The Next Wave: Cyber-Selling?

Boat/US Magazine, Nov, 2001 by Elaine Dickinson

These days, retailers can find just about any reason to hold a sale. There are "dollar days," "blue light specials," and "midnight madness" sales, not to mention sales for every holiday, every season, and of course, "everything-must-go" clearance sales.

But as a big-ticket item sold though widely scattered local dealerships, new boats have been, a difficult product for which to hold a big-time national sale - at least until now.

In the last days of August - which are the dog days of seasonal boat sales - Genmar Holdings, Inc., arguably the largest boatbuilder in the world, launched a national clearance sale of 2001 models, unloading 2,000 boats in just 10 days. With 16 separate brands of boats under its umbrella, from Aquasport to Wellcraft, Genmar stepped boldly where no manufacturer heretofore had gone.

The sale was not only "worldwide" in scope, highly unusual in an industry built upon "mom-and-pop" companies, but tapped into the power of both the national mainstream media and the Internet to reach potential buyers.

"August is a slow month for retail but we decided to do it anyway because there was plenty of inventory," said George Sullivan, vice president of marketing for Genmar. The company had just completed its last dealer meeting on Aug. 9 and the sale began Aug. 10 with 1,200 of Genmar's 2,000 dealers agreeing to participate.

According to Genmar, a selection of 250 different models were part of the sale by dealers for Aquasport, Carver, Crestliner, Four Winns, Glastron, HydraSports, Logic, Lund, Javelin, Larson, Lowe, Ranger, Seaswirl, Stratos, Trojan and Wellcraft. (Hatteras is the one Genmar company that did not participate.)

Here's how the "Worldwide Internet Boat Clearance" worked: advertisements in national publications, as well as radio and television spots, directed people to a special Web site - www.boatcash.com - set up by Genmar. At the Web site, interested shoppers could peruse the boat models to find the size and type that interested them.

If they narrowed their interest down to a specific make and model and clicked on it, they were instantly emailed a voucher for a specific amount of money off that particular model.

On the voucher was the name and location of the boat dealer in their area with that model in stock.

The boat shopper then printed out the voucher, took it to the local dealer and went through the normal negotiating process to agree on a price for the boat. Once the deal was made, the voucher was honored to take anywhere from $500 to $25,000 off that final selling price. The smallest rebate was for a 12-foot aluminum fishing boat and the $25,000 rebate could be used to buy a 45-foot Wellcraft Excalibur motoryacht, for example.

"We exceeded our goal for the sale," said Sullivan. "A significant amount of the business was incremental. It was sales we wouldn't have gotten otherwise or that would have gone to a competitor."

The total retail dollar amount of the sale appears to be close to $100 million, although not all the figures were in to Genmar as of presstime. Over 30,000 vouchers were distributed, said John Tuzee of Genmar marketing, and 100,000 people visited the Web site.

Sullivan said the concept was based on a promotion one of Genmar's dealers had pioneered last year and was tested on a limited scale with Glastron and Wellcraft. Sullivan said at least half of the dealers participating reported that they sold boats because of the Internet voucher offer.

BEYOND THE BOATING MEDIA

Very unusual in boating, Genmar placed full-page ads in non-boating, mainstream media - USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. They also ran television ads on Fox Sports Network and Speedvision, ads on radio stations, on several major Internet sites and the 10 leading search engine sites.

"The consumer not already committed to boating is not necessarily reading boating publications," Sullivan said. "We were trying to reach as broad an audience as possible."

No one expects a boat buying decision to be made on the basis of an ad in USA Today, but Sullivan said they needed the "traditional" media exposure to "drive eyeballs" to the Web site. Once there, he said, visitors averaged 10 minutes at the Web site.

"The Internet is very measurable. We know exactly who came," he said. Each of the visitors to boatcash.com, a process which Genmar has actually patented, got a follow-up letter from Sullivan. Genmar also now has a valuable e-mail list of potential buyers, and dealers also have valuable customer leads.

"I think it's risky," said Wanda Kenton-Smith of Kenton-Smith Advertising and Public Relations of Orlando, FL, who has many marine industry clients. "With the high cost of mainstream marketing, there are very few companies that can afford it. There's nothing wrong with test-marketing a concept but you've got to have pretty deep wells to spend those kinds of dollars."

Kenton-Smith added that the results will have to be analyzed before the clearance sale can be deemed a big success but its big plusses were that it kept dealers in the loop while at the same time making new use of the Internet. She added that everyone in boating benefits from the national advertising exposure. "I'm glad to see people getting innovative and 'out of the box,"' she said.