[Rhodes22-list] gb business

[stan]

/This is not Part 2.  Just my promised response to any comments://
/
You are correct Peter, on all 3 of your points.
1.    "those boats will never last. The problem turned out to be exactly 
the opposite."  As a still standing relic of WW11, I was there in 59 
with O'Day and the host of others discovering a business you could start 
in your garage. I am sure we all were aware of the pitfalls of a  
product that unlike a car, does not conveniently go away. The difference 
was what we did about that fact.  Most chose to sell through dealers and 
when the dealer pipe lines were filled and that model boat stalled, they 
solved the problem for the moment by bringing out a new model that 
dealers had to start taking to keep their dealership.  We were not that 
smart or well financed so we were forced to choose the: 'If you can't 
fight them, join them' solution for survival; we bought our boats back.  
I don't think any of those 1959 builders are here today.

2.    You are correct about your point that "boat builders will have a 
harder time selling new boats if their old boats last forever."  So our 
early lesson was that in the sailboat business you have to keep changing 
the business plan if you don't want to die with the current one. To my 
knowledge we were the only company to buy back our boats that would not 
die and "recycle" them to be able to re-sell them with a new boat 
guarantee.

3.    You are correct in your statement that "the boat business is full 
of challenges that I don’t fully appreciate,".  That you do not 
appreciate the next challenge is understandable.  You have to live it to 
appreciate it.  And then you have to see if you can come up with still 
another business plan change to meet the next changing market 
conditions. And, good or bad, that is what we are about to do.

You go on in your point 3 to add, "but I don’t think it’s useful to 
compare it to the auto business or the housing business, neither of 
which I fully understand either. Maybe we should just talk about 
boats."   Here is where you miss the boat. We could again see where the 
market was again re-heading. Accordingly, for the past several years we 
have been testing another change of course to go with the changing flow 
of our particular market.  The problem with our control group was that 
many came up with the same response, 'that is not how it is in other 
businesses', cars being most often cited.  The first challenge we 
discovered was education; understanding, appreciating, that the building 
and selling of fiberglass sailboats is completely unlike other 
industries; that our customers had to be directed to /focus on their own 
self interest /rather than on business plans of dissimilar industries. 
That was the intent of Part One of our email to the List.  If you still 
don't see this need of driving home how the different temperament of a 
major industry can not be used as a one shoe fits all, hang in there, 
you will.

stan


On 10/24/19 9:21 PM, Peter Nyberg wrote:
> I don’t really have a comment at this point, since I’m not sure where this is going but I thought I’d share a bit from a magazine article I read not that long ago about the beginning of the fiberglass boat industry after WW II.  When a few pioneers started making boats out of fiberglass, some people scoffed saying ’those boats will never last’.  The problem turned out to be exactly the opposite.
>
> There’s at least two aspects of this observation.  One is the waste disposal problem.  The other is that boat builders will have a harder time selling new boats if their old boats last forever.
>
> I’m sure the boat business is full of challenges that I don’t fully appreciate, but I don’t think it’s useful to compare it to the auto business or the housing business, neither of which I fully understand either.  Maybe we should just talk about boats.
>
> —Peter