National Marine Manufacturers Association president Frank Hugelmeyer took over the reins of the organization only months before the Covid-19 pandemic shut down much of the world. It was about as challenging a time as any to steer a large industry association through very choppy waters.

Soundings Trade Only talked with Hugelmeyer about his experience in outdoor-related organizations, how he feels NMMA has improved during his tenure, and what the organization is doing to help industry participants with supply-chain issues, inflation, staffing, the pandemic, representing diversity and more.

It’s been about two years since your last Q&A with Soundings Trade Only. Can you refresh our readers about your career before you became NMMA president?

I’ve been a lifer when it comes to the sporting goods and outdoor recreation spaces. I grew up on Long Island, New York, and then started as a retailer with Paragon Sports in New York City. I eventually moved from there to be part of the fourth-largest leisure sports group in the world, AB Aritmos. They were a large, public company with a vast sporting-goods portfolio that included Etonic and Garcia. Bodyguard Fitness was the company I was a part of.

Then my wife and I moved to Colorado. I took over as vice president of sales and marketing for Lowe Alpine. We held the largest market share in backpacks and sold mountaineering gear and apparel. We were going up against Patagonia, Columbia and The North Face, who were huge players in the market. That’s how I got involved in the association business. I was at Lowe and got elected to the Outdoor Industry Association board of directors. When we sold Lowe, the chairman came up and said, “Hey, what do you think about taking over the association?” I’m glad I did it. I was always interested in the politics side, and that’s how I got involved in the Outdoor Industry Association, which lasted 15 years. That’s a good run.

Next, I went to the RV Industry Association and Go RVing, and ran that for four years until the NMMA knocked on the door and the board asked if I was interested in interviewing for the role. I grew up on the water, boating in Long Island. If it’s my day off and I am standing on the bow of a boat with a fly rod in my hand, I couldn’t be happier. So to have the opportunity to promote and grow the industry that started that journey couldn’t make me happier.

What were some of the NMMA’s big wins and challenges during the first two years of your tenure?

It’s been an interesting ride. I took over in October 2019, had a couple of months to interact with the team and then we went into a global pandemic. I’d say from a member perspective, we’ve got a long list of accomplishments through this period. We responded right at the beginning of the pandemic to quickly help our members survive and thrive in what was an incredibly difficult, challenging time for them. We really put in the work to make sure that they got the assistance they needed to get through it.

And then we quickly pivoted toward working on passing legislation in what had become a very divisive political climate. We passed the Great American Outdoors Act, which brought in billions of dollars of investments to the recreation space and secured permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We also had the new Biden administration coming in, and we needed to create strong relationships across that entire administration. And we did that very well. That led to us being able to steer billions of new dollars toward recreational boating, fisheries and infrastructure, through both the American Rescue Plan, as well as the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

That also helped us eliminate the punitive 25 percent retaliatory European Union tariffs on American-made boats, which was another big member win. The other big member win we’ve had is the Discover Boating partnership we forged with the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation for the “Get On Board” campaign, which has generated unprecedented levels of consumer engagement and sales leads during the past two years.

From the internal side, the NMMA had to go through a reinvention. I’m extremely proud of how we have navigated the crisis and, particularly, supported the staff through a period of constant change and disruption and shutdowns and health scares. It’s been a trying time for any leader, and leadership team, for sure. So we’ve really focused on member health and staff health during this period and, finally, organizational health.

Our business model is largely built around consumer events, and obviously consumer events were entirely disrupted. The location where we held the New York Boat Show this year was an emergency Covid-19 hospital last year. Nearly 70 percent of our revenues were completely disrupted. That was an enormously challenging period to go through. I look at things right now, and I’d say it’s one of the proudest periods of performance and operation that I’ve ever been associated with, and our staff and the board came together to cut risk in the organization and reinvent our path forward.

How did you do that?

Rather than compete against Informa Markets with three shows right on top of each other in Miami, we came together to create a new partnership and build the largest boat show in the world. We established a new, long-term memorandum of understanding with the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas to reinvigorate Discover Boating and integrate all of these consumer-facing assets because we know that when you look at the future of the industry, we’re really successful right now because we have a lot less competition.

We reinvented the NMMA and our programs to be relevant to the future. We did all of this with 40 percent less staff resources in the middle of a global pandemic. I am so proud of this team and of the support that the board has provided us through this timeframe. We now have an opportunity to be a more relevant, dynamic and adaptable organization as we move forward.

What is NMMA doing to help members with supply-chain issues, staffing problems and inflation?

It’s interesting because each of the issues that you just raised, particularly when you look at the supply chain and labor issues, those are systemic issues. They’re not specific to the marine industry. Those are large. We are engaged with much larger coalitions in trying to address these issues. We’re part of the National Association of Manufacturers and the Council of Manufacturing Associations, which is all the manufacturing associations, and we’ve come together to address these big macro issues. When I look at the supply chain, we engaged very quickly in terms of what the Biden administration was trying to do and advocated for many of the same things that they’ve acted on.

Also, we’re starting to see ports operating 24/7 now. They weren’t six months ago, and we’re starting to see the containers get onto land and rail cars and trucks faster. But the related costs are going to take time to go down.

The inflation we’re all dealing with is due to the staff shortages and everyone going, “You know what? Hold on, let’s go backward. Let’s shut down because we’re not going to see any business because of the pandemic.” Then, everyone said, “Well, it’s in the opposite direction.” The global supply chain, and specifically the marine industry supply chain, simply was just not resilient enough to be able to make that sort of instant pivot.

The bigger challenge on labor, from what I’m hearing, is people getting sick with the Omicron variant. This has been a game of Whac-A-Mole when it comes to supply chain, because the consumer confidence is there. Consumers right now have more money and net worth than we saw at any time during the Great Recession. So we’re not seeing consumers back away. They’re going to continue to lean in and spend. I’m most concerned that we don’t see inflation go out of control, and we see fuel prices continue to stabilize.

What initiatives in the Outdoor and RV industry associations could be applied to the marine industry?

A lot of what we’re doing right now with Discover Boating is just actioning on what was most successful at Go RVing. What our team at Go RVing did a little more than six years ago was to move completely to the experience side. Instead of selling the widget, we aimed to sell the experience. This allowed a wide variety of people to find themselves in a product that was their vehicle to adventure.

Discover Boating is the water-based version of that. I don’t believe we have completely tapped into our potential with it, either with our current potential market or the wide variety of emerging markets that, to be honest, we don’t even have close to our potential market share. I really do believe that the marine industry is extraordinarily well-positioned to broaden its pie. The thing that has kept us from doing that is we have a history of speaking to ourselves. We broke out of those guardrails in the RV industry with Go RVing and saw significant gains. Discover Boating is about to do that.

The last time you spoke with Soundings Trade Only, you discussed representing diversity, not only in the sport of boating itself but also within the marine industry. How’s that’s going?

You’re already seeing us act on that. Much of what I’ve just shared with you about Discover Boating and where we’re heading with it, diversity will be at the forefront. When we started on that journey, the first thing we said in the NMMA is that we have to make sure our own house is in order. We created a cross-functional team internally to look at how are we operating, and being welcoming, and what we need to continue to do so we move forward and are a model organization that attracts talent that would also help us attract the next-generation consumer that’s incredibly diverse.

That ultimately led to the recruitment of Kevin Williams, our vice president of marketing, who is working with Ellen Bradley on driving the Discover Boating campaign. And Kevin came to us having led emerging markets and diversity marketing for BMW. So we’ve gone outside of our space to identify somebody who really has done this before, is authentic himself, and is a person of color. He understands what those consumers are looking for and how to speak to them.

He shared an interesting story about a friend who was trying to get out to the Minneapolis Boat Show. She’s interested in boating, and she’s been talking to Kevin, but she couldn’t get to Minneapolis. So she flew to New York for the New York Boat Show and went in with a budget of about $70,000. She left with a $100,000 boat. This is the example of there being a lot of consumer segments out there that we are simply not speaking to. We just need to know how to do it authentically. We’re building that team within the NMMA. We’ve got a very strong growth path in front of us. We’re not even scratching the tip of that market potential right now.

You mentioned your passions of boating and fishing. What has your work-life balance been like since you took over at the NMMA?

I did not get out as much as I would’ve liked. I definitely did both, but not nearly as much as I’d want to. Travel was shut down quite a bit, but I’m excited to be getting back out on the road. I’m heading out to see members. We’re going out to the boat shows. I can’t wait to get down to Florida to wet a line.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I just couldn’t be happier with the direction NMMA, our members and the marine industry as a whole are heading. It’s a really exciting time in the business, and I feel like it’s only going to get better. 

This article was originally published in the March 2022 issue.