I just read in the boating-industry.com newsletter about a website called TheOpenSeas.com.
The website aims to be a social networking utility for the boating community. The article was pretty vague but I get the sense it aims to simply be a Facebook or MySpace aimed at the boating community. The founders aim to have 100,000 members by this summer.
As of now, compete.com does not have a profile for this website which normally means it receives under 5000 visitors a month so it’s a fairly lofty goal to have 100,000 members in the next few months (especially considering iboats.com, the largest online boating community, doesn’t even have 200,000 members).
This website will face the challenge of being a bit late to the party in terms of boating communities. However, it’s formed partnerships with a number of marina and boatyard associations which may help them.
Boat builder Regal has begun offering factory tours to view the entire production process at their factory in Orlando, Florida. Of course, there’s also a show room where you can view their boats.
The tour is designed to support local dealers who may not have the room or the inventory to show all of Regal’s boats.
Free tours are held every day at 9am every day. More information can be found at: http://www.regalboats.com/factory-tour.php
If you’ve had an opportunity to take part in this tour please let me know. The next time I’m in the Florida area I’ll definitely try to make a point to check it out and give a personal account of the experience.
I seen an ad in the newest Pacific Yachting magazine for an amphibious vehicle called “SeaLegs” which reminded me an opportunity I had to check out this vehicle and speak to the man behind the company at the Seattle Boat Show.
Manufacturer in New Zealand, Sealegs is essentially an inflatable boat with wheels that you can drive both in the water and the land. It looks pretty skookum no doubt and definitely it was the eye catcher at the Seattle Boat Show (at least for me).
I’d love to be able to overflowing with praise for this “invention”, but unfortunately this isn’t the case for two main reasons:
1) It’s not street legal so you can’t drive it anywhere outside of a desolate beach.
2) It costs over $120,000.
Both of these things wouldn’t be so bad if this was truly one of the only Boatmobiles on the market today, however, there’s a plethora of other such vehicles already available.
The Gibbs Aquada is the most famous example. It retails for about $85,000, goes 100 MPH on land and is street legal (at least in the UK) I’d love to find a reason to love the Sealegs but its really hard to find such justification.
Time for some shameless self promotion of our products.
Anyone who has ever gone swimming from their boat and not had a ladder has done this before. Probably about 50% of our customers we speak to about boat ladders call us immediately after experiencing the above.
We have ladders to suit every boat, every style. Check them out here: http://www.northstaranchors.com/products/ladders/boat-swim-ladders.html
Political correctness entered the boating industry this week after a remark by President Barack Obama when he stated…
“When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices.”
The National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) attacked the remarks immediately asserting boat building was one of the few American manufacturing industries still left.
OK, come on people. The comments obviously aren’t a call of action for people to go out and buy boats but at the same time, they’re not going to cripple the boating industry any more than it already is. Not to mention, the remarks weren’t exactly “BREAKING NEWS” on CNN so the the amount of people who heard the comments is likely very limited.
NMMA’s motives are honourable, however, they’re likely to have undesired consequences. Barack likely isn’t going to retract his comments. Really, all NMMA is doing is better publicizing some obscure comments that would have gone almost completely unnoticed other wise.
The Vancouver Boat Show is a no-go in 2010 due to the Olympics (the boat show is normally held at BC Place Stadium, the arena where the opening/closing and medal ceremonies are taking place). So with this in mind, me and my dad decided to head down to the Seattle Boat Show.
The Seattle Boat Show bills itself as the largest boat show on the West Coast. This is a little bit surprising given that a) I would have naturally thought LA or San Francisco would have a larger show and b) the show didn’t feel that much bigger than the Vancouver Boat Show. Nevertheless, some thoughts…
-The boat show was held at Q-West Stadium, home to the Seahawks. Really nice venue!
-However, as I mentioned, we were a little surprised by the size of the show. General opinion is that Seattle has about twice the boat community as Vancouver but the show felt only marginally bigger than Vancouver’s.
-There were no real show stoppers at the show. There was nothing really new and spectacular so to speak of. The most dominating theme seemed to be the dramatic fall in prices for aluminum boats. My theory for this is that the price of raw materials were amongst the lowest in years in 2009, hence the huge decrease in prices for aluminum boats. Seems to make sense eh?
Overall, it was a nice excuse to have a night out of town. We ended up walking away with some new boat cleaners (the staple of every boat show!) and we, of course, did the mandatory shoe shopping that all Canadians must do when visiting the U.S..
I’m used to being ripped off for stadium food but this was a bit much! $5.50 for this hot dog which was really a bun with a bit of meat. Tip: go outside the East doors and you can get a giant smokey outside for $3.50
Trying to remove dirt and mildew from your seats? Use a combination of Magic Eraser and another versatile cleaner like Fantastik and you should see good results. If you scrub and scrub and scrub and are still left with dark patches, it’s likely the the mildew is ingrained into the fabric and you’ll be stuck with it forever
As the boat show season gets underway, I’ve been hearing a lot positive spin attempted by those in the industry insisting that sales are on the upswing and recovery is just around the corner. Things may be on the rebound but it’s an awfully slow rebound!~
Our company, North Star Marine Supplies, hasn’t felt that much of an impact from the economy (likely because we’re a discount retailer and are stealing business from traditional retailers) but the other company I call home, West Marine, sure has. Without getting into too many specifics (I’m sure there’s some company policy against that) the number of products arriving in the weekly product shipments at Vancouver West Marine store is the lowest many of the senior staff can ever remember. The number of products brought in each week is directly related to inventory levels and, basically, how much stuff has been sold.
Even positive news stories like Walker Bay inflatables increasing its sales volume by 27% at the Toronto Boat Show is shadowed by the fact overall unit sales were down. Add in other stories like Genmar’s recent bankruptcy and you get the point- it’s going to be a long way up for the boating industry.
