I just got back from a Chris Craft Dealer Council Meeting and can report that:

• The long- awaited capital infusion into Chris Craft by OMC has preliminary approval by the Board of Directors
• A strategic planning team has been put into place to detail the plan, and this team is extremely smart and talented
• This team is supposed to update me every 2 weeks on progress and in 90 days present to the dealer council the final plan and budget as given final go ahead by the Board
• The intention is to turn the entire product line in 3 years
• Any more than that I'm under a confidentiality agreement not to say.

As you may know, in Newsletter #1 I addressed many of the rumors that had been said about the marina and singled out one dealership in particular as being way out of line.
I hereby retract what I said because the proprietor of that dealership personally came to my office yesterday to apologize. He said he wouldn't have believed me had I told him but after reading the letter he caught a person doing it and forbad them all from doing it again.

Our hats off to you, Carlton Phillips. It takes a helluva a person to say he's sorry, and we all think very highly of you for doing it. Yesterday is dead and gone. Now we, the Woodbridge dealers, can do the job we need to do: work together in competition against other boating markets.

Many of my customers asked me to comment on rumors about OMC, Chris Craft's parent. In a nutshell, my opinion is:

• OMC bought Chris Craft to be OMC's flagship line
• Over the years OMC has never had a really defined market focus for Chris Craft, leaving that job to whoever was managing the company at that moment
• The product therefore (although of roughly the same build quality as Brunswick's flagship Sea Ray) did not have a cohesive look or theme, a cohesive marketing strategy, and ultimately the success of it's main rival
• In addition, the present ownership of OMC (in place for 18 months) was unable to complete as much of the due diligence as it would have liked before purchasing the company, and it has taken this long to fix the other boat companies, which required less tooling and other costs to reshape
• I'm happy to say that our time has come. Although I can't divulge specific details I can tell you I'm a small part of the decision-making process as are the other council members, all of which are seasoned Chris Craft dealers. We've been promised to before, but this time there's accountability and the people running the task force are there because they've already done excellentwork within OMC. I promise to keep you updated through this medium.
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