Sealine - Slimmed down range

The differance was that a dealer normally buys a stock boat at yard price, and so has to cover it till sold. Sealine only had the material cost and manufacturing cost to cover. They kept staff employed during the dead time around Christmas doing referbs, that included Firline and Princess trade ins. Plus the dealerships were also the base for the service side. So every cost was minimised, at times like this it was very useful.

Brian
 
Mmm, I doubt very much that a manufacturers sales operation buys boats cheaper than a dealer sales operation. Firstly other independent dealers for the manufacturer would complain like hell because they are at a disadvantage and, secondly, IMHO, it would violate accounting regs by effectively moving the manufacturers profit on the boat into it's sales operation
Don't independent dealers keep their staff working on p/x's and offer service? Why is this only a characteristic of manufacturer's sales operations
 
The fully owned dealer model worked just fine when they owned all the dealers, but it caused chaos when they expanded to have a mix of owned and independant dealers, cos on the boat show stand, they were competing against each other.

But, as a dealer model, it does make sense in several ways. Closeness and being on-side to the manufacturer is an advantage, not having to finance the stock through a bank is another, and security of deposit and payments counts as a big plus in my book. The re-furb activities meant that all the boats that went back on the second hand market through the dealer were substantially smartened up.

dv.
 
There were no independant dealers at one time, Sealine bought them out. The only dealers were the export ones. Around mid 90's from memory it all started getting broken up and Shepherds and then Burton Water got envolved.

This was why Sealine appeared to be cheap, coupled to very efficent production, got you a very cost effective boat hi spec boat.

Brian
 
a guy in the biz told me Azimut is experiencing similar problems having apparently, something I never known a company owned dealer for Ligura, Tuscany and Piemont regions in Italy
in this case this is Euronautica

the problem with the other dealers apparently is that they are over valuing the used boats versus the others so this makes it difficult to operate, in a fair competition market as being a company owned dealer they have bigger margins
 
S28, I'm sorry to take issue with you again but it is highly unlikely that manufacturer owned sales operations have their stock financed by the manufacturer. A manufacturing operation like boat building requires a large investment in working capital so it is very unlikely that Sealine or any other manufacturer would want or be able to finance stock boats for it's sales companies. These so called manufacturer's sales companies tend to be separate companies anyway for legal reasons (in case they are sued by a customer)
I agree with you that, being owned by the builder, these operations are closer to the factory and, in a disagreement with a customer, may have greater influence with the builder but I still don't think there is any financial advantage to the customer in terms of the price the customer pays
 
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