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| Madison Bay Holdings intends to also produce marine Leisure Products, which consist of related products such as water skis, personal water craft, and marine accessories. |
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The Industry
Water skiing was invented in the United States in 1922 when Minnesotan Ralph Samuelson built the first pair of skis and was towed on them behind an outboard-powered boat. What Samuelson originated became an exhibition sport on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1920s and early 1930s. It developed officially into a competitive sport in 1939 when the American Water Ski Association (AWSA) was organized and held the first annual National Water Ski Championships at Jones Beach, Long Island, New York. Throughout its history water skiing has closely paralleled the development of recreational boating in its appeal to the general public. Over the years it has shown almost continuous, sustained growth. Surveys of sports participation show that there are roughly 11 million water skiers in the United States.
Water skiing is a family-oriented activity and the participants tend to be well educated and affluent. Three-fourths of adult USA Water Ski members are college graduates and many are career professionals and administrators — physicians, attorneys, psychologists, business owners and top-level administrators, among others. Seventy percent of the Association's members have yearly household incomes of more than $50,000 a year, and 53 percent have incomes of more than $65,000.
Jet skiing is believed to have started when Bombardier actually produced a sit-down personal watercraft (PWC) for one year in the late 60's. At that time the snowmobile craze was strong. Bombardier was a major snowmobile manufacturer and was looking for something to counterbalance seasonality. However, their dealer network was too small in popular boating states and they had no brand recognition, hence they could not create a market. JET SKI is a registered trademark of Kawasaki Motor Co. and refers to any of the models of PWC manufactured by Kawasaki. They have been in continuous production since 1973. The first model was called a WSAA and was 400 cc twin cylinders.
When Bombardier came back to the marketplace in 1987 with the now widely recognized Sea Doo, Kawasaki and Kawasaki dealers had been selling PWC for 14 years and consumers had a pretty good idea what a PWC was. This combined with the fact that non Kawasaki dealers (like Honda and Suzuki) were looking for something to attract the type of customers Kawasaki was attracting, helped relaunch the Bombardier product more successfully than the initial effort almost 20 years earlier.
Marine accessories consist of a wide range of related products:
One of the greatest challenges facing marine accessory firms is how to cost-effectively market niche-specific products and services to the right customers and prospects. The generic boating enthusiast is just about everybody in the U.S. so you can assume any exposure will attract attention.
An annual, quantitative Sports Participation study undertaken by the National Sporting Goods Association's (NSGA) indicates that of ten water-based sports (nine that use boats in the process) can identify pockets of greatest opportunity. Water sports covered are power boating, canoeing, kayaking/rafting, sailing, scuba, snorkeling, surfing, water skiing and fishing. Some interesting demographics:
Highest Participation by Men
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Windsurfing (83%) |
| Highest Participation by Women |
Sailing (49%) |
| Most Educated |
Windsurfers (55% are college graduates) |
| Richest |
Snorkelers (48% have household incomes exceeding $75K) |
| Top Region for Water Sports Participation |
South Atlantic |
| Number of One-day-only Water Sports Participants |
17.4 Million |
One of the most interesting aspects is identification of "crossover" activities where participants of one sport engage to varying degrees in others. As might be expected, 66% of power boaters also water ski and 44% of snorkelers also scuba dive. But some unexpected alliances occur, such as 55% of canoeists are anglers and 7% of scuba divers also sail. |
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