whatever they may need to help them enjoy
their time on the water. So, we feel like that’s
the critical link in the growth of our
industry. If we can help them grow, then the
entire industry can grow.
BUSINESS WORLD:
Do you have
typical members? Is there one sort of entity
that pops up most often in terms of your
member list?
GRUHN:
The large majority of our
members are boat and engine dealers, so
they’re selling new boats and new engines
and new packaged boat/engine combos.
That’s our typical member. We have a
number of members who are service only,
where they would be a service repair shop
for boats and engines. We have a number of
members that are marine retail locations
only, so they sell parts and accessories, for
boats and engines. There’s a good mix that
way, but a large sample of our members also
have marinas, so it’s kind of a direct link
between selling a boat and then putting it in
thewater to get going.
BUSINESSWORLD:
I talk to a fair bit
of organizations and associations like this
one, and a lot of the ones I’ve talked to will
say “this is what we do particularly well” –
we’re an advocacy organization, we are a
networking organization, we educate our
members, we have a thing that we plant our
flag in the ground and say this is why people
find value inus.What is that for you guys?
GRUHN:
That’s a really good question.
We’ve got a really strong mix of what we do.
We have an advocacy position in D.C.,
which we have a lot of members tell us that
they join because of the support we provide
themthat way. But our big focus really is our
educational component.We have a national
conference. That national conference has
grown from literally 97 people in 2007 to
last year, we had over 1,100 people. So it’s
grown significantly.
We reinvented that event back in 2008 and
really focused on growing it, but then
adding new elements to it and so forth, and
we ended up with more than1,100 people
last year. We’ve had a record number of
dealers — our core audience — every year
since 2007, and right through the recession
and right through all of the difficulty. The
recession hit our industry really hard. Our
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