Allison Boats

[Crunchy]

Well Nolem that Bob is more like a Fred than you realise, the new Bob's have a shop & an internet shopping portal. You can touch / feel / try / learn about their product offering at the store and purchase it online if you want....new Bob even have kiosks in the store where once you have tried the product you can go to the kiosk and order it online while still at the store. In fact they even have different pricing structures, you can buy the product from the store there and then for a "premium" or you can go to the store, check it and buy online at a discount if you are prepared to wait. This is the trend of the new Bob's which we are seeing O/S. Successful new Bob must understand the paradigm shift of retailing and work with the trends, not against them. How could this concept work with boat building? I can picture a few ideas......

[Noelm]

Yep, I can see that too, but I am not 100% sure on the go to the store and look at the goods, then order online in the store that you are in right now, but maybe it will come to that, lets be 100% honest here, I am not trying to tell anyone not to shop around (even globaly) I am just sort of "thinking" where this will lead us to in the future, with all sorts of dealers closing doors left right and centre, we maybe left with no option but to "virtual shop" with a faceless terminal on the other side of the world, if I was positive of the direction, I would be setting up my new business right now. Whether this is the root cause of the demise of dealers I think is open to conjecture, but I am pretty sure it is not hyelping, I have seen the amount of boats on the docks that are imprted evry day from the US, and that MUST have a huge impact on the local dealers, maybe they should start importing themselves and setting up an import boat yard, selling boats here, with all the hassel taken out of it, and buyers can see and hop in their potential purchase.

[Crunchy]

Was in a boating retail store chain yesterday looking at LED lights, priced from about $60 - $140, two blokes behind the counter didn't lift a finger to see if I needed any help or advice, in fact they were just standing there talking about how quiet it was and that was pretty cool....will make my purchase on the net at half the price AND perversly enough will probably get better service and advice from the shop on the net!