This is a great thread and I love the passion. If you'll humor me, I'd like to share a perspective on this that has me stymied, more on that in a minute. We've brought Gekko back to life and it's going great. The 2015 boats are the best yet and at our Fall dealer meeting we sold 100+ boats and hope to deliver about 150 by July. The ratio of direct drives to V drives is about 1:10 for Gekko, which is high compared to other builders. Want some sick figures? These are from DataLink, a respected data cruncher, and here are 12 month registrations for 20' boats through March 2014. DataLink does not break out DD vs VD in these figures, but if we give it the benefit of the doubt and say that 50% (I'm being generous here) of registrations in the 20' length (all ski boats) are DD then the numbers look like this: MasterCraft 104, Malibu 104, Nautiques 132, Centurion 6. These figures represent roughly 5% of each company's total production.
My personal passion is skiing and I've got a new ski here in my office I can't wait to get wet. So these production figures scare me a little. I talk with the principals at most of the ski companies on a pretty regular basis and they tell me slalom ski sales are strong and represent a positive trend. So I'm encouraged but then I have to temper that with market actualities.
Ski boats have gotten very expensive. Our government is somewhat to blame with more stringent EPA standards, compliance and liability issues, but the bill of materials costs are significantly higher than what they were a few years ago as well. And performance expectations are higher too. All considered, some builders look at the costs to compete in the market vs expected market share and elect to spend their time and money elsewhere, like on V drives.
I'm stymied because we brought back not only the GTR which is a great competitor to the big 3 boats, as well as the GTS 20. The GTS 20 is a legacy boat and most that are 10 years old are selling today for about 60% of what they cost new. Not too many boats have that kind of resale. For 2015 we overhauled it, everything. It now has synthetic stringers, digital shift and throttle, billet machined handles, 330 HP engine, standard cruise, analog and digital dash, top vinyls... all for about $34,000 including a full featured trailer. I'm not trying to sell you on it but know that it works great and it's equipped for today's market. Guess what, we are struggling with this. Why, most dealers would rather focus on selling $90,000+ wakeboard boats because they know these move and move more easily. Yikes! We love it as a builder of VDs but are concerned as skiers.
Further, I have a fight on my hands with Gekko's CFO because we're doing the GTS 20 at a slim margin. He's paid to be the fiscal watchdog and is right to be concerned. But I believe that the market needs this. A 20' outboard or stern drive for the same money should be no competition, right? That is if a buyer can live with the DD set up. We should be selling these GTS 20s like hot cakes but we'll see how 2015 really develops.
The market has changed too. Dealers, those that have survived, are more careful about where they spend their money and want to make sound decisions, and V drives are an easier sell requiring less expertise. Perhaps it's easier to now see why there are 5 or fewer DD boats even worth considering.
Regarding AWSA, it's worth supporting. We will do it again, we just didn't have boats in time this year for testing. Maybe our perspective on this is not unique, but the requirements for Nationals are a mountain to climb and as much as I hate to say it, I'm not sure anyone cares outside the tournament crowd about approved boats. Thus, every company has a CFO looking at ROI when it comes to tournament participation. We look at it as street cred and know that we'll pursue opportunities where having that certification can be leveraged. Another consideration is that the higher levels of waterskiing have gotten so driven to private sites and retracted from the public that having promo skiers talking to the converted is a tough proposition for some companies. Gekko will shortly announce an ambassador program for 2015 that will reach out to skiers on lakes where it all began in addition to attempt to scale the mountain for high profile events.
Hopefully this sheds another light on DDs and that they are a complex segment with lots of moving parts. We're optimistic about the segment and do expect growth. We're going to start working on a new DD soon and wave the flag for skiers too!