Boat, RV makers to buyers: Don't worry, be happy

By James B. Kelleher - Analysis

CHICAGO (Reuters) - When the Chicago Boat, RV & Outdoors Show opens this week, exhibitors have a ready answer for consumers spooked by the deep economic downturn and surging unemployment.

Stop worrying. You can afford this.

Faced with one of the most significant recessions in decades, manufacturers and retailers of pleasure boats, campers and other recreational products are setting aside two areas inside the vast McCormick Place convention center to showcase the less-expensive ends of their lines.

Inside these so-called "Affordability Pavilions," would-be buyers with "smaller budgets" will find an array of boats and RVs they can finance for $300 a month or less, according to the National Marine Manufacturers Association trade group, which produces the show.

If the industry seems to be encouraging people to whistle past the graveyard, Rochdale Research analyst Hayley Wolff predicts it is not would-be buyers who are headed for the cemetery. She is more worried about retailers and manufacturers.

After enduring three consecutive years of rapidly falling boat sales, and four years of declining RV sales, retailers and manufacturers now face what Wolff predicts will be a "precipitous" decline in sales again in 2009. Many are unlikely to survive the first half the year, the industry's key selling season.

"You are about to see a huge contraction in the industry," Wolff said. "Over the next four months you are going to see retailers closing their doors at a pace the industry has not ever experienced."

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