quote by Kingwood Cat

"You know, this whole issue of boat companies going belly up started with the Motor companies buying the boat companies."

Can you please explain this. I only know of one motor company that owns a boat manufacturing plant. They are doing quite nicely.

Cheaper more economical boats hopefully, skeeter's obiviously not following that business model.

Maybe FLW should restructure and dump Charlie Evans while they are at it

Maybe a little history lesson is in order.

Back before Ranger was bought by Jacobs, the original suitor was OMC. The deal did not get done, because OMC was not willing to guarantee that they would not move Ranger from Flippin. So, Evinrude bought Javelin...Now Belly UP, and later, Stratos. Genmar later ended up with Stratos and Champion through the Bankruptcy courts, as Bombardier bought OMC out of Bankruptcy. Right around the same time frame, Yamaha bought a Coleman (You know, the camping company) company, Called Skeeter. Next If I'm not mistaken, Mercury bought Pro-Craft and Hydrosports (HydraSports ended up in the Genmar Fold, but it became a saltwater boat.) For Years, Earl Bentz (Later Founder of Triton)had been the performance VP for HydraSports, and when Merc bought them, he left and formed Stratos, then later sold it to OMC). Pretty much, as I remember, Champion was just about the only company that went belly up on its own, without help from anyone, but even then, when Genmar bought Champion, they moved it from Northern Arknasas to Tenn.
If anyone wants to make some corrections to my memory, please do so.

I personally think jacobs is going to be out of the bassin community in its entirety.But thats just my opinion. Everyone seems to think that Skeeter is doing so outstandingly well, but maybe they just have deeper pockets, after all, Merc doesn't make motorcycles too, but they did go into the Corvette motor business for awhile. Not sure how that turned out. Anyway, I prefer the competition of having the two high dollar trails, but they need to be able to co-exist. I think part of the problem was not being able to carry over one sponsor to the other trail. I would think the sponsors would love the chance to be seen on BASS and FLW. I know that would eleminate some guys from having to run two boats with different raps. Anway, I'd just like everyone to think about what is best for the recreational fisherman as well as the pro or aspiring pro. The popularity of the Sport has made a lot of people some pretty decent livings and certainly has caused a lot of us to spend a greater portion of our disposable income to just chase those little green and white fish.