Wells Fargo
The Authority on Canada's Recreational Boating Industry

Message From The Editor

Boating Industry Canada's Newsweek

SUCCESSION PLANNING IS A NECESSITY

When we talk about succession planning for our businesses, we have a vision of the well-crafted and orderly plan that rewards the present owner while providing a solid business opportunity for the new owner.

If you have that neat and orderly succession plan in place, an unexpected accident might not be the devastating event that it could be.

We learned recently that there are a number of marinas either on the market now or coming on the market soon. They all have one thing in common; you can't sell without a buyer.

I now have a much greater appreciation for what it takes to run a marina because I sat through the Marina 101 seminar put on by IMI, the International Marine Institute at IBEX in Tampa on September 18. The session was delivered by Carl F. Wolf and he broke the day into nine different sections. The first was titled, "The Daily Challenges of Managing a Marina on a Day-to-day Basis".

He broke the session into different size marinas first; National or "brand" Marinas, Large Marinas and Smaller Marinas. In Canada, we don't have very many chains of branded marinas although that may be a direction the industry will take in the future because a big marina has critical mass with back office support and resources to meet a wide range of customer needs.

Large marinas can justify the cost of department heads who work with and report to a main marina manager. That group of people have a wide range of responsibilities. To name a few; manager, administrator, bookkeeper, IT services, customer services, environmental stewardship, government liason, reporting to the landlord for a leased property, human resources, maintenance, marketing, retail manager and also being a long-term strategist for the business. It's a daunting list.

The manager is the leader of the group and organizational skills and time management are among the most critical functions. The manager is often the owner or owner's representative.In this one section, the first of nine if you were to take their full course, you would spend half a day or longer looking into these business areas in detail.

The point to listing these nine topics here, is to give our readers a moment to consider all the things that a successful marina manager will need to be able to do because for your succession plan, you need to identify at least one individual and perhaps more than one, who could handle all of these areas.

If you own a marina now and are hoping to sell or retire, it would be nice if somebody simply walked through the door with the money to buy it and asks nothing of you in the future. Unfortunately, many buyers will create a more complicated offer to purchase that might include vendor take-back financing, an "earn-out" or some other form of overlap between the old management and the new.

It would make good sense to investigate opportunities now, to begin the process of training some of your people with an eye towards your future succession plan. The industry needs successful marinas and you do too.

Andy Adams, Editor aadams@kerrwil.com Twitter YouTube

Feature

Randy Caruana

Q&A WITH MERCURY'S RANDY CARUANA

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Bridgeport Marine

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People

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Events

Maritime Museum Logo

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New Products

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Calendar

Calendar

Check out all of the upcoming events in your Boating Industry

World Conference on Drowning Prevention
Oct 17 - 19, 2017
Vancouver, BC
CC Marine Distributors 2017 Marine Trade Show
Oct 22 - 23 2017
Toronto, ON
Mermaid Marine Distributors Show
Oct 27 2017
Moncton, NB
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Marine Careers

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