Visitor Numbers Up, Sales Up, Industry Looking Up!

VISITOR NUMBERS UP, SALES UP, INDUSTRY LOOKING UP! 2012 SANCTUARY COVE INTERNATIONAL BOAT SHOW

Visitor numbers in total were up 1.6%, coming in at 37,094 over the four days. But importantly, out in force were genuine buyers. 

Organisers of this year’s event are ecstatic with feedback from exhibitors, all of whom state they are very happy and in many cases “blown away” by their results.

Brett Thurley at Pacific Motor Yachts, dealer for Clipper, Jeanneau and Prestige, was happy to report he sold boats at the show. “But I gauge a boat show on response on the Monday. Sometimes people are really keen on the weekend, then pull back the week after. But we have been busy doing sea trails and the leads we have are serious.”

Thurley continued: “We ramped up our effort this year to have the largest presence on the water and launch Jeanneau and Prestige. The response and rewards were beyond our expectations. SCIBS provided the show and the visitors. It was a far greater result than we could have hoped for. I applaud the management of the show for their efforts to generate and invest in media activity to support the show. To me it’s the premiere boat show for Australia.”

John Hogan, CEO at Superior Jetties labelled this year’s event “the best we’ve ever done”.

“We increased our efforts this year: we launched new products and that combined excitement turned in to real sales, not just leads. We do have more than 100 leads, but for us, we signed 14 contracts, including the biggest lift in the Sunstream range that was launched at the show.”

Integrity’s Brett Flanagan is “over the moon” with year’s results. “We sold four boats, all our stock boats, collected money on them, and sold another one yesterday afternoon, which is under construction. And we are in the process of negotiating two more. And we haven’t even been through our list of prospects! It was our best show ever, no doubt about that.”

An exhibitor for 21 years, David Tanner from AMI Group said the sales are already coming in. “It was certainly the best show in five years. The people were very high quality and that’s what exhibitors want. They seemed to be prepared to spend. There was a great local feel about it, wonderful street atmosphere and friendliness.”

Tanner who says he gauges ROI by post-show orders, judged the show as a great one by the orders he received first thing this morning. “That’s unusual, even in the hey-day. To receive two big orders at 8am on the day after the show is exceptional. The fact is, the sales results are there.”

“Dollars don’t lie,” said one veteran exhibitor, thrilled that he had doubled his target for this year’s show, hitting a 24-year record cash and card total.

“You can’t fudge these figures,” said Steven Quan at Dometic/Seabreeze Industries, distributor of Dometic, Crusair, Sealand and Sovereign products and accessories, who have been at every show for 24 years. “We have made more at this show than any other, topping $100,000 in sales during the four days. We are very happy indeed.”

From Palm Beach Motor Yachts, Mark Richards stated “We had a fantastic show! I am really happy. A lot of people had been negative about it, but it went well for us. We have two sea trials today and another one tomorrow. We had people from New Zealand and interstate. I love this show!”

Josh Metz, dealership director at Fairline Queensland said the show was “extremely successful” for the UK brand.

“We sold the Fairline Targa 58, the newly delivered model for this show. We are working on another three to four, which is fantastic! For us it was excellent.”

Andy Young from Boating Syndication Australia sold six shares in its Belize motor yacht during the show. “Yes, we had a great show. We exceeded our expectations. We had a good product and the people were great. We have 17 tests this week and we deem this year’s SCIBS an overwhelming success!”

Peter Collins from Arvor Boats said interest in the Weekender was non-stop and the leads were top quality.

“We put a fair effort in to marketing the new model five months prior, and we expected a fair crowd. It felt like there were more people around this year, even on the Friday. And we have many trials booked in for this week and we will be heading back up to Brisbane to conduct these. This is unprecedented from any show. There were heaps of people here from interstate. We are confident we will have good sales.”

Peter Crossley from Marine OEM Supply, representing Arctic Steel and Tides Marine said: “It was fantastic! A much better show than last year. We were in an excellent position in the Superyacht Pavilion. We had people from all over the place approaching us and hundreds of leads. If we can convert one quarter of these enquiries, we will be wrapped.”

Crossley continued: “It was disappointing that some manufacturers and builders didn’t come, but I am sure they will be back next year.”

Melissa Yeomans from Deckhardware was thrilled with the “genuine buyers” at this year’s event. “Our leads are many times better than for the past two years. We had a lot of interest and request for quotes from owner/builders from interstate. That’s the bonus of SCIBS – you get a lot of interstate visitors which we really noticed this year. We are going back to Sydney with 12 quotes, which is awesome. If we get half of those through, I will be very happy.”

Ian Douglas Mooloolaba Yacht Brokers, representing Jeanneau sail said the general feeling from the public was that the show was excellent. “We were happy with all of it. We had a great show. I would have to say a lot stronger than we expected. We are pricing four boats this week and expect to have four contracts by the end of the week. The DS44 was outstanding and everybody was talking about it. We are pleased we went to the trouble of bringing it here.”

Dani Limback, from Chaparral Australia said the show was surprisingly strong, with interest on the bigger boats and wake boats. “We’re really happy. We have excellent leads – and we don’t take any old leads. We have 120 strong leads and a lot of good feedback. We are organising sea trials from now until Sunday and we have a dozen of those so far. We will be coming back next year for sure.”

Riviera Syndication’s John Russell said this year’s show was “much better than last year”.

“We have sold three shares in the 58 Sports Yacht located in Sydney and two in the 58 here. That’s it for the moment, but we had four full books of leads and demonstrations to do. We are confident we are going to better that. It was great to see so many happy people at the boat show enjoying the best of the boating lifestyle.”

Maritimo’s Luke Durman reported a positive show all round. “One of the dealers told us it was the best SCIBS in four years. We were happy with numbers and general enquiries,” he said. “We had new products on show and great feedback on them. It was a good quality crowd, some faces we recognised and some new faces. In terms of sales, we expect over the next two weeks to take at least five or six orders.”

The new Maritimo 58 was one of the busiest boats on show and according to feedback, visitors were impressed. Likewise with the new Mustang 43. “We’ve spent a lot of time on its development, so it was good to hear the positive feedback.”

Powerdive’s Aaron Hawke, from Perth, was thrilled with his company’s ROI. “We had great days every day, selling out of product. You can’t complain about that! It was worth every cent in marketing and getting our brand out there.”

Florian Caroller from Ensign Boat Brokers said the company went “better than expected”.

“We had one sale of the First 40 and many, many good leads for the Sense 43 and enquiries on the Sense 50. The new Oceanic has also generated a lot of interest. We were able to show the brochures and the boat has some of the same attributes of the Sense. We have many quotes and leads to follow up. We are happy. This week will be busy and we will be closing deals.”

Russell Wright at Horizon Motor Yachts Australia is “delighted” with results. “We were extremely happy with the numbers we had on our stand. It surpassed what we had expected. Whilst there were no direct impulse sales we were introduced to many potential buyers and progressed many of our current leads closer to a sale. It was also encouraging that fewer people were commenting on the current difficult economic times.

“Our new release Horizon E54 was a winner and we are confident to get at least 3 orders of this model after demos and we have two clients close on our new Horizon E70.”

Will Sangster, Director of Sales at Mercury Marine commented on the “enquiry from genuine customers” “From our stand point, that’s important – quality over quantity. The people we saw were absolutely genuine and in the market.”

Define Watches’ Peter Petzold exhibited his prestige timepieces in the MarineBusiness-World.com pavilion and said the show was “very good” for both sales and leads. “The promotion with Gold FM worked extremely well for us. We have sold a few watches and most importantly, we have started interest in our brands.”

According to Petzold, feedback from visitors was that they have never seen anything like the range of German watches he had on show and that they were glad to see a broader range of exhibitors. “It certainly was a good show for us.”

Marc Hall from United Motor Yachts admits that they were late to sign up as exhibitors, and that while the Superyacht Pavilion was quiet for them, “the leads were strong”.

“It was really flag waving exercise for us, since we only opened the doors three weeks ago. We were happy with the show and will be back in 2013, with boats on the water doing boat sales.”

Launching its innovative 950, Seawind sales were very strong. “We sold two 950s and one of the new 1000XL2, the first time it has been on display,” said Brent Vaughan. “We also have hundreds of leads. I think we will have at least one sale this week, as well as three or so strong leads in coming weeks. We are very pleased, especially considering the economy. It has been very slow. This is the best sales activity we’ve had all year.”

Mark Elkington from Multihull Solutions referred to SCIBS as “the best multihull show in Australia” and that this year’s event was “excellent for sales and leads”.

“We secured three contracts on boats at the show and are undertaking sea trials and quotes, hoping to get a similar volume of orders. We have plenty to do. We are very happy. It was a very good show for us. Buyers are noticeably showing a lot of signs of being nervous about committing, but they are there.”

Mark Leach from Raymarine said the show had “its vibe back” and commented on the great atmosphere. “But for us, the important thing is quality enquiry and passing leads on to dealers. We think our dealers will be really pleased with this year.”

Damien Weber from Navico was exhibiting with a brand new stand showcasing brands B&G, Simrad and Lowrance. “The results will be seen by our dealers in the next two to three weeks,” he said, “But we think it was a very strong show. There is a great ambience and traffic through the pavilion. Outside on the marinas, we noticed Simrad has about three times as much share as last year. That is the measure for us. Our brands have really gained traction.”

First time exhibitor, Stand Up Surf Co did great sales at the show, said Kath Philp. “We sold seven boards, which we didn’t expect, and got some very big leads for distribution which we haven’t been able to crack to date, which we also hadn’t expected. The show exposed our brand to a whole new market and we got extremely positive feedback. We will absolutely be back next year!”

Clive Raharuhi from Concept Models not only sold out of his show stock of remote-controlled boats, his store nearby was cleared out by visitors on their way home from SCIBS. “We were in the best spot,” he said referring to the new “Adrenaline Area”, where JetLev and Jet Surf demonstrations were held. “We must have sold close to 100 units, from $75 to $800. It was a great show and people were really upbeat.”

Sue Thomson, Boat Show General Manager said “These results are fantastic! It’s pleasing to hear exhibitors had a great show. We worked hard ramping up marketing and promotion this year and it’s very rewarding when exhibitors leave the show with these kinds of results. In these tough times, these results are encouraging. Planning is already underway for the 25^th Anniversary show next year.”

Winson Chow, Mulpha Chief Operating Officer said “Mulpha congratulates exhibitors on their success. As we head towards the significant milestone of the 25^th Sanctuary Cove International Boat Show, 23 to 26 May 2013, we are looking forward to an even stronger event. It is excellent to cap off this year’s show with such positive results.”