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Old 03-25-2016, 04:55 PM   #3
BandB
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City: Fort Lauderdale. Florida, USA
Join Date: Jan 2014
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Classifying a few brands you might be considering.

Sea Ray, Meridian and Carver. They fit in channel one and you should get a substantial discount off MSRP. Carver is actually at 20%, Sea Ray at

KK has company owned sales locations but fits in Channel 3. Perhaps a very small discount. Nordhavn also would be Channel 3 as would Fleming. Marlow is the same but has been known to be more negotiable. Grand Banks can't make up their minds but now they're selling from the factory. They may give discounts of some amount because they're still getting more than when they were using brokers and dealers.

Here are some of the finances behind how this works. Note all prices would be higher as these are base prices.

Carver C40. Base price $491,570. Invoice price to dealer $393,256.
I would expect a 5-10% discount. At 10% the price would be $442,414. This would give the dealership a margin of 11%. A 5% discount to $466,991. That leaves a margin of 15%. That would be more the target of a dealership but they're not likely to refuse a lower number.

Sea Ray 590L. Base $2,326,698 Invoice $1,396,019. That's actually a 40% discount. So, I would expect to buy at 20% off for $1,861,358 giving the dealer a 25% margin or at 25% off for $1,745,023 giving the dealer a 20% margin. Honestly, I would negotiate for an even lower price but Marine Max would certainly be fine with 20% margin.

Now, let's take a $3 million boat working through a related US sales company that is stocking inventory and has a showroom. This entity is often treated like a brokerage and so they'd be paid $300k commission for a sale. That's likely though 5% for salesman, 5% for company. They might then drop the price another $50k, maybe $100k.

Now a factory. If they've always been factory direct, probably no discount. If they've changed and were paying 10% or more, they might discount $50k-100k on a $3 million boat.

It's very complicated. I will say this, when dealing with a factory or their US sales office. When you sit down you can probably determine very quickly if the price is negotiable. When they show you that, ask if there's any flexibility. They'll say clearly "no" or "perhaps a little, but not much." Then you just sit trying to get a feeling for how much.
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