Navigating Through Boat Club Failures
By Roxanne Rockvam
T
he subject line read, "We are not returning to your boat club." Just the type of email you want to open, right? The message popped up on my phone and I thought, "seriously, what now-?" It's just like when you open a bill you receive in the mail, where you slice open the envelope and peek inside to see what horror awaits you. I pressed open and there it was-a four- paragraph email.
Testing the Waters
This family had been amazing members. I remember the first visit during the exploration phase of their shopping adventure. It was back in about April. Remember April 2020? Nothing was going on, so as a result I had a great deal of time to spend with Dad, Mom, and their pre-teen son and daughter. The son, clearly the one in control of the entire boating movement, wanted a wake board boat. Dad stood behind him with cautious bewilderment. He didn't roll his eyes, but he was a little more realistic and said, "We are new to boating and we don't know if we will actually be boaters." Now I was curious. They asked about pricing for slips and maintenance for the boat if they instead went down the boat ownership route. Then we went into our warehouse and looked at our boats on display for the boat club and that was it. The son was up and down the ladders of every boat, he was 100% in on the family boating adventure. As for the daughter, I'll just say she was very patient with her brother. Mom asked the pertinent questions about logistics and boat availability. She really liked the spontaneous use benefit and the ability to stay in touch with us to "let us know" if plans changed so someone else could use the boat. She said, "That's just polite." Then they left. About four days later Mom and daughter returned just as calm as their first visit. They wanted to sign up as boat club members for the 2020 summer. All summer I watched this family, completely intrigued. They used every boat in the fleet, over and over. They were actually one of the top three users of their membership. They were always happy. I think the son actually enjoyed the challenge of carrying the world's largest inner tube out to their boat-with arms fully extended leaving only six inches of clearance to the ground-one time he accidentally hit our emergency fuel shut off with the gigantic tube. So what happened? Why are they not returning to our boat club?
Failure Leads to Success
They aren't returning because they bought a boat. And this is exactly what the marina industry wants and needs and why starting a boat club is the number one best thing you can do for the industry while making money locally. Grow boating customers from within. We started our boat club in 2009 with one boat and one member. It was a painfully slow growth process.
50 Marina Dock Age November/December 2020
MARINA OPERATIONS
Rockvam Boat Yards Inc. has a no show policy that encourages members to be considerate of each other so everyoe is able to enjoy a day on the water.
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