No one sane guarantees the future, but two outside-the-box industry moves made just before Super Cat Fest West in Lake Havasu City, which ended last weekend, show strong potential. That they happened ahead of what just four years ago was an upstart event—produced by an online community owner no less—in the shadow of the famed Desert Storm Poker Run made them that much more poetic.
DWR/Doug Wright Powerboats headed into Super Cat Fest West with Angle of Attack Marine as is its newest distributor and service center. Both DWR principal Justin Wagner and Chris Richards of Angle of Attack are entrepreneurial mavericks unconstrained by what’s been done before in the high-performance marine industry. The leaders of both entities vow to set new standards for concierge-customer service and the overall experience of owning a high-performance powerboat.
To that end, they brought on Michael Hall, formerly of Performance Boat Center, to help lead them into the Lake Havasu-hosted event. And while Hall was handling things in the desert last weekend, Angle of Attack Marine’s Christian Marquez and members of the DWR team had things covered at the current Florida Powerboat Club Tampa Bay Powerboat Week event.
Firing on all product-development and proper marketing cylinders these days thanks to the brand-immersion of company owner Mark Fischer, Deep Impact Custom Boats of South Florida entered Super Cat Fest West partnered—so to speak—with Phoenix-based DCB Performance Marine. Deep Impact displayed a brand-new 399 center console at DCB headquarters last week, and the 39-footer will remain there through the upcoming Desert Storm event. The company also showcased a 369 model during Super Cat Fest West, and company team-members to Mauricio Urbina and John Wittenberger were there answer questions and offer demo rides.
Deep Impact builds plush offshore-water-worthy center consoles. DCB builds exquisite custom high-performance catamaran. Neither company plans to tread on the other’s turf, so the collaboration was brilliant.
A former colleague of mine used to proclaim that “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” Grammatical butchery aside, he had a great point.
Sometimes, moving forward means breaking with convention and constrain and doing things differently. Sometimes, it means disrupting the status quo.
And sometimes, such disruption leads to great things.