OCONTO, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – While COVID-19 is challenging most companies, Mike Osmanski tells FOX 11 sales at South Bay Marina have likely doubled in the past year.
“When difficult challenges come about, people like to do family-oriented things. The beauty of the boat sales, and rentals and brokerage is that people can do it as a family. You’re isolated.”
Yacht-builders like Cruisers Yachts agree.
“The best thing is to jump in their boat and enjoy life and we’re seeing that. So we’re happy to be able to bring them the product to be able to do that,” Cruisers Yachts President Mark Pedersen said.
Based in Oconto, Cruisers Yachts is the number one builder of boats 30 to 60 feet in the United States.
Pederson tells FOX 11 they can’t seem to keep their boats in stock, even in the midst of a shutdown.
“Once they saw this all was progressing, the activity at our dealers just really picked up and when we brought people back to work, we had demand that people wanted to get out and boat.”
Pedersen says the boom has community-wide impacts.
“A lot of local Wisconsin companies supply the parts to the business, and so yeah we’ve always been a major employer up in this area and we take pride in that.”
The company voluntarily shut down for a couple weeks at the end of March to put COVID-19 safety guidelines in place.
It has not had to lay anyone off during the pandemic.
Cruisers Yachts is always looking to hire more people, with or without experience.
