LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
WILLIAM SISSON
Holding station
while waiting for
the tide to turn
During tough economic times, it’s easy
to lose your perspective. A steady
diet of bad news can lead to the refrain: “The sky is falling … the sky is falling.”
Given the volatile October that has finally
been put in the rearview mirror (and good
riddance, too), that’s understandable. So just
how bad are things? And when will they get
better? Is the sky really falling?
For a dose of perspective, I spoke with John
Anderson, the new CEO of Australia’s Riviera
Yachts and an old hand in the U.S. boatbuilding industry. A former senior vice president of
sales and marketing at Sea Ray, Anderson also
helped manage two turnaround projects, one
with Rampage and the other with Four
Winns, as well as doing a stint with Bombardier. He’s been part of boating long
enough to have seen the inevitable ups and
downs that are woven deep into the fabric of
this highly cyclical business.
“This industry has been around for a hundred years, and it has survived … wars,
countless recessions, the oil embargo, the
luxury tax,” Anderson told an audience at a
Riviera gathering the evening before the
start of the Fort Lauderdale International
Boat Show last month. “We’ve survived all
this as an industry. Some of us have survived corporate bankruptcy. [Anderson
was running Four Winns when corporate
parent OMC went bankrupt in 2000.] And
we will survive this just as we have everything else put in front of us.”
The industry veteran also is realistic about the
current slump. “You’re not going to sell your
way out of this,” Anderson told me before his
press conference. “You’ll go broke doing it.
You have to manage your way out.” That’s a
distinction that all of us need to keep front and
center as we go about our daily business.
“Manage your way out of it.”
Anderson has learned from both personal
experience and other savvy industry vets, including Eddie Smith of Grady-White Boats,
who years ago advised Anderson to always
build one fewer boat than dealers are asking
for. It’s a mantra he’s subscribed to ever since.
“The No. 1 sin a boat company can do is
build too many boats, in any market,” Anderson says. Going into this current downturn,
he says some builders could have “come off
the hammer sooner.”
For several years, Riviera has aggressively introduced new boats into the U.S. market. New
product is vital, says Anderson, quickly adding,
“the right new product. It’s understanding
what the customer really wants to buy.”
He continued: “There are opportunities to be
had in this environment. There are still people
out there with money. And they’ll spend it.”
NMMA president Thom Dammrich also
talked about maintaining perspective during
downturns in remarks he made to the Marine Marketers of America during the Fort
Lauderdale show. And like Anderson, he,
too, saw opportunity amid what he described as “great turmoil and change.”
“I predict that those who take control of
change and use change will not only weather it, but will prosper beyond their expectations,” says Dammrich, who predicts recovery in 12 to 18 months.
The down market, he says, is the time to
be taking market share and getting ready for
the recovery.
“What is your perspective?” Dammrich
asked. “Too many in the boating industry always see their glass as half empty. If you
view your glass as half empty, you need a
new perspective.”
At one point, he quoted Thomas Edison: “
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is
dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
Dammrich’s strategy for weathering the
current market malaise includes:
• Simplify, focus on what’s important; everything you do should add value.
• Invest in new products, innovate, and be
creative.
• Use this time to strengthen your brand
with consumers.
• Now more than ever, keep your people;
communicate good news and bad.
• Develop new markets; strive for better
penetration in existing ones.
• Act now; delays will kill you.
• Succinctly define your business; sell the
experience of boating, not the “thing.”
Here’s what all of us who have been in this
business for any length of time know: The
boating consumer is not going away. They’re
in it for the long haul. They’re lifers like you
and me. They’ve been sitting on the sidelines
for a while now, hibernating, holding onto the
boats they already own, content to maintain
them, perhaps springing for some upgrades.
But as soon as credit markets thaw, confidence
rises, the mortgage crisis is worked through,
and the jobs picture stabilizes, they’ll awaken.
And when the tide swings — and rest assured, it will swing — they’ll be back.
It may be raining pretty hard, but the sky’s
not falling. n
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VOL. XLVI, NO. 6
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