Warranties Honored for Four Winns, Wellcraft, Glastron, Ranger, Stratos, Champion!

“Absolutely!” David Huls answered, when asked whether Platinum Equity would honor warranties. “We will honor all warranties for the brands that we bought.” David Huls is President and CEO of “Project Boat Holdings”, the corporate umbrella for Platinum Equity which bought Four Winns, Wellcraft, Glastron, Ranger, Stratos, and Champion from the Genmar Chapter 11 proceedings. “Rest assured that we will stand behind all of the published policies and warranty programs for those brands,” he said adamantly yesterday to BoatTEST.com’s editor, Jeff Hammond. He also said, “We are one of the best capitalized businesses in the boating industry,” he said, “and we will be investing in these businesses going forward.”

Production of Glastron boats will be moved from Little Falls, MN to Cadillac, MI for the 2011 model year, as part of the Platinum Equity consolidation of Genmar assets.

Last week dealers for the six brands bought by Platinum Equity received letters from Huls saying that Platinum Equity would support all warranties for Genmar brands that it purchased. The letter also said that the new owners pledged their support for the dealers and planned to aggressively make their brands leaders in their respective niches.

Dealers Will Have Floor Plan Money

Huls said yesterday that before the deal was inked with the court for the six brands that it had signed a contract with GE Capital to provide floor-planning loan support for all of its dealers for the company’s brands. “The dealers will have to meet the GE’s requirements, of course,” Huls said. He praised the lending company for sticking with the boating industry during the current financial crisis.

Four Winns V475 is the largest boat built by the brands that Platinum Equity purchased.

Huls said that dealers would likely not be inventorying as many boats as in years past, a development affecting all brands and dealers country-wide. “We’ll all be doing business differently,” he said.

“We’re going to take the offensive,” Huls said. “After eight months in Chapter 11 we want to reassure our dealers that the trauma of Chapter 11 is over. We’re going to actively pursue new product introductions and new product development. Our plan is to develop these brands on a long-term basis.”

More Consolidation

Glastron production will be moved in the next six months from where it has been for years in Little Falls, Minnesota to Cadillac, Michigan, the home of Four Winns. Huls said that Glastron boats would be built in Little Falls until the transition is complete which will be in time for the 2011 model year, which traditionally starts in August or September. The VEC hull molding process which was pioneered by Irwin Jacobs over a decade ago will not be used for Glastron boats, Huls said.

The largest Wellcraft is the 350 Tournament Scarab, a descendent of the high-performance boats built during Wellcraft’s heady “Miami Vice” days of the 1980s.

He also stated that the production of Stratos and Champion bass boats would be moved to the Ranger factory in Flipping, Arkansas from their current facility in Tennessee. When asked if those two brands would be continued, Huls replied that the disposition of those two brands was under consideration and no decision had been reached.

While Stratos and Champion were built in Tennessee, their marketing and management has emanated from the Ranger offices for the last couple of years. Stratos and Champion are generally considered to be lower price-point products than is the Ranger brand, which shares the top of the fiberglass bass boat pyramid with a couple of other up-market bass boat brands. Sales of Stratos boats the last five years or so have ranked #4 among fiberglass bass boat builders, with Champion a distant #5 with about 25% of the Stratos sales.

The Ranger Z518 Comanche trimmed out for warp speed.

Another CC Brand In Its Future?

During the conversation when Hammond observed that Platinum Equity had bar-belled the sportboat and the bass boat markets with low and high price-point products, but had only Wellcraft in the center console market, Huls said that they were considering their options for that market as well.

Huls said that “Project Boat Holdings” was just a temporary name for the holding company and that a new name would appear soon to be used in the trade only. He emphasized that each of the brands will be run separately, and that their management teams will be running their profit centers and be responsible for their success. This is a recurring theme from all members of the Platinum Equity management.