For the first time ever Budget Marine sent representatives to visit the Miami International Boat Show. The party consisted of Anton Block, Tony Waldren, and Jolyon Ferron.
This show is not a trade show for retailers as many of the other shows we visit. However there is still a notable presence from many of our American suppliers. The team went with the main purpose of starting a dialog with Tohatsu and our export agents Fujichem (ex Santai). The main topic of discussion was Budget Marine’s frustrations with the selling of a parallel brand, NS Marine outboards, in our market. While this product is a different brand the only difference on them is the sticker. Tohatsu Japan got the picture on how upset we are about this situation especially when we found that the engines in are market are coming straight from the factory to IWW. They have made no promises on stopping the distribution of NS in our market. Fujichem has been in discussion about lowering our prices that we should see happen in the next container
Beyond this we also got to see the new Tohatsu models! As many of you know there is large four stroke Tohatsus in the US but they are manufactured by Honds and Budget Marine is not able to buy them. These new models are made in japan and will be available to us. The new range is from 70-115HP. We have still not received any price lists but they did look good!
While Tohatsu was the main reason for meeting there we where also able to check by with some of our other suppliers who where exhibiting at the show.
We approached many of them about the possibility of Getting co-op dollars and just about every vendor we visited is open to doing so.
One interesting conversation was with Icom radios. There has been an issue with their pricing on amazon being a mere 20US above our cost price. There has been many emails back and forth trying to find out if icom is willing to do something to rectify this. As it turns out amazon is listing these products but is actually not longer able to buy them from icom any more. So when a customer places an order on amazon they are then told that the product order cannot be filled. This is still bad for us as this low price is still being advertised on the web. This is important knowledge for anyone who may often try and keep their prices competitive with online pricing. You can ignore amazon Icom pricing. That being said amazon will still have access to the most basic Icom radios, The M25 as well as the most basic fixed unit.
A meeting was also held with the team from Sun selection to talk about warranty issues with some of their dinghies. The majority of the issues have been from the Sint marten store with some of the bigger dinghies. The Sun Selctions team sends their greatest apologies for this; they have been very good about making sure the problems are fixed for the customers. It was promised that these issues have been fixed and would not happen again in the future.
Another potentially productive meeting was with Ezdock. Budget Marine is yet to receive any new price lists but there is talk of moving our purchasing to EZ dock Florida. One of the current issues with Ezdock has been the huge inland freight. If we could drop this freight it would be a win for everyone.
Visiting the Fusion stand is always fun, being able to see their latest and greatest. If you have not been on their website to learn the differences between each model then I would encourage you to so. The new models are the apollo series. One big improvement on these is that they are finally waterproof. They are not discontinuing the old models as they are still wildly popular with people who want to replace existing units.
To continue on with audio systems we also visited poly-planar. He was told that we had made the decision to move to only fusion and some lower end units. He has sent Carlijn a revised price list. BMSXM at this current time still plans to only stock fusion.
There was not too much else to report that was not business as normal at that time.
Hope everyone is staying safe,
Jolyon Ferron
Sales Manager, BMSXM
