BIG news coming down the Carver street

[chpsk8]

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Sorry for the long URL. Any speculation on what this means now? Was the Cruisers acquisition simply a flip, or do we think the Carver/Marquis brand is still gone with Marine Max buying Cruisers?

That’s quite the move feels like the little fish getting eaten by the bigger fish, which gets eaten by the bigger fish!

[g36]

Then the fish gets eaten by the shark

[Cooler]

Yeah, that is not the development I had hoped for. Dang it! I have heard some not so complimentary comments on Marinemax. I guess the results will be determined by the people who survive the whole thing. Just exactly how the consolidation thing goes is anyone's guess. Honestly, I was a little perplexed when the whole thing started out. While KC is not past his prime, he is no young buck either. I really thought Cruisers was on it's way to employee owned company status. Not easy in that industry due to capital requirements in production/sales cycles. er

[bud37]

In my opinion.....In the long run these acquisitions seem to be for a specific reason, sometimes it takes a while to see it though. These guys generally do their homework and know full well how the game works......

[Cooler]

Yeah, they know the game. As a large company, we can control the majority of the business in pocket areas, then we can say we had to increase prices by 20% to better serve our customer. Then there are less services, less options, less overhead, etc. all in the name of to better serve our customer. Then, at some point they create opportunities for smaller operators, but that takes years of "better serve our customer" abuse. Hope it does not play out that way, but as soon as large populations of stock holders need to be "better served", things just happen. er

[Viper]

They're a huge company so it'll be interesting to see what happens with the brand. Things usually go two ways; either positively by improving the brand or the corporation is so large that smaller holdings just get lost in the shuffle and die a slow death. Cruisers sales seems to be successful for them so hopefully at least that side of it will survive for the sake of the industry and employees.

I'm not happy with this outcome though, it's always sad to see the end of a brand that has been around for a while and has always had much success in the industry. It was always said that Silverton's fall from grace was the lack of express style boats in latter production years as that is a huge market, wonder if the same is the case with Carver.

In any case, WE'LL STILL BE HERE, so the brand lives on

[Midnightsun]

In any case, WE'LL STILL BE HERE, so the brand lives on

Some of us here go back to model years of 40+ years ago so yeah, we'll be around for quite some time.

Bottom line is

Marinemax will take over the big boat fabrication/sales in North America.

Brunswick makes smaller boats and basically controls the marine engine market in North America.

Volvo Penta is a very limited market trying to push builders like Marinemax to get their engines into their newly built boats as standard equipment.

Outboards are another story as Yamaha and Mercury seem to have the largest share where we are stating to see some mega HP units in multiples on big dollar boats. Then comes Honda, Suzuki and a few Asian models in the smaller HP arena mostly used on runabouts and pontoons.

That I believe sums up the motorboat industry in North America

[bud37]

Yup, it's all marketing now, bean counters and bonus metrics.....names don't seem to matter like they used to IMO.....There are still the hardliners that live and breathe a certain boat builder though....

I seem to remember Crates selling both Carver and Cruisers way back......

[pepmyster]

We will have to see how this all pans out.