At the recent Southampton boat show, I spent some time on the Raymarine stand. Some of our electronics have been recently unreliable. A nice gentleman from Sea Ventures took our details and said someone would take a look within a week or so. Didn't hear back, but did find out why they haven't been in touch.
Sea Ventures have gone into receivership, meaning that one of the largest Jeanneau dealers in the world has gone. In the scheme of things, our little bit of electronics servicing wouldn't have been high on their list of things to do. I'm very sorry for all the people who will be affected.
What they missed, however, was that they could have turned a one hour service call into a very profitable sale. We were contemplating replacing all the electronics on our boat, including redoing the wiring, the antennas, the gizmos at the top of the mast, and setting up so that we could have the latest charting toys down below as well as new instruments and radio. My guess was that this would have cost between £2000 and £3000 and been a pretty good earner for Sea Ventures. It could have been done in a slow time for them, optimising their work force, because it didn't matter much to us when it happened. They could have probably sold us extra stuff we hadn't thought of. They would have made decent margins on the electronics and great margins on the labour. And they were located about 100 yards from our boat, so not far to travel.
Perhaps one of their skilled installers is looking for work?
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