Exhibitors Positive At IBEX 2012
Reflecting a steadily improving sales picture in the U.S. marine industry, exhibitors we talked to in the final hour of IBEX 2012 were positive about the outcomes.
Boating Industry Canada was in Louisville, Kentucky for the entire event starting with the All-Industry Breakfast on Tuesday. The room was packed and Thom Dammrich of the NMMA opened the sessions with some recent sales data suggesting that overall, the business was seeing a lift in the magnitude of 10% this year, with some segments stronger than others as always.
The featured speaker was Dr. Stephen H. Murdock, Former Director of U.S. Census Bureau and his presentation about changing American demographics was hard to follow, but harder to ignore. A wealth of detail presented at high speed added up to a picture of the substantially changing U.S. market. As white Anglo Saxon consumers fade in numbers and purchasing power, the growth in the Hispanic population becomes a force the industry cannot ignore. Asian populations too, will have higher educations and correspondingly higher incomes, but boating may not be of interest unless we work to attract them. The consumers we are geared to serve, will not be the volume market of the future.
The industry really will need to address those issues as fast as possible but for IBEX 2012, there was a feeling that business was finally starting to return to usual.
No one was more enthusiastic than Ken Smith of Smart Plug who said, “Great show! Best show I’ve ever been to. Its been 3 years since we introduced the Smart Plug product and now we have 19 sales reps and we just hired another 5, so we’re up to 24 sales people in both marine and with RV. We now have 25 major distributors and including West Marine, we are up to 600 dealers. Still…the show results overwhelmed us! I’m still taking time to grasp what has happened.”
Newly appointed Show Director Anne Dunbar told us, “The show has been awesome! All the players were here. These are clear signs that the marine industry continues to rebuild. Every major boat builder was here and shopping…that’s why we say IBEX is where the future of boating begins.”
While it is easy to understand Anne Dunbar’s enthusiasm, Jim Jones at Raymarine told us, “It’s been an excellent show. All the right players were here with the right people.”
Just as Raymarine was looking for OEM business, so was Marvair and National Sales Manager Shaun Hall said, “It’s been a very good show this year. We’ve seen all our OEMs and we’ve had good booth traffic.”
Steve Spitzer at the NMEA was in the ‘ConectFest’ display and he told us, “This has been a good show. There were always people in the display.”
Tristen Fletcher at Dolphinite won an IBEX Innovation Award for their new aerosol gel coat repair product and the booth was buzzing with interest. He said, “We’ve really had a lot of interest in our products here…we’re really pleased with the results.”
Canada’s Dock Edge had a well-located and attractive display but their product line was of greatest interest to distributors, not OEM boat builders and Wally Szwez noted that for them, many important marine distributors did not attend. He said, “Day 1 was good. We saw lots of existing customers and there was certainly a ‘good vibe”. Day 2 was steady to lunch, but then the traffic slowed and Day 3 slowed significantly.”
Overall, we felt the show was well-attended, a little larger than last year and a positive sign of recovery in the business.
