A time for some candor, https://www.speedonthewater.com/comm...le-with-miami/

My brother in law was a yacht builder for years. Lauderdale alone would soak them for 500K to display 20 years ago, they had a killer display too! It was a gouge from the tickets to the slips and if you didn't show up then the dock chatter would start that you were having trouble. He'd have qualified buyers and then ballers that showed up with a 550 credit score trying to buy a 4mm boat (despite a multi-million dollar contract)............not a bank in the country would take that gamble. It hurts to blow 1-2mm on boat shows and not sell anything. For low production builders (5-25 boats annually) it literally adds tens of thousands to each boat going out the door.

If car manufacturers like Mercedes, BMW, VW and others have skipped huge auto shows for years, its only a matter of time before the boat shows are a thing of the past.

Wow!

It took serious stones to write that story, not many, especially in your position….., would.

Back in the day, I worked many, many shows here in central Ohio and EVERY one of the *****es were the same then.

My bosses always complained about the expenses and threatened to sit out, except for the false reports, that you mention, of being in trouble.

Got to the point (my end in it) that a couple of them held their own “dealer shows” which I thought was brilliant!

Back to your story, I was at the Miami show twice and gave up on seeing it all based on how spread out it was.

Great story and thanks!

Choosing how to blow your marketing budget is a chit sandwich on a hard roll that is sometimes hard to order much less swallow .

I had retail stores for a few years back in the 90s that I grew to hate because of the money you had to spend to keep traffic, later on in the water sports business I was able to track what was working and what was not. But that was before the internet really took hold.

I like Skaters perspective that they know their future or past customers want their boats and they don’t need further exposure to meet their production quota.

In this day and age of future customer data access and the internet why you wouldn’t have a crack sales team that would persist and follow up than arrange test rides on a date in a region of the country for a few.

I understand it’s an International show but I think a lot has changed in the last decade with worldwide marine manufacturing mooting the importance of displaying at the shows for marketing out of the US.

sad but true i guess... Internet shopping has now taken a big part... only to go to your final choice in person to confirm your thoughts and findings, then sign the deal...
part of todays game in many purchases !

Most "conventions" in other industries have been on the downslide for many years for similar reasons. In a nutshell, I am guessing that in todays environment, I am guessing that nobody buys a boat at Miami that they were not planning on buying anyway. Between online and some unbelievable dealerships, buyers can get everything they need, at anytime they need it. I cannot imagine that the return on the investment makes any sense when it comes to hard numbers, but must make sense when the ownership considers brand awareness and future sales. At one time that was important, not anymore, at least in my opinion. Boat shows are a real shotgun approach, but in todays market it may make more sense to have a more focused strategy of doing more poker runs, events, local shows, etc.

A totally different industry but similar situation. When I was working for a custom
paint and body shop we would set up at our isca Indoor car show every winter. We did this for over 20 years and would always worry if we didn’t go the rumor mill would start that they are doing bad or are out of business. I tried keeping track of how much business we would actually get and most times it was not much at all we would have most of our previous or current customers come hang out and talk to us or run into the same people who wanted to tell you about their car but never do business with you . We started realizing that the time away from the shop was not worth the time we were spending at the show since we would use several shop guys for setup tear down etc. Finally the boss gave up going and that 4 years ago and is as busy as he ever was and people still know he is in business.