrate success collectively. And in that, RNO places training efforts among its most important initiatives each year.

Looking at Regal & Nautique of Orlando’s 2023 Top Dealer application, it’s easy to see the emphasis the organization places on its team and the training that goes into it. From in-person events to internal training initiatives, when it comes to planning team training, RNO is sure to leave no stone unturned.

“RNO has a long-term commitment to training and regularly invests in its team, in every department. Over the last year and really over the past five years, we enhanced our ‘training log’ processes and procedures so we could accurately and effectively track annual employee training throughout all aspects of our dealership,” Husby explained. “We use this log effectively to track and schedule training activities throughout the year.”

In addition to training efforts, Regal & Nautique of Orlando took to bringing in additional team members to improve its team’s success in 2022. From bringing on a new chief marketing officer and a parts specialist to the addition of other support team members in the service and transportation/lot departments, RNO aims to build the best team in the business.

“RNO has been focused on strategic staffing initiatives to build the strength of our team and to foster the continued growth of our organization. Our management team is 100% dedicated to ongoing improvements for our dealership and we totally understand that is directly linked to training and professional development for ourselves and our entire organization. Training and continued professional development is an integral part of the RNO culture. Our team is the heartbeat of RNO’s award-winning DNA,” Husby said.

A “never-stop” mentality

One of the many things the team at Boating Industry looks for in judging and scoring Top Dealers applications, especially when a Dealer of the Year is gunning for a repeat win, is an effort – and the metrics to back it up – to not take a foot off the gas.

Along with training, the goals section of Regal & Nautique of Orlando’s 2023 application was among the largest.

“As was our perspective in the previous year, we once again submit it isn’t the one hit wonder or ‘flash in the pan’ that sets the world class standard,” Husby said. “It’s the combination of ongoing improvements – all the big and little things across the board and throughout the entire organization – over many years that creates a truly world class, top performing, No. 1-ranked dealership.”

“We clearly understood that this [earning a second Dealer of the Year award] would not be an easy task,” Husby added. “It required that we continue to build upon the major momentum we had established; to consistently ‘up our game’ and demonstrate bona-fide, ongoing improvements throughout all areas of our business; and to deliver proven results worthy of this, the single most significant recognition given to a retailer in the business of recreational boating.”

And even after being named the 2023 Dealer of the Year once again, the goal and initiative list for Regal & Nautique of Orlando further shows that this organization won’t stop anytime soon.

First and foremost, for the RNO team is a list of major facility improvements and expansion. Regal & Nautique is set to launch its brand-new world-class Nautique facility in Orlando in 2023. Comparing it to a Ferrari-level dealership for boats, Husby said this brand-specific dealership will be unlike any other in existence.

“Ultimately, these major facilities improvements and expansion will benefit not only our customers by delivering better sales, service and delivery experiences, but also tremendously enhance the working conditions for all team members,” Husby said.

Aside from a brand new facility expanding the business, Regal & Nautique of Orlando’s goals range from major initiatives to small, but meaningful enhancements across all of its departments.

From past success to its non-stop commitment to never stop pushing forward, Regal & Nautique of Orlando sets the perfect example for marine dealers across the globe and will certainly will be a business to keep an eye on for the long haul.

“RNO is not a dealership that rests on its past success,” Husby said. “Vision, direction, hard work and effort with a consuming passion for continual improvement to be our best represent the driving focus in our DNA.”