The racing would be a huge expense and would relate little to sales......Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday is a cute saying but not realistic.
40-50 boats a year is basically a boat a week completed, check in hand. Lets just say you make 40K a boat X 50 boats is only 2mm a year, knock it down to 20K a boat and you only have 1mm a year..........nobody would risk green money or worse yet borrow money to make that deal happen. I also think if you could do 18-25 boats in your first year you would be extremely lucky. I would bet Donzi hasn't finished 30 boats total in the last 5 years......with investors, an existing factory and plenty of capable workers.

I would absolutely love to buy Donzi and I agree with you 100%. I really wonder what the company is worth. I wonder what OL sold for?

They aren't my numbers (although I may have mis spoke on number of employees. It was in the 200's)

http://pokerrunsamerica.com/merchand...-bill-jennings

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...ICLE/906251047

Two years ago my girlfriend's daughter told me we shouldn't have a bonfire, because it kills polar bears. So I probed a bit and discovered her teacher told her that bonfires warm the planet. I told her to tell her teacher that cows farting warm the planet more than bonfires, forgetting how she takes everything literally and is not even a little bit shy. LOL

Didn't read the link but agree with your statements 100%. Even by today's standards, the ZR is a very capable boat!

Jupiter, we can agree to disagree and that is fine.

I am in the heavy highway construction industry where we do 30-50 million dollars of work annually and we are lucky to work with 5-10% profit margins. If I could make 20-40K per boat per week profit I would jump into the boat building business right now. That isn't a huge profit but overhead and materials would be minimal compared to what I do everyday now and my overall gamble each year would be cut in 1/3. I know there is a lot more to it but Cigarette, Outerlimits, MTI, Skater, etc are all doing it, survived these tough times and putting out top notch products. This industry is all about quality to a very small niche market.

Chris-Craft is a perfect example of a company that went from being mass produced crap to reinventing themselves back to their old look and way, down sizing to a higher end niche market and doing well again. I was just at their plant in November and it is a fraction of the size of their plant from the 1980's (at one point they had over 600 employees in the 80's). Their production facility was very small but well run and efficient.

Tom I understand your passion for the brand and can see your point(s) however I think your brand loyalty is blinding you.

Road construction and speed boat building are two totally different industries and has two separate sets of clients (govt vs. upper middle class toy buyers).

You mention others are "doing it" but as we saw with the OL ownership debacle, Mike was doing it but certainly not "getting rich doing it." The flip side of that argument is all of the builders that are scraping by paycheck to paycheck or worse. I would like to see a boat builder today that has become "rich" building boats. Not a guy that has sold a company to a sucker (aka the Don Aronow game) or a guy that made millions in another industry and then bought a boat company but a guy (or gal) that is earning a sizable income building go fast boats and started from scratch.

Assuming you had 40 boats sold in your first year and 30 go to buyers loyal to the brand (pent up demand) and then you convert 10 new buyers to the Donzi brand. Year 2 you need 40 new buyers, not sure how that cuts your "overall gamble by 1/3." Chris Craft reinvented itself by building small runabouts and ditching the cabin cruisers and other lines. Donzi would need to to the same to tighten up its identity (classics to center consoles to sport boats) is too broad and honestly confusing to the buyers. They would also need to make their boats more custom, like OL/Skater/MTI/Cig/AT as no two are a like.

My biggest concern would be if the current owners (with millions at stake), with an existing factory (Fountain factory) and a more than capable crew (Fountain employees) couldn't make Donzi a success in the last 5 years then who could?

If I had a 5 million dollar windfall today, I would certainly buy a new boat but certainly wouldn't buy a boat company! :D

I can see where you got your info but I still can't see 500 boats a year........the used market simply doesn't support those kinds of production numbers. Cigarette has made 700+ Top Guns right (they had a 600th TG edition years ago so I added 100 boats to that number). There are 18 Top Gun (sport boats, not Center Consoles) for sale in the OSO classifieds representing 2.5% of 700 guesstimated to have been produced.

In the case of Donzi in the classifieds there are 22 total boats. Disqualifying older boats (non boom years) 2003 and older removes 6 boats. So Donzi is left with 16 boats spanning 2004-2012. If you pick the most popular year of any style Donzi (2006 and 2007 both have 4 boats) then that would represent less than 1% of an annual production of 500 boats (1% would be 5 boats). Even combining 2 years of available boats you still don't get 2% of a 500 boat production run. So buyers either love their boats and never put them up for sale or Donzi never hit those types of production numbers. Also keep in mind your source (PRA article) might have used an "off the cuff" comment by someone that was boasting about the success of Donzi. Breaking it down, if Donzi made 500 boats like this: 50 classics, 200 sport boats, 250 center consoles I could almost see the validity until you realize that 200 sport boats would mean 25 43's, 25 27's, 75 35's and 75 38's.......Can't see those amounts of boats out there.

I agree with Tom A that the right person/people could bring Donzi back to compete with some of the current players. But, I also agree with Jupiter that they won't get rich.

And this is going to piss off Comanche3Six. :D

Pantera - Hit it right on the head.

Jupiter agreed, I do have a little bit of brand loyalty blinders but Donzi was the originator. I also agree if I hit for 5 million - I'd be buying a boat or 2.
However if I hit for 50 million and could front a few million start up, I would give Donzi a shot. Worse case keep a 5 -6 man crew, build to order and do rehabs of the old boats. Combine it with a marina and you have a business. You could make money just owning the name and doing Lip-Ship type rehabs and custom builds.

Just because the current owners aren't making money with it doesn't mean anything. They are a group based on selling volume that thought they could take Baja, Fountain, Donzi, ProLine, etc. and turn it into a General Motors of the performance boat world.

Oh and the big production Donzi years started in the mid 80s and ran through the mid 90's thanks to Chris Craft's former owner buying them, ramping up production of bow riders and non-performance boats. This made OMC interested and then they took it to the next level at one point offering 25 different models with only 3 being longer than 30 feet. They had over 400 employees and were cranking out 10-12 boats per week. Most were 20-25 foot bowriders and cuddys.