If you spend any time reading the monthly Pulse Report from the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas and Soundings Trade Only, you should have a pretty good sense of what’s going on in the boating market right now. Let me summarize things for you: It’s tough out there, and dealers are looking for answers.
The talk at recent events — dealer meetings, the National Marine Lenders Association Annual Conference and the International BoatBuilders’ Exhibition and Conference — suggests that the months ahead will continue to be a challenge. Dealers and manufacturers will need to capture consumer attention and discretionary spending, manage an industrywide inventory surplus and reignite business growth. Many people say they hope that after the election and a couple more interest-rate declines, the boating retail market can regain its footing.
One of the most interesting takeaways from those recent meetings came from Gina Martin Adams, chief equity strategist and global director of equity Strategy at Bloomberg Intelligence, who was a keynote speaker at the lenders’ conference. Adams said that the recession is already behind us, and that the only reason we haven’t called an official recession is the lack of an increase in job losses and layoffs. That factor, she added, is due to demographics: We simply don’t have enough people to fill the jobs we have available. Meanwhile, every other indicator suggests we hit a recession, and the challenging economic environment we’re all feeling is our slow climb up and out of it. That’s welcome news for the boat market, and it seems to suggest that 2025 could be a rebound year for marine retail.
The fact remains, however, that the lack of clarity in the marketplace, particularly pre-election, has challenged dealers to find a rhythm. Numerous conversations we had this fall suggest that dealers are facing a number of key pain points stemming from the uncertainty and poor market conditions.
Chief among these pain points are changing consumer needs and the repercussions of high inventory levels. Consumers have been displaying demand complacency, with several dealers saying that even boat use is on the decline. No clear data seems to exist to substantiate this, but the perception is common among dealers and marina owners.
As such, in 2025 planning, dealers should focus on creating opportunities for customers to get out on the water through events and other programs. Meanwhile, adapting sales techniques to help set better expectations for customers and appeal to the next generation of boaters will be critical to retail success.
One of the most needed focal points for dealers in the near term is the emphasis on lead management. The MRAA has noted that while dealers’ lead-response times have improved post-pandemic, the quality of the response going to consumers leaves a lot to be desired. While dealers seek to better understand consumers, they can improve engagement with the right amount of sales training and lead-management training. This should be an imperative ahead of boat show season.
As sales have dropped, inventory levels have spiked. Coupling high interest rates with high inventory levels has put dealers in a compromising position, requiring dealers, manufacturers and lenders to become creative. Aging inventory, though, creates numerous downstream pressures for dealers, including understanding and managing inventory turns, profit margins, and effective inventory levels and model mix. Dealers are hoping to return to growth, of course, but balancing that idea with rising business costs and the risk of taking on more product has become more challenging than at any time since the Great Recession.
The path forward for dealers is to outperform in their marketplace. This is the most palatable focal point for dealers to pursue as we enter the prime selling season for the 2025 model year.
Beyond that, the place for dealers to gain the best insights into how to create success is at Dealer Week, the MRAA’s annual conference and expo, scheduled Dec. 8-11 in Orlando, Fla. In this time of market uncertainty, the answers can be found among the expert speakers, the hundreds of dealership professionals, the exhibitors and the sponsors of Dealer Week. Dealers can take home vast amounts of resources to help implement new ideas.
For instance, dealers can learn how to generate leads through the all-new Marketing Pathway. Sessions at Dealer Week include Marketing Strategies for Maximum Impact; The AI Advantage (7 Practical Ways to Explode Marketing, Increase Sales & Win Trust); Transform Your Marketing Message from Boring to Truly Remarkable; Create and Capitalize on Raving Fan Advocates with Community-Based Marketing; and Fix the Leaky Bucket (3 Systems to Stop Missing Marketing Opportunities).
Dealer Week’s Sales and F&I Pathway can help a sales team manage and convert those leads into sales. Topics include Create Masterful Conversations that Close More Sales; Differentiate Your Dealership to Win More Deals; Mastering Sales and F&I For Success; Master Sellchology (The Science of Anticipating and Negating Objections); and Drive Up Profits by Benchmarking Your F&I Performance.
In addition, Dealer Week offers insights into how to outperform in a marketplace. Information will be shared through two keynotes, dealer-to-dealer discussions and other sessions such as Is It the Market or Me? Sort Fact from Fiction in a Tough Environment; Lead Your Team by Uniting them Around a Common Goal; The Name of the Game is Revenue Diversification; Grow Your Bottom Line by Mastering Offseason Scheduling; and Maximize Customer Experience and Create Stability by Strengthening Your Store.
These courses have been curated by the MRAA’s team of education leaders and partners who are subject-matter experts. Each course is designed to help dealers prepare outperform the competition and maximize success.
Check it all out at DealerWeek.com. The MRAA guarantees that you will learn something you can implement, or we will refund your registration. That’s how confident we are in our ability to help you succeed, particularly in such a great time of need. I hope to see you there. n
Matt Gruhn is president of the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas.
