OneWater Marine: Boat Manufacturer and Dealer Relationship

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From the manufacturer side, how did you and other manufacturers feel about OneWater buying up so many dealerships? Is their concern that it's getting really big? Are you happy to have more stores selling your boats that are run by a really good operator? Or both? Or neither? From a manufacturer's perspective, what do you think about the approach?

I think from a manufacturer's perspective, it depends on where you sit as a brand. We, as Everglades, are a high-end premium brand. Our least expensive boat is only 24 feet long, and it's more than a Porsche 911, so we're looking for dealers that can provide a 911 experience. OneWater, for the most part, acquires and has acquired dealers that, if they aren't doing it, have the understanding, capability, raw ingredients to do that. From our perspective, and from that of some of the other top higher tier brands, OneWater is a good fit. They have expectations that, again, they only acquire those types of guys, but they have expectations that the OneWater experience in those dealerships is going to match what ours is. If you are a brand that's more of a price point brand that makes a lot more boats than we do, you like them because they're a sales machine with a good reputation. You're not overly as concerned about the experience, you're not willing to pay for that kind of stuff. I would say it depends on who you are, as far as a brand, whether or not that dealer is the fit.

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As somebody who's pretty new to the industry, this is definitely not an opinion, but my guess would be as an outsider, that this dynamic you're describing would be even more helpful on the premium side, or at least as helpful. Maybe I shouldn't say more. In terms of the inventory sharing, if I have a dealership in Naples and I have a dealership in Miami, I can take in a trade in Naples and then expose it to – I shouldn't just say Miami – people walking into my stores in the entire state or in the entire southeast? Am I wrong there?

No, I don't think you're wrong, but it depends on where you are in the cycle too. Used boats out sell new boats seven to one, all the time. Having used boats on the lot for dealers, always good things when times get tough. There's a cycle that might help frame this a little bit. We know that every year, 40% of the people that bought a brand-new boat are going to get out of boating. We know that. It's correlated, it's linear, it's going to happen. During this pandemic, 40% of all these boats that we've sold – these crazy boats – over the two-year period, are going to end up back on dealers’ lots. Once that gets saturated and full and all of that, new boat sales slump, because they're selling all these used boats. They don't need to floorplan them; we pay the interest on floorplan for a while. They don't need to do any of that. We will slow, they'll get rid of those and the cycle turns back up to new boats. For people that are shopping for used boats, depending on the segment, pontoons are not the same as offshore fishing boats, are not same as ski boats.

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It seems to me, and I might be wrong about this, that the returns that OneWater claims it's earning on its acquisitions are really high, and capital is not abundant, we'll say. It seems like it's not abundant for somebody who wants to come in and roll up dealers. It seems like there should be more private equity activity in the space. The first question is, is my perception there wrong? Is there a lot of private equity activity and if not, why not?

There's not; I think, in large part, because it's hard to make money being a boat dealer. When times are good, they're good, when they're not, they're not. You've got to be very good at service. You have to have other sources of revenue, to be able to support it through the good times and the bad times. The first thing people want when times are good is a boat, and the last thing people want when times are bad is a boat. You've got to be willing to take that risk and live with that sort of volatility. The good ones will have storage, they'll have slips, they'll have really good service. They'll do all of that kind of stuff, at least as much as the new boat guys, which means you've got to have the facility to do it. You've got to have the people to do it. It's a different sort of level of business.

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