Diversification helps boat dealer remain above water

By Mark Hansel

Friday, June 12, 2009 | 3 a.m.

Dan and Matt Boyle, owners of Proshop Motorsports and Marine, have been selling boats and boating equipment in the Las Vegas Valley for more than a decade.

Despite the recession, they have managed to stay afloat by diversifying their business model and focusing on customer service and maintenance.

When they started out in a beat-up building on Boulder Highway in 1997, they sold mostly wake boards, water skis and, every once in a while, a boat. With annual sales of less than $1 million, they were making a living, but were not exactly setting the boating world on fire.

“It was a pretty small company,” Dan Boyle says.

A few years later, opportunity knocked and the Boyles took advantage, purchasing a Sea-Doo dealership along with a building and some land on Lake Mead Parkway. A subsequent renovation expanded the showroom size to more than 12,000 square feet.

Proshop Motorsports became more of a full-service shop, offering maintenance services and selling Malibu Boats and Sea-Doo watercraft in addition to accessories.

Although people are not heading to Lake Mead thinking, “Hey, I’ll stop and buy my boat on the way,” having a store on a direct route to the country’s largest man-made reservoir has its advantages.

Accessory and equipment sales have benefited because of the move, but the biggest increase has been in service and maintenance.

“That’s a huge part of our business and the reason is that it’s much more steady than sales,” Boyle said. “Sales kind of come and go with the season and they come and go with the product life cycles, but service is much more predictable.”

Good customer service also helps build a reputation in a business where word-of-mouth can spur sales.

Boyle recalls a customer from California who needed maintenance while at Lake Mead and stopped at Proshop Motorsports. He was so impressed with the dealership and the service he received, he told some friends about it and they came in a few weeks later and bought a boat.

The recession has hit luxury products hard and when the economy started to struggle, there were concerns that despite its prime location, Proshop Motorsports’ business could dry up faster than Lake Mead.

“We are definitely a discretionary product,” Boyle said. “When times were good we used to joke that when things turn, we hope people still like us because they don’t need us.”

Fortunately, boaters are pretty passionate about their hobby and if they are not buying a new watercraft, they are servicing the ones they have.

Proshop Motorsports has not only managed to keep its head above water, the company made some moves that have it well-positioned to capitalize on the anticipated recovery.

It recently became the exclusive dealer for Yamaha Personal Watercraft in Southern Nevada. Yamaha is the No. 2 personal watercraft brand in terms of sales, behind only Sea-Doo. The two brands account for 75 percent of personal watercraft sales.

Because the company has always serviced a variety of watercraft, including Yamaha, the addition of the brand was seamless.

Proshop Motorsports also sells all-terrain vehicles, including the Can-Am Spyder, which is a kind of reverse trike, with two wheels in the front of the vehicle.

“It’s more of a roadster than a motorcycle and anybody can ride it,” Boyle said. “It kind of brought a new customer to the market. Somebody that might not normally buy a motorcycle will come and look at this.”

Both Can-Am and Sea-Doo are divisions of Canada’s Bombardier Recreational Products.

At its peak, Proshop Motorsports achieved sales of about $6 million, a number Boyle says will be hard to match this year. The company had existing stock left over after the last boating season, and those boats’ prices have been greatly reduced this year to make room for new inventory.

“Ideally, we buy what we think we will sell and hope to sell out by the end of the boating season, but that didn’t happen last year,” Boyle said. “The good news for customers is that we have some really good deals right now.”

Despite being in the desert, the Las Vegas Valley has a well-defined boating season. Boyle estimates the company does about 75 percent of its business from March to October, with a few die-hards who boat year round.