Innovations are coming at us so fast these days, it can be hard to keep up. Everywhere we look — helm electronics, fuel systems, propulsion technology — what seemed impossible just a few years ago is now a baseline expectation. Simultaneously, we are making big leaps forward with company cultures and environmental sustainability.
Top industry thinkers are not only embracing this evolving landscape, but are also leading the way through it by carving out smart, practical pathways to success for boaters and marine companies alike. Whatever it is that hasn’t been done before, they’re figuring out how to do it — and then some.
It’s this type of excellence that our judges rewarded in this year’s Soundings Trade Only Most Innovative Marine Company Awards. The program, now in its seventh year, honors forward-thinking companies that are transforming the future of the boating industry through new initiatives, technologies, processes and more.
This year’s judges were Nancy Cueroni, executive director of the National Marine Distributors Association and the Outdoor Power Equipment and Engine Service Association; Scott de Recat, a former partner with the sales representative firm Derema Group; Michele Goldsmith, vice president and general manager of the Soundings Trade Only Group; Daniel Harding Jr., editorial director of Active Interest Media’s Marine Group and editor-in-chief of Power & Motoryacht; and Gary Reich, editor-in-chief of Soundings Trade Only. (Power & Motoryacht is a sister magazine to Soundings Trade Only.)
Here is a look at what makes each of this year’s winning companies an innovation leader, as well as a glimpse at some of the advancements coming to the boating business around the nation and around the world.
1. GARMIN
Garmin is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. Since the company’s founding in 1989, it has continued to create groundbreaking products, maintaining a well-earned reputation as one of the most innovative brands in the marine industry. “When you look at technology companies and the level of innovation we turn out every year, that’s pretty impressive,” says Carly Hysell, associate director of public relations.
This year’s new-product launches include the GPSMap 9000 series of multifunction displays, which is a new flagship line for Garmin. This series includes the industry’s first and largest, at 27 inches, integrated 4K resolution touch-screen chart plotter. The MFDs have processing power that’s seven times faster than previous generations, along with multimedia streaming and video integration.
“The last time we did a big update like that was probably five or six years ago,” Hysell says. “It’s a big overhaul. We like to say it’s future-proof. It’s not going to be outdated next year if somebody puts it on their boat.”
Also new this year is the 48-inch Force Kraken trolling motor. While the Kraken line is not new, this model is designed for smaller boats, such as pontoons and flats boats. “It’s really showing how we continue to evolve an existing product,” Hysell says. “We introduced the Kraken trolling motor last year, but this year we added another shaft length to it.”
Garmin acquired JL Audio last year and has spent much of this year integrating the audio company into its R&D processes, marketing strategies and other in-house systems. All the while, new products continue to emerge, such as the recently released JL Audio Media Master 55 and 55-HR source units. Hysell says JL Audio was already working on these hidden controllers when Garmin acquired the company, but the product release shows how Garmin intends to continue innovating through the JL Audio brand.
“We have Fusion, so JL Audio was a competitor,” Hysell says. “We didn’t buy them to eliminate them. We bought them to give our customers more audio options, and a lot of OEMs, too. Now everything is under one roof as a Garmin solution.”
Fusion debuted new speakers and subwoofers at the International BoatBuilders’ Exhibition and Conference in October, showing yet again that Garmin intends to innovate and expand with new products from all kinds of directions at once.
2. BRUNSWICK CORP.
Brunswick Corp. has four divisions: Brunswick Boat Group, Navico Group, Business Acceleration/Freedom Boat Club and Mercury Marine. Each division launched innovative products this year, with what the company says is a record number of new products overall. There are 18 brands in the Boat Group, and they are intended to offer something for every type of boater, with innovation being more important than ever as economic headwinds continue to frustrate some dealers.
“Our biggest message is that we’re in a time when the market is in a trough. You have to innovate new products and refresh products to get people excited,” says Lee Gordon, vice president of communications and public affairs. “We’re doing a lot of that.”
Among the notable launches for the Boat Group this year is the Boston Whaler 365 Conquest, which is designed for multiday cruising, offshore fishing and entertaining. Another innovative launch is the first electric pontoon boat from Harris, the Cruiser-E 210. It is powered by Mercury’s Avator outboard.
The electric Avator line is itself notable for innovation this year, Gordon says, with five models launched: the 7.5e, 20e, 35e, 75e and 110e. Mercury also developed new ideas in the e-foiling category this year with the Flite Air and Air Pro electric hydrofoil surfboards. “The Flite Air is half the price of a normal Fliteboard,” Gordon says. “It’s getting you on the water at a price point that is more accessible to beginners.”
Navico Group’s big product release this year is the Simrad NSX Ultrawide multifunction display. “That’s the first MFD that is ultrawide, with a screen like in a car,” Gordon says. “And the Simrad Recon trolling motor, that is the first-ever saltwater trolling motor that we’ve ever launched. You always see them for bass fishing, but we’ve never had a saltwater version of a trolling motor.”
In the Business Acceleration/Freedom Boat Club division, Brunswick expanded to more than 410 club locations. “When we bought the business in 2019, we had 170,” Gordon says. “It’s definitely grown a lot in a small period of time. This last year, we expanded to Australia and New Zealand — again, in the spirit of offering more products and services to more people.”
Going forward, look for innovations under Brunswick’s Boating Intelligence label, which involves innovating ways to use artificial intelligence.
3. VOLVO PENTA
Innovation at Volvo Penta comes in the form of many products, but it’s all focused on the idea that being on the water should be easier and more intuitive — and in some cases, more sustainable. Three new products show how various types of innovation are combining to achieve those goals.
First is the Glass Cockpit 9000 series, which integrates navigation, engine monitoring and control functions. “You have everything at your fingertips — navigation, all the Volvo Penta system data, all at one touch,” says Jennifer Humphrey, vice president of marine marketing. “That’s for larger yachts. The system can be combined with our new IPS Professional Platform, or independently applied.”
The IPS Professional Platform is also new. The company is collaborating with Northern Offshore Services to bring pod propulsion to crew-transfer vessels for wind-turbine operations, and it’s partnering with Sanlorenzo to install it on the SX120 and SX132 yachts expected to launch in 2025 and 2027, respectively.
“This is what we believe is a groundbreaking innovation that will both make the experience more elevated and easier, but will also enable customers to be more efficient out on the water today, and be prepared in a flexible way to grow with new technology as hybrid and electric packages become available,” Humphrey says.
Also in the past year, Volvo Penta gave owners of older boats a way to update their Electronic Vessel Control technology so they can have such features as a Glass Cockpit, joystick steering, dynamic positioning and assisted docking. “It hasn’t been possible before to get all-new electronics in an easy way,” she says. “Now we have different kits available. Depending on the technology you have installed in your boat, the dealer can assess an easy kit to get you to an upgraded experience and a new level of features.
“This also has an element of sustainability to it,” she adds. “You’re investing in your current boat. It’s more cost-efficient than buying a new boat. It’s giving new life to your existing boat, and you’re getting a whole new boating experience.”
Looking ahead, Humphrey says, Volvo Penta recently unveiled a hybrid propulsion package in partnership with Azimut Yachts. “That’s another example of everything coming together, where we’re trying to look ahead and be more sustainable in testing out a hybrid-electric package with the end goal of the elevated experience on board,” she says.
4. SUZUKI MARINE
In the area of sustainability, Suzuki Marine is a clear leader. This year’s efforts include helping to spearhead a project in tandem with the National Marine Manufacturers Association to launch the first-ever pilot program for sustainable marine fuels. Suzuki played a key role in making high-performance, 93-octane, ethanol-free gasoline available to boaters at St. Andrews Marina in Panama City, Fla.
“It’s been a hit,” says Brandon Cerka, Suzuki general manager of sales and service. “From an overall standpoint, if you take it back a year or a year and a half before that, we drove a boat with sustainable fuel from Florida up to Washington, D.C. There are alternatives to saying ‘electric everything.’ That was the start of it, and then it was connecting the dots down the line.”
Attempting to bring sustainable fuels to the marketplace isn’t something Suzuki is doing in a silo, Cerka adds. The goal is to create an industrywide solution to reduce carbon emissions without replacing boat engines. “We made sure that Mercury and Yamaha were involved with this, as well,” he says. “We did all the lifting, but we wanted to make sure they were in the loop. That’s a cross-corporate thing that we do as a company for the environment and sustainability.”
Also this year, Suzuki Marine provided incentives for boaters to trade in old 2-stroke outboards and exchange them for cleaner-running 4-strokes. The program, called 4-4-2 (4-stroke for 2-stroke), increased sales beyond expectations while raising money for environmental non-profits, all while properly scrapping the old engines for recycling.
Through the program, Suzuki incentivizes dealers to have boaters trade in the old 2-strokes that cannot be resold or returned to the water. “We give a bigger discount to our dealers so they can get a trade-in value on that engine that is better,” Cerka says. “Maybe the thing is worth $500 or $1,000. The boater is like, ‘Whoa, I get that and can put it toward a new, efficient engine?’ ”
Suzuki tested the program during summer 2023 with a single dealer in Minnesota. It worked, so this past February, the company launched it within the dealer network to see how many old 2-strokes it could get boaters to trade in. “The goal was to do 442 in the first year,” Cerka says. “That would be a win for us. Within four months, we had 2,000.”
5. YAMAHA MARINE
It’s not every day that a company unveils the world’s first hydrogen-powered outboard for recreational boats, along with a prototype fuel system integrated into an actual vessel. But that’s exactly what the Yamaha U.S. Marine Business Unit achieved this year, with a prototype displayed at the Miami International Boat Show.
“It all ties back into our multiple technology solutions,” says Brad Massey, communications manager. “Us and a lot of other people, there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to carbon neutrality. Hydrogen is a part of that. There’s the sustainable fuels, there’s electric — we purchased Torqeedo this year.”
For the hydrogen outboard, Yamaha partnered with Roush and Regulator Marine. Roush has spent more than two decades working on hydrogen systems integration and research. The idea for recreational applications is not based on using a hydrogen fuel cell. Instead, it’s a system with an internal combustion engine that uses gaseous hydrogen as a fuel.
“The hydrogen outboard that we developed, and the fuel system that we’re designing with Roush and Regulator, is a first for the recreational marine industry,” Massey says. “The fuel system we’re working on with Roush has pressurized hydrogen fuel tanks in it. Pressurized hydrogen gas runs from the tanks through the injectors to the outboard. That’s a first for the industry.”
Massey says the prototype works and that testing is continuing. It’s too early to release results, he says, but “as soon as we possibly can, we will. This is real. It’s right now.” One of the next challenges, he adds, will be determining how to make that fuel available to boaters. That’s why the Yamaha U.S. Marine Business Unit has been discussing infrastructure with regulators, legislators, non-governmental organizations and others.
The auto industry will likely be key to that infrastructure effort, Massey says. Ben Speciale, president of the U.S. Marine Business Unit, took part in Monterey Car Week this past August in California (photo at right, holding microphone), working to build relationships in that direction. “They had a classic car panel, and Ben was the lone representative of the marine industry, up there with somebody from Ford, Chevron and Toyota, as well as SEMA — the specialty equipment manufacturers association,” Massey says. “We’re reaching out because, in the end, the result is going to impact all of us. That runs in parallel to the research and design of the hydrogen system and the outboard.”
6. SHARROW MARINE
When the Sharrow propeller was gaining popularity in 2020, the company was already almost a decade old. The team had spent years building the computer code that runs through billions of iterations to lock in the geometry of a given propeller shape — all based on an idea Greg Sharrow had in 2012, when he was walking his dog and thinking about how to make a drone quieter for his work as an executive producer in the video industry.
“You can look it up in a textbook, how to design a propeller,” Sharrow says. “We had to throw that book out the window and develop it from scratch. That was the first step. Then, how do we accurately predict what will happen when we design and manufacture these? Now we can predict within 1% accuracy what will happen when the propeller is manufactured.”
Sharrow Marine has produced more than 5,000 propellers since 2020, with revenue increasing more than 300% from 2022 to 2023. Now the company is partnering with Veem to create the Sharrow by Veem line of inboard propellers for larger boats. Through the partnership, Sharrow props can be up to 15 feet in diameter. The companies are in preproduction now, with the product expected to be delivered by the end of this year.
“It truly is rocket science, figuring out how to apply it for inboards,” Sharrow says. “The big challenge for us was modifying our code so it could handle all the complexities of inboard technology. With large inboard applications, there’s usually a tunnel and a tip clearance. There’s also the shaft angle. Our code has to account for all that. There’s a non-uniform flow called a wake fraction that our code has to account for.”
Getting any of those things wrong with a 15-foot propeller carries a more significant cost than missing something with an outboard prop, he adds. “When you’re making smaller propellers, if something’s wrong, you make another one,” Sharrow says. “With the bigger ones, there’s one shot. That’s where our relationship with Veem is so helpful. They have an incredible ability to manufacture these gargantuan propellers that matches the accuracy of what we do with our propellers, to two-thousandths of an inch. It’s less than the thickness of a human hair.”
Expectations are for big demand. Sharrow’s manufacturing goal is to increase capacity to more than 200,000 props per year in the next five years.
7. DOMETIC
Dometic makes the components and parts that make boating better — for boaters as well as for the environment. For instance, the company is a leading provider of air conditioning, refrigeration, galley equipment, icemakers and other systems that are primary consumers of electricity on board. Dometic’s titanium A/C condensers and variable-speed A/C compressors are key to making those types of products quieter and more efficient.
“Why it’s important for customers is because, especially when you’re out at sea, anything that’s using energy is using fuels,” says Justin Celauro, product and business manager. “With air conditioning, most customers need to run a generator. More and more are moving to batteries, but you want to get the longest life out of your batteries that you can. People want to get the most they can out of their air conditioning.”
The variable-speed A/C compressor is a component that has been used in residential applications for quite a while, Celauro says. Dometic launched its version for marine applications in the United States earlier this year, with the global market planned for next year — after four or five years of figuring out how to do it. “The challenge is getting the technology to the size that we need,” he says. “Marine is much smaller. And then, getting it to a price point that customers would be excited about. There’s a premium to these — there’s a lot of components and technology — but the compactness, the robustness for a marine environment, that’s what customers get excited about.”
With this technology, as the compressor slows down, it blows over heat exchangers that are oversized for the amount of refrigerant passing through them. “Let’s say you have a 1-ton compressor paired with a 1-ton condenser and a 1-ton evaporator. When the compressor runs at half speed, you’re at half a ton, but your heat exchangers are still sized for 1 ton,” he says. “You get more efficient air conditioning. You’ll save money on your batteries, or on fuel that your genset needs, and the customer experience is better.”
The A/C unit is also far quieter than what most boaters are used to, he adds, especially when it’s operating at slower speeds. “With this unit, we would have it at shows, and I would challenge people to put their hand on it and tell me when it turned on,” Celauro says. “You don’t hear a clunk when it starts.”
8. VOLTSAFE
VoltSafe Marine builds shore power pedestals with magnetic hardware connectors, eliminating the need for prongs and live, recessed metal contacts. “No company in the world has made shore power pedestals the way that we do,” says chief marketing officer Terri Breker. “If a cord falls off into the water or somebody is near the outlet, you will never get electrocuted or get a shock. It is one of the most significant differences between our hardware and other pedestals.”
VoltSafe brought this technology to the Consumer Electronics Show in 2023, and its representatives learned that marinas hadn’t seen any significant innovations in shore power systems for quite some time. “They were having all these issues. We then came up with the shore power pedestals for the marina operators,” Breker says. “Then we started attending very marina-focused trade shows. We went to IBEX. We went to Metstrade. We’ve done preorders and are starting to accept orders now for delivery of pedestals in 2025.”
The system comes with a software management platform that lets marina managers control power at slips, detect current leakage and receive alerts about safety concerns on the docks. It’s available in a 30-amp setup, with a 50-amp on the near horizon, according to the company. “They can control their whole marina from a dashboard, and the boater has a companion app where they can see their own slip and get notifications when their power turns off or is disconnected,” Breker says.
Boaters will need an adapter to use the shore power pedestals, but the marinas will have them, she adds. And automated billing is part of the system, so both the marina manager and the boater can see everything about energy usage with a better level of transparency and detail.
Creating a safer and more efficient way to plug into shore power isn’t the kind of thing that most companies are innovating around, which makes VoltSafe a standout. “For over a century, we plugged in our toaster and coffeemaker in the same way. It’s how we plugged into power,” she says. “There have also been advancements at the other end of the cord. As we move to electrification of boats and all these things, we’re looking at how to be more efficient with renewable resources we already have access to, and how to make it safer, and how to make it cool.”
9. MEDALLION INSTRUMENTATION SYSTEMS
Medallion is a company whose ruggedized electronics are used by boaters every day, even if they have no idea the brand has been around since 1957. “The reason you don’t hear about us is that we don’t sell branded products,” says director and owner Jeff Sands. “We build directly for the OEMs to produce products under their brand name. It’s Malibu, it’s Sea Ray, it’s Bennington — those are all customers of ours.”
One of this year’s notable products is the 360 Camera System, which will be on model year 2025 Malibu boats. It gives smaller-boat skippers an experience similar to what megayacht captains have at the helm. “Big yachts will have maybe six cameras so somebody high up at the helm can see how close they are to the dock,” Sands says. “Ours is quite a lot more advanced, and it’s made for production boats.”
Sands says the challenge with innovating this type of technology for smaller boats is how much closer to the waterline the cameras are. “It becomes a much more difficult process for stitching the images together,” he says. “If you’re up high and looking down, you get a pretty good perspective. If you’re at the waterline, where the rubrails are, you’re only 18 inches or less above the waterline. It’s a much different perspective.”
Medallion also wanted the system to make sense for the ways smaller boats are used. “You can get a bird’s-eye view from above — you see your boat and what’s around you — but with our system, you can also get a perspective from a water view,” he says. “When you’re on a pontoon, you can’t see below the deck line in front of you or to the side of you. It’s driver awareness.”
Being based in Michigan, near the automotive industry, means a lot of the company’s engineers bring that type of expertise. It leads to products such as the 2025 Malibu Boats Command Center. “The last five years or so, you’ve been seeing more use of displays in automotive, particularly lower-profile, wider displays. Nobody has really adopted that in the marine industry,” Sands says. “This is a very low-profile, wide display, so you get a lot of information. It’s thin and mounted on the dash. It gives the driver a greater field of view above the display by shortening the height of the display.”
10. ROSWELL MARINE
The team at Roswell Marine doesn’t think about new ways to do one thing or another better on board. Instead, their goal is to try and think in a way that encompasses just about all of the things that are happening on any given boat, all of the time. “We’re trying to innovate every experience that you have on the water,” says Brad Gearhart, director of marketing and business development.
That approach to thinking about boating is what leads to so much diversity in the products where Roswell Marine comes up with innovative solutions each year. This year is no different, with numerous advancements being brought to market. The offerings include the Centurion SurroundFire tower speaker system, which has conical diffusion technology to disperse full, rich, crystal-clear sound evenly throughout the cockpit, eliminating dead zones. The system includes a trio of R1 Pro marine speakers: two that project sound to riders off the stern, and one that channels audio directly into the cockpit.
Another product announced this year is the Centurion Predator Power Tower, which also introduces Roswell’s Compacting Dual-Fold Technology. This innovation lets boaters raise and lower the tower to any height while maintaining full functionality, and with the ability to tow a rider in any position. The integrated Bimini top remains parallel to the boat’s sole throughout the entire range of operation for configurable coverage.
Those two products may not sound similar, but at Roswell, they’re both part of the same overarching philosophy of making boating better. “If we’re on the water and we think we can make that moment better, we do — whether it’s a rack, a speaker, whatever it is,” Gearhart says. “It’s about creating that ultimate experience.”
Roswell is also working to enhance the experience of doing business on both sides of the Atlantic. The company hosted a 25 Years of Roswell event this year, celebrating a quarter-century in business, and created a Roswell Europe Division to provide fast, direct service to the region.
There also are new U.S.-based manufacturing processes to expand capabilities, control quality and create more capacity for rapid prototyping. “We’re constantly expanding our made-in-the-USA program,” Gearhart says. “Here in Rockledge, Fla., it’s been growing rapidly. We use state-of-the-art technology not only in our machines, but also in our processes to stay ahead of the curve.”
SOLTICE DOCKING – HONORABLE MENTION
When people think about a segment of the industry that’s ripe for disruption, docking is not generally the first thing that comes to mind. That is, unless you’re Craig Freeman, director of Solstice Docking Solutions. The company is the North American distributor for SeaPen dry docks, which have been used in Australia for about two decades.
“We’re going into year five now, and we’ve done a lot of innovation with the product once we got it here,” Freeman says. “It takes us three years in a market to really start penetrating. We were at the Annapolis show last year, and you would’ve thought Martians fell out of the sky. It’s just such a different concept.”
The SeaPen is for boats from about 20 to 65 feet and eliminates the need for a traditional lift to keep a boat out of the water. The system attaches to fixed or floating docks, or to a seawall. A boater pulls in over the SeaPen, and the system rises to clear the boat out of the water. Most people need a minute to wrap their brains around the idea, Freeman says.
“It’s a lot of education and getting people to see it, but once the clients and dealers and manufacturers see it, a lightbulb goes off,” he says. “Being able to dry out the boat and have the same benefits as a lift is a game-changer. Nobody wants their investment sitting in salt water.”
This year, Freeman and his team added a SeaPen app that lets boaters remotely control and monitor the system. “All our clients are controlling their houses via their phone. Why not their boats?” he says. “Anywhere their phone works, the app is going to work. It’s no different from the Ring camera at your house.”
The app is useful, he says, if an owner needs to lower the SeaPen gate so a worker can access the boat for maintenance. It also can function as a type of security enhancement. “Think about tying up a boat with a line,” he says. “Physically, there’s nothing locking that boat to the dock. With a SeaPen, somebody is going to have to work pretty hard to get the boat out of there, especially if they don’t know what they’re doing.”
LOOKOUT – HONORABLE MENTION
Lookout CEO David Rose says “information should be painted directly on the world.” The Lookout system that launched in July is based on that belief. It combines data from charts, AIS, radar targets and online sources into a 3D, augmented-reality view, integrated with smartphones as well as multifunction displays from Garmin, Furuno, Raymarine and Simrad.
Research shows the human brain absorbs information more easily if it’s in context, Rose says. To understand what makes the Lookout system different, he asks people to think about driving their car and looking ahead for the next turn. There are several ways to get information about that next turn into the driver’s brain. “One is if somebody put a sign up on the road or the corner of the street that said, ‘This is your turn, Judy.’ The other way of doing it is to look down at a map, understand the scale of the map, where you are on the map — to do those mental gymnastics in your head,” he says. “What we’re doing is giving boaters another view that’s just as important as the chart view. It’s the top-down view. We call it augmented navigation.”
In a car, technology might speak the words “turn right in a half-mile.” However, audio is not ideal for loud boats, Rose says. “We’re giving you a view from a camera that sits high on the boat, a view of the world around you,” he says, “and we’re superimposing information about where to turn or hazards directly on the camera’s view.”
The system works with FLIR cameras that boaters may already have, or with a camera that Lookout sells. A processor plugs into the camera. “We use AI to detect everything that’s on the water and around you, and display it using augmented reality on the screen on your boat, and we give you warnings if you’re getting too close to something, if there’s a potential collision,” says chief operating officer Howie Hecht.
The future for boats, as the Lookout team envisions it, is similar to what has happened with vehicles. For instance, it’s hard to find a new car that doesn’t have a backup camera. “Where this goes is to be recommended by marine-insurance companies or subsidized by those companies,” Rose says. “That’s the aspiration. We want to be like a backup camera on a car, where you really can’t buy a car without one.”
AKZONOBEL – HONORABLE MENTION
The team at AkzoNobel is trying to make it easier to paint a boat. Historically speaking, just choosing the right color has been a labor-intensive process, says Matt Anzardo, global marketing segment manager. “What most paint companies have are little color chips,” Anzardo says. “You’re not really sure if it’s the right color, and painting a boat is more labor-intensive than painting a wall in your house. You’re trying to take a 1-by-1 chip and visualize how it would look on your boat.”
AkzoNobel created the Awlgrip 3D Color Visualizer to help solve this problem. “We developed this algorithm that will allow you to visualize what the paint will look like on your boat,” Anzardo says. “We have four types of boats — a superyacht, a sportfish boat, a powerboat and a sailboat. We 3D-model them.”
The 3D modeling is important, he says, because boats aren’t straight like walls. “The way the light hits it matters,” he says. “When you’re on the tool, you can play around and see what colors could look like on your boat. You can see it from the waterline, from above. You can see the superstructure, the boot stripe.”
Boaters can then print an image and bring it to a boatyard. “You can say, ‘This is what I’m thinking. Can you help make my vision a reality?’ ” he says. “Then it’s a more detailed conversation.”
Also with the goal of making it easier to paint a boat, AkzoNobel introduced Toplac Plus and Pre-Kote Plus. Toplac Plus eliminates the need to apply paint with a roller and then tip it with a brush because it spreads out on its own. Pre-Kote Plus can be applied directly to metal, such as a window frame above the waterline.
There’s also now Awlcraft 3000, which replaces Awlcraft 2000 topcoat in the product line. “It’s a very popular, professionally applied topcoat for boaters in North America because it can be buffed and repaired. It’s very forgiving that way, and it has a fantastic gloss,” Anzardo says. “We kept all of that but made it easier by using a standardized toner system. Before, when Awlcraft 2000 was mixed, it used tints. A painter would take some red, some blue, some white, and mix the paint together to create the color. We’ve made it easier for the distributors who mix colors for our professional applicators.”
