From Diamond in the Rough to Gem

In 10 years, owner Steve Arnold and his crew have transformed Moose Landing Marina in Naples, Maine, from a property steeped in deferred maintenance to a facility that has won the Marina Dock Age Small Marina of the Year award.

When Arnold first saw the property, he recognized it as a diamond in the rough. With much infrastructure needed and limited funds, improvement and growth of the marina started slow. Smaller improvement projects, such as building and replacing docks, were tackled first. Then larger renovations and upgrades began in earnest about four years after Arnold purchased the marina.

Renovations and Upgrades
To start, Arnold hired a contractor to rebuild one run of the docks. When his team reviewed the quality and cost of the results, they proposed building the remaining docks themselves in-house. They were confident they could produce quality docks that were just as good or better. The project was completed in stages during the off-season. “In about 5 years, we rebuilt all seven runs, and the docks are impressive,” Arnold said. “We quickly noticed that having the improved docks attracted higher caliber customers. And having the work completed by our staff not only saved us significant money, but it also kept members of our service crew fully employed throughout the winter.”

Another priority was to build indoor heated and cold storage buildings. “We had leased a 100,000-square-foot building that we used for boat storage,” Arnold said. “But it was about 30 minutes down the road and was heated with old oil furnaces, which were extremely inefficient and expensive to run. I knew if I could find or build boat storage buildings closer to the marina, it would improve both manpower and cost efficiencies.”

Arnold found a property less than five minutes down the road from the marina and was able to build three boat storage buildings there. “Before we even completed the construction on those buildings, we had boat storage contracts for all the space. It paid for itself,” he said. Following that he built two additional service buildings on the marina property. These provided much-needed indoor space for the service technicians to complete repair and maintenance work. Two years later, Arnold demolished and replaced a dilapidated, one-story service building on site that was barely functional and constructed a two-story service office to accommodate service and administrative office space.

These efforts allowed Arnold to expand the marina’s winter work service. Arnold estimates that now Moose Landing has from 800 to 1,000 hours of winter work on customers’ boats. To complement the business’ winter revenue stream, the marina also plows snow for nearby commercial properties. This helps ensure steady year-round work for his yard crew. “We’re profitable in the winter, which is really difficult for a marina to say when there’s snow on the ground six months of the year,” Arnold said.

Training and Monitoring

Continuous improvement is a critical part of doing business for Arnold. To monitor his performance, Arnold participates in a marine 20 group with other boat dealers across the country who meet three times a year to compare notes, critique and help each other. He gets feedback from his employees through the Marine Retailers Association of America’s (MRAA) Employee Satisfaction Survey. Done annually for dealerships, a survey is sent to employees to assess how the company is performing internally. They can provide input on department performance and give suggestions on ways to improve. It’s anonymously submitted, and MRAA then sends the results to Arnold. “I go through all the results, and I always learn, which is critical,” he said.

To make sure his employees are performing at their best, Arnold invests heavily in training. “Training is key to me, whether it’s leadership, technical or management. We leverage a grant through the Southern Maine Community College to cover about half the cost of training for trade skills,” he said.
He also brings in experts through MRAA’s network to do on-site sales training for the dealership. “Sometimes they do ghost shopping and talk to the salesperson and then later coach them on how to do better,” Arnold said.

Innovative Design
Innovation is also paramount to Moose Landing’s success. One of the most unique discoveries has been the use of weather-resistant netting for the outdoor storage rack. Arnold explained that he was visiting a friend who had a large rack storage at his marina. “I was walking around the storage area and stepping over these piles of material that looked like tennis nets. He told me he used the nets to protect the boats in his rack storage building, and a light went off,” Arnold said.

Moose Landing had been using shrink wrap to protect all the roughly 300 boats in their stacked storage facility. “To winterize and shrink wrap every boat, put it in storage, and then to have to remove and dispose of the wrap in the spring was expensive and a lot of work. I had to try the netting,” he said. He used it on just half of the building in the first year. “I calculated the savings to about $400 a boat, with $18,000 saved in shrink wrap costs plus the labor,” Arnold said. “The nets were only $4,000, and they worked. No rain or snow got through to the boats.” The following year he covered the entire rack and saved more than $70,000.

Innovation also came from Arnold’s team when an annual regional boat show was canceled. His crew came up with the idea to do traveling sea trials instead. They brought key boat inventory that needed exposure to various nearby marinas. They marketed their event through email and social media campaigns then signed up prequalified customers for sea trials at the venues. The marinas benefited from showing off their properties to potential new slip holders and several boats were sold. The idea stuck and is now part of the summer calendar.

Combining both company needs with customer convenience, the marina instituted a quarterly payment program where boaters can pay four times a year for their annual boat slip and storage costs. “Customers love it because it’s easy to budget, and they don’t get a big bill right before Christmas,” Arnold said. “It also allows the marina to better monitor and schedule space and manpower needs.” With 100% occupancy for their in-water slips and winter indoor storage, the process seems to work.

Arnold’s overall processes for the marina have resulted in a top-tier facility revered by its customers and employees. Arnold was anxious to share news of the Marina of the Year award with his team because he said it validates everyone’s hard work. “It’s not me as an owner; it’s the employees who are the true assets of this business and on the front lines of executing the vision,” he said. “The award is more about them than me.”