How Performance Boat Center Changed The Game

Less than 15 years ago, the cove at Mile Marker 21 on the Lake of the Ozarks was a deep and empty recess in Osage Beach, Mo. But that’s not what Performance Boat Center founders Mark Waddington and Brett Manire envisioned when they first spied it in 2011. A couple of longtime friends from the Midwest, Waddington and Marine saw the future of high-performance powerboat dealerships, a haven that not only provided sales, service, storage and dockage but one that marketed a lifestyle.

They didn’t just create an extraordinary multi-brand business that sold and service powerboats. The created one where customers wanted to hang out. They built a restaurant with a pool—and then another—on site. They organized events that started at their showroom with breakfast in the morning and carried into the evening around the pool and the adjacent Lakeside Grille.

They didn’t just create a unique dealership experience. They made Performance Boat Center a destination, the kind of place where, if you had an ounce of cool, you wanted to be.

A couple of years after it launched, Performance Boat Center didn’t just tackle the presenting sponsor role for the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout. The dealership held its own massive Thursday night Shootout Welcome Party. And by “welcome” that meant everyone.

The annual celebration concludes with a fireworks display of the kind a small city would be hard-pressed to produce.

Last year, the outfit produced its own spring and fall boat-show-and-open-house events, and they were a breath of fresh air next to the frankly stale and outdated “traditional” boat show format. Both events will return this year, as will last year’s Power By Performance Fun Run— exclusively open to owners of models from the MTI, Performance Powerboats and Sunsation Boats the dealership carries—and its Outboard Fun Run introduced several years ago.

But long before either of those events launched, Performance Boat Center offered spring and fall fun runs open to powerboats of all brands—and not just those owned by its customers. That was another savvy move by Waddington and Manire as the dealership does a healthy pre-owned powerboat sales business.

Waddington and Manire didn’t just create a successful dealership—they created a community and culture around that dealership. And that, above all else, is how Performance Boat Center changed the game.—Matt Trulio

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Source: https://www.powerboatnation.com/how-performance-boat-center-changed-the-game/