Forecast 2015: Brett Manire—Performance Boat Center

Although it’s technically the offseason at Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri, you’d never know it by talking with Brett Manire, one of the owners of Performance Boat Center in Osage Beach, Mo.

Just last week, Performance Boat Center secured a deal to merge with Nauti Marine, an experience-filled racing facility (read the story), and also signed on as title sponsor for the 2015 Lake Race (June 4-7) and the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout (Aug. 22-30)—two of the lake’s largest boating events. Between new boat orders, pre-owned boat sales and service on all types of boats, Performance Boat Center, which is part of the impressive Redhead Yacht Club and the coming-this-summer Redheads Lakeside Grill, is cranking. We caught up Manire last week to see what he sees on the horizon.

What do you expect to see happen in the performance boat market in 2015?

First of all, thanks for taking the time to get caught up with everything that is happening here at Performance Boat Center. One of the largest developments around the dealership is the recent merger with Dave Scott’s Nauti Marine. Continuing to grow customers’ trust and build our service department is huge for us. We have an amazing group of talented technicians here at PBC, but we wanted to expand. With Nauti Marine’s racing experience, rigging expertise and customer base, we will be able to combine our talents and offer the nation’s “All Star” team of performance boat technicians. Along with the service department expansion, we are tripling the size of our paint shop with a new semi-truck-sized paint booth and adding staff to help with the workload.

On the sales side of things, we saw another large growth of revenue this year with a 60 percent increase for the 2014 season (not including December). We have seen the price—as well as the quality—of boats grow this year. We offer our brokerage service for any performance boats, but continue to see growth in new performance boat sales.

Gearing up for 2015, we have aligned ourselves with three boat builders. We were excited to announce the addition of Cigarette Racing this fall and have three new boats on order—a 38 Top Gun with Mercury Racing 565 engines, a 42X with Mercury’s 1,100-hp turbocharged engines and a 41SD Center Console powered by twin 520 engines with Mercury’s Axius joystick control. Statement Marine is finishing a couple of pre-sold 380 SUVs as well as building us a 380 SUV with triple Mercury Verado 350 engines that will be on display at the Miami International Boat Show in February. Along with those orders, we are working with Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats to continue building boats with them. We are working on configurations at the moment and are excited to be part of their bright future. We believe that the new V-bottom market is strong and well. All three brands we carry are busy building boats and have seen increases this season.

Construction of the restaurant—Redheads Lakeside Grill—is going strong. The crews were pouring concrete in the snow last Thursday. We hope to be open the restaurant, which will be approximately 10,000 square feet on two levels, by Memorial Day. Redheads Lakeside Grill will feature multiple bars, one of which will be a swim-up bar in one of two pools. The bar/restaurant will feature memorabilia and powerboat pictures and it will be located next to our showroom and service department. Customers can come in for lunch, swim in the pool, enjoy a drink and then walk around and look at the world’s more luxurious performance boats…all in one location.

Finally, we’re excited about becoming the title sponsor for the 2015 Lake Race (June 4-7) sanctioned by Offshore Powerboat Association. We’ll also be the title sponsor of the 2015 Lake of the Ozarks Shootout (Aug. 26-30). We feel both events are great for our local economy and a great way to bring performance boaters together from across the nation. The Lake of the Ozarks has a lot to offer performance boaters and we want them to make our facility their home at the lake.

Forecast 2015: Brett Manire—Performance Boat Center

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