[Rhodes22-list] gb business

[Peter Nyberg]

I don’t really have a comment at this point, since I’m not sure where this is going but I thought I’d share a bit from a magazine article I read not that long ago about the beginning of the fiberglass boat industry after WW II.  When a few pioneers started making boats out of fiberglass, some people scoffed saying ’those boats will never last’.  The problem turned out to be exactly the opposite. 

There’s at least two aspects of this observation.  One is the waste disposal problem.  The other is that boat builders will have a harder time selling new boats if their old boats last forever.  

I’m sure the boat business is full of challenges that I don’t fully appreciate, but I don’t think it’s useful to compare it to the auto business or the housing business, neither of which I fully understand either.  Maybe we should just talk about boats.

—Peter

> On Oct 24, 2019, at 8:29 PM, stan <stan at generalboats.com> wrote:
> 
> //
>> // ///general boats policy change/
>> This being of major importance to Rhodes owners and wannabes, it will be presented in 3 short segments so as to not interfere with normal List activity.
>> Part One: Understanding the Industry:
>> "What's to understand? It is just like the car business."  Many of us share this common, 180 degree mistaken view in almost all aspects of comparisons:
> 1.    Sales.   We all know millions of cars are manufactured each year.  Counting /every *size* //sailboat/ made in the U.S., take a guess at the grand total of all sailboats built last year. I will settle for the nearest ten thousand.  "American sailboat production last year hit its *highest* level since *2008*, roughly *7,000*." A number so insignificant, no one notices it alongside the cars built figure.
> 
> 2.    It's the Economy.   99.99% of Rhodes owners and wannabes characterize themselves as "middle class". They cannot function in our society without owning or having access to a car. Budgeting reflects that fact of life.  At the slightest hint of a drop in discretionary spending funds, the first item to be lopped off the family wish list is a sailboat; a car, the last.
> 
> 3.   Life expectancy.   In years past we went to the annual automobile shows for the fun of seeing the new look in driving. New designs were uncloaked yearly; cars did nor last that long and we were back in the market.  Today the looks of new cars emerge less frequently, some on a six year term as the manufacturer sees this as the timing for an owner to be needing a new one.  Most all of us buy a new car a meaningful number of times in our lifetime. The life expectancy of today's sailboats is greater than that of its buyer.  Most "sailors" buy a sailboat once, maybe twice, in their life.
> 
> Bottom Line.   If anything, the sailboat business has more in common with the housing business where a change in location is dictated by a job change or a family need for something larger, or smaller; changes that happen once or twice in a lifetime or not at all. Given this background on how diverse automobile and sailboat manufacturing are, the next time you are about to take issue with GB's business plan vs Ford's, take a second look at the above factual partial list of the differences, and bite your tongue.  If others tell you, "GB should not do something because GM does not do that", bite their tongue.  Coming: A boat being built vs a historic footnote.  As always, if anyone has any comments re this or the next and/or final installment, I am ready to listen - and respond.
> 
> stan
> 
>