Powersports manufacturer Polaris took a different direction in May 2018 by acquiring its first marine brands: Bennington and Godfrey pontoon boats, and Hurricane, which is best known for its value-minded deckboat models. Six years later, the parent company is bolstering those brands by filling out model ranges to appeal to a wider variety of buyers.
Bennington recently beefed up its midrange pontoon boat offerings with the addition of the M series, while Godfrey updated several models from the low to high end of the market. Hurricane recently previewed a 24CC center console and a 3200 cruiser that look nothing like the models that came before them.
Ben Duke has been the president of Polaris Marine almost since the beginning of its involvement in Bennington, Godfrey and Hurricane. He came to Polaris Marine after serving as group president at Briggs and Stratton, and as marketing vice president at Mercury Marine, where he worked for 12 years.
We sat down with Duke in Lake Wawasee, Ind., in August, after the company’s annual Bennington, Godfrey and Hurricane dealer meetings, to get a business update and a look at his plans for the three brands.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What are the biggest challenges in the marketplace? Interest rates, supply chain, a combination?
I think it’s just the uncertainty that consumers are feeling, not so much any of those things. Interest rates at credit unions have come down, so they’re not that much different than they were even just a couple years ago — and they’ve moderated. Dealers are looking carefully at their total inventory, not so much our product because we’ve been managing it well since Q4 of last year. So I think it’s just the uncertainty for the consumer in that they just don’t know. They need to get through the election, too.
As far as the supply chain, that’s pretty much back to where it was, in a healthy way. If we do encounter supply-chain issues, we normally are doing it to ourselves. Maybe somebody will order a wrong part or not communicate well enough. We have a supplier village, which means most of our suppliers are within a hundred miles of our facility in Elkhart, Ind. That works out well for us, and we have great relationships with our suppliers. It’s closer than any place I’ve ever been. These are people you see at dinner and that you bump into in town all the time. That means you can’t be too crazy in a negotiation or anything like that because you’re going to bump into this guy at church on Sunday. But if you need a favor, you know exactly who to call, and they can cascade it down the organization.
Some manufacturers are pushing product hard. It sounds like you are fairly sensitive to not overloading dealers. Is that a fair statement?
I think that’s evident in the fact that we started cutting our production in Q4 of last year ahead everybody saying that they had too much. We saw it in the numbers.
Where we must be careful is when we bring our inventory down, and then somebody else will take advantage and try to push their stuff in there. The dealers are very open with the fact that we’ve managed it well. It’s regional, so it’s not to say every dealer we have is perfect on inventory. Some still have some aged inventory that they need to work through — maybe they started discounting too late or whatever the case may be. We have some dealers that are on wealthy bodies of water. They haven’t felt this at all, and they are chugging away, another great year after another great year. My management team and I spend a lot of time in dealerships. We just got back from a trip, I think it was five or six states, and we visited seven dealers in two or three days.
“Wealthier bodies of water” seems like where the overall boat market is now: The high end is filled with people who generally still have money.
Forbidding any kind of crazy financial catastrophe, yes. For Bennington, which is more of a luxury brand, and that dealer base, which is used to dealing with that customer, the upper end of the market has done very well.
In the middle, we needed to refresh that product, which we have done with Bennington’s M series. For the low end, we’ve had some boat companies go extremely aggressive on promotion. So we’re starting to match them with a nationally advertised entry-model Godfrey like the Xperience. Godfrey’s low to middle end has also done really well.
The new Hurricane 24CC and 3200 models are big departures from the brand’s tried-and-true deckboats. Would they have happened without Polaris?
That’s a really interesting question. I would tell you that I don’t think, before Polaris, we would’ve had the dollars to invest in those all-new models. We did a lot of market research to see where that brand could go before we went into this. This wasn’t a guess. We hired some great market research businesses to come in and take a look regionally and globally at where Hurricane could sit. The brand is extremely well-known. And then we went out to dealers and had long conversations, sometimes over a cold beer or in a boardroom with a whiteboard. It was clear to us that this brand could grow. Hurricane’s CEO and CFO, they’re data-driven guys, and they saw the data and they said, “This makes total sense to us,” and we were able to do it.
Even though you haven’t formally launched the 24CC and 3200, is the plan to grow each of those lines?
We’re going to tread lightly and see. The 3200 wasn’t really the first move into that market. The 2600 last year was really the first move. And we had the 2690, an amazing-running boat. The 2600 is more of a departure on the luxury side for us — the layout, the way it runs, the sound system. That told us that Hurricane really isn’t only a deckboat brand and that we can start making a departure into different boats.
We’ve been in the center console business for a long time, but those models have typically been on a deckboat platform. They’re an older design. We needed to make a big step forward and get a deeper-vee and stretch the DNA on the running surface but keep those Hurricane genes on deck. The 3200 was built this way also. The 3200’s deck design, with the forward bow seating and aft cockpit, those design elements feel very purposeful. Even in the main area, the co-captain’s and captain’s chairs turn to create another space. That’s why that boat is different than a lot of its competitors: because you have these formal sitting areas where people can gather. There’s also a great sound system, a cooking area up top and down below, and multiple refrigerators. I mean, it’s an entertaining boat — that’s what we built it for. And if you want to spend the night on it, you could.
When did the process of conceiving these boats begin?
About two-and-a-half years ago. We did a lot of market research. We rented a lot of competitors’ boats, spent a lot of time on the water and talked to a lot of owners. At the same time, we had a formal market brand positioning done. Then we sat down with some industry partners and said, “OK, what’s this going to look like?”
We already had a leg ahead because a lot of the dayboats that are out there are conversions from sterndrives. They take longer to get on plane. They ride bow-proud as they’re coming out and then they kind of lay down. The 3200 goes on plane really quick. You have great visuals all the way. I think we’ve already got an advantage there because it’s the newest boat in that segment.
Among all these brands, and the company in general, what is most exciting to you right now?
If I break them down, I look at Bennington, and they continue to redefine innovation and luxury. Like the boat we’re sitting on now with this cool-touch black seating, I mean, it’s very comfortable, right? That’s us working closely with our vinyl supplier. We did testing in Florida and then decided to include it in our brands. So for Bennington, they keep pushing the bounds of luxury and performance.
On Godfrey, it’s that family-friendly boat that’s durable, and often people’s dad or grandfather had a Godfrey. Those customers love their dealers. I think how they’re serving those customers excites me the most.
And then for Hurricane, it’s entering into new spaces. I mean, spending an afternoon on that dayboat, that’s pretty nice.
This article was originally published in the October 2024 issue.
