Executive Vice President & Chief Revenue Officer, MARINEMAX INC
Chuck Cashman on MarineMax, Superyachts & the Future of Boating | Yachting USA
In this powerful episode of Yachting USA, host Rick Thomas welcomes Chuck Cashman, Chief Revenue Officer and Executive ...
About Charles Cashman
Chuck Cashman, Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer at MarineMax, has appeared on several podcasts in 2024 and 2025 to discuss the company's history, strategy, and the broader boating industry. On the Yachting USA podcast, Cashman described how MarineMax was formed roughly 33 years ago when five Sea Ray dealers, with a combined revenue of about $220 million, came together with the goal of providing a better customer experience and team opportunities. He noted that Sea Ray has remained a common thread through subsequent acquisitions. Cashman also discussed MarineMax's expansion into marinas, stating that after lessons learned from a recession, the company began seeking dealerships with storage to provide insulation during cyclical downturns, and later began acquiring standalone marinas under CEO Brett McGill. He commented on Blackstone's acquisition of a marina portfolio, expressing optimism that the infrastructure division views marinas as long-term assets similar to ports and airports. In other appearances, Cashman discussed workforce challenges in the marine industry, stating that a lack of vocational programs and apprenticeships creates a weak pathway for youth not bound for college. He expressed a desire to see boat building return to the United States. Cashman also shared his personal experience with Dockmate, a remote boat control system, describing it as a "game changer" that allowed him to single-handedly move his boat from its slip)Skip, giving his family an extra day on the water. He has also promoted the ElectroStrainer, a marine growth prevention system, calling it a "cheap insurance policy" for air conditioning systems and noting that MarineMax offers it as a dealer standard option. On the Luxury Item podcast, Cashman noted that the average age of superyacht owners has dropped by about 10 years over the past two decades and that interest in alternative propulsion is growing, though adoption is slower than expected due to range and speed limitations.
Transcript (47 segments)
I
Interviewer0:44
Hi, Chuck. Welcome to Yachting USA. What a pleasure to be sitting with you today. Awesome. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it. Look where we are. We're in Palm Beach. The Palm Beach Boat Show starts. It's gorgeous South Florida winter weather. Doesn't get better than this. Amazing. Tell me about the boat we're sitting on right now.
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Charles Cashman1:02
We are on a 35 Puro Ocean Alexander, which debuted at this show last year. We actually sold Hull One. This is Hull Two, and it's a really good collaboration between Giorgio Cassetta, well-known Italian designer, and Ocean Alexander, a very well-known eastern builder out of Kaohsiung, Taiwan. That collaboration has resulted in a boat that's kind of a new class for Ocean Alexander. It's really gone over well with the clients. The little bit of the European flair with the traditional Ocean Alexander, which has always been a sea-kindly, sturdy motor boat, is wrapped up in a beautiful package. I was walking around the boat earlier as we're setting up and it looks like a very nice family boat. It's got a little bit of everything you need and lots of space. We're taking advantage of the Sun Sky Lounge actually to turn into an impromptu studio today.
I
Interviewer1:59
Good to have you here with us. You know, this is interesting because you and I go back pretty far in the industry. I guess I predate you slightly, but you started with MarineMax in 1992.
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Charles Cashman2:07
I did. Bill McIll, our founder, founder of MarineMax, formed as a public company in 98. He hired me in 1992. We were basically one store with one brand and I started selling Sea Ray.
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Interviewer2:29
Sea Ray was the brand that everybody knew you guys, right?
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Charles Cashman2:35
It really was. For many, many years, more years than we like, they would still call us the Sea Ray place. We've tried so hard to be so much more. But honestly, without a brand like Sea Ray, I don't believe we could have ever brought the dealerships together that we did to become public. So Sea Ray has a special place in our heart for that brand. At the time, it was the greatest brand in the world, certainly the greatest brand in America.
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Interviewer2:59
No question about that. They were just amazing. And they were built on the east coast of Florida by and large.
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Charles Cashman3:06
That's right. The common ground there too is I started my business in the back of my dad's shop in Clearwater, right on Alton Road. I remember if I went just a little bit west and turned right and came up US 19, you were on our front door. Some of the first business I did was with MarineMax. It's so cool to be here in 2025 having this conversation. We have so much behind us to get to this point.
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Interviewer3:36
Wow, what a story that is. Let's talk about the Sea Ray story because that is kind of how everything started. You guys basically pulled dealerships together to create a consortium of dealers.
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Charles Cashman3:47
We did. It was a time where there was a lot of companies consolidating and going public, certainly in the auto industry. Our founder Bill got an idea. The idea was to provide a better experience to the customer. At the end of the day, it really wasn't about let's make more money, let's consolidate. It was let's provide opportunities for the team, which sitting here almost 33 years later, it provided me incredible opportunities and provides a better experience for the customer. We were basically five Sea Ray dealers, big Sea Ray dealers, with Sea Ray the common thread. There was enough critical mass at the time, we were somewhere around $220 million. Not a very big company, but big enough. Sea Ray provided enough business for those companies to form together. Through the years we've had a number of acquisitions where all the dealerships we acquired primarily had Sea Ray as their main brand. Sea Ray has been a common thread and today it still is, if not our largest brand, it's right up at the top.
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Interviewer5:15
Brunswick never factored into your public move. It was strictly the owner of Sea Ray and you guys worked independently of each other?
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Charles Cashman5:28
They did, with some collaboration. There was a little bit where they got a certain stock grant for allowing us to go public because there are dealer agreements and we needed their permission to transfer the dealer agreement from Gulf Marine to MarineMax. There was a little bit of a partnership there, but Brunswick was a manufacturer. We're a dealer. I would say simply a boat dealer. At the time we were simply a Sea Ray dealer. Boston Whaler had entered into it a little bit, but at a lesser scale. Now it's grown to be equivalent with Sea Ray. Some years a little bigger, some years a little smaller. They're two of our biggest brands.
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Interviewer6:23
Nice brand. It's amazing what they've done through the years. The amount of customer feedback a company like yours would bring to the table would have to have a lot of influence in how these boats get built. Starting out selling boats, eventually you're evolving into actually building boats. That's interesting because I go back so long watching boat builders in North America, the rise and fall. It's been fascinating. I point to Lazari yachts. I was very close to the Lazara family because they were building the Gulf Star line in St. Petersburg. Great family. We watched what happened when Vince's company Gulfstar got consumed by Viking and eventually went away. I remember the phone call when Dick called me to ask if I'd sit in some design meetings because they were going to come out with a new brand called Lazari. We integrated davits into the hull works of these boats. It was cutting edge and has been copied a lot since. I watched that brand build and do very well. Then I think they overstepped going into bigger boats and that hurt them. They tried to reinvent themselves but there was too much competition from Taiwan and Italy.
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Charles Cashman8:22
That's a great point. As a Sea Ray dealer we went to probably 58 feet, the most relevant boat we had, and they hadn't come up with the L class yet. Then the small Lazari came out at 76 feet and built one a little smaller, 68 maybe. Those boats were cutting edge and we lost so many of our customers to that brand because we didn't have an offering for them. It was phenomenal what they did. There weren't a lot of lessons learned to fall back on. When you have a great product, you're hitting the mark, selling a ton, logically you think we need to go bigger because our customer is going to go bigger. I don't know that always translates.
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Interviewer9:09
Hatteras is another example. They had a good business in the 70 foot range, the long range cruisers. Then they got into the 116 and the 130. I'll never forget the Fort Lauderdale boat show. They brought their 130 and tied it directly behind North Coast's 130, a brand new offering out of Seattle. You could see clearly one was a small boat manufacturer trying to build big and the other understood big boat building with naval architects supporting them. That was a done deal for Hatteras.
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Charles Cashman10:07
It's not longitudinal length, it's volume. They become significantly bigger as you go bigger. This is where when you become MarineMax, you can get a little bit of influence. It's really just advice, but we've seen it so many times. We talk to manufacturers that just because you dominate the 50 to 80 doesn't mean you should build a 100. We were a Hatteras dealer for many years. The intellectual capacity and workload that goes into building a 130 or a 116 could have been allocated to keep the 76 relevant or make the 80 relevant or build a 90. Instead they build this flagship for all the right reasons in their head, but customers don't come to Hatteras for that size boat. They come for 70, 80, and 90. If you have patience and sell a dozen 90s, you've earned the right to sell 100. But you can't go from 75-80 to 116-133. It doesn't always translate. The builder needs to understand the competitive landscape of building a 133 foot boat and whether you can pull that customer out of the swirl of other brands.
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Interviewer12:02
Back when that boat was built, I counted over 30 shipyards in North America building over 100 feet. You had real competition that doesn't exist today. A lot came out of the Pacific Northwest. There were some great brands that thrived and now maybe in a period of rediscovery, but most don't exist anymore. Look at Westport. Their 112 has to be one of the most iconic boats over 100 feet in the world. However, it was so successful they started building other boats instead of keeping the 112 relevant where they were dominating.
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Charles Cashman13:27
There's a lot of takeaways there. I'm pretty close to that shipyard because of the business we did and my relationship with Gerald Wakefield. You've got Christensen that bought the operation. There was a decision made not to build on spec, and in that 112 to 125 range, if you don't have the product, the client's not likely going to wait. So there was some opportunity missed there.
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Interviewer14:01
Here we are sitting on an Ocean Alexander. Ocean Alexander and a couple other brands have taken a huge piece of the Westport market. The question begged: are we working on a level playing field, because these are Chinese built boats or Taiwanese built boats? China would say Chinese, Taiwan would say no. I'm not going on record as pro tariff or not, but I am pro American voter. This is Yachting USA after all. I want to see boat building coming back to the United States. Are there unfair advantages that exist?
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Charles Cashman15:26
There's not a simple answer. I believe in America. There's no country like ours. If we collectively decide we want to build yachts for Americans here, we'll do a phenomenal job. The challenge starts with workforce. A month ago I was in Italy touring six shipyards. You didn't have to go far to get to six. Viareggio is the epicenter of yacht building. What I love about it is you can talk to people on the line that are second, third, fourth generation builders. Their dad did this, their grandfather did this. They aspire to be that. In the US, I don't know that if your father was a carpenter, something is getting in the heads of our youth that says I want better for my child, I don't want you to be a carpenter. In Italy, they want to teach the trade. It's artistry. When I did business with Palmer Johnson and Burger Boat in Manitowoc and Sturgeon Bay, it was multigenerational, two and three generations of woodworkers, joiners, welders. They'd pull labor between shipyards, there was a community. In Italy, you walk outside the shipyards and see shops supplying stainless work, copper work, fiberglass, carbon fiber. Everything is right there. In the Netherlands, same thing with apprenticeship programs and subcontractors to support boat building.
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Interviewer18:04
For the last few years there's been conversation about forgiving student loans for people who got degrees they can't use, and they've never been vocationally guided. You go through high school and they ask what college you're going to. Only 20 or 30% are truly college bound. What about the other 60 or 70%? There's not a good program for that. It's why I took my son out of high school to homeschool. We need to tell kids about vocational opportunities.
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Charles Cashman19:18
I think it starts with just a different name, but call it the trades. It offers a tremendous future, great stable income. We need a hundred technicians today if we could hire them. We find 30 or 40, but then 20 or 30 retire. We're barely holding serve. For the good of the boat industry, the home industry, how are we going to take care of all these homes and boats if people can't fix a door or an ice maker? AI is not going to fix this stuff. Our technicians are making tremendous, stable incomes. Being a technician today is getting cleaner with all the electronic products. Boats are generally a clean environment. We need to figure this out and it starts at the parents level.
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Interviewer21:00
Billions of student debt was forgiven. Those people are living through massive debt trying to make a better life. If they had realized there was a different path, six figure incomes in shipyards welding or running piping, you can make a strong living. We have contractor, entrepreneur developer customers. If you learn the trade from the ground up, you can grow your business and become a customer.
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Charles Cashman22:03
That's the beauty of it.
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Interviewer22:10
When we met briefly in Miami, the conversation started around acquisitions. I realized your story is more interesting. I've been paying attention to MarineMax's acquisitions. When I got into the business, it was a cottage industry of mom and pop shops. Income was a byproduct of doing what they wanted because it was a family thing or passion. I look at M&A and ask: good for the industry? Do we sterilize it with spreadsheets and shareholder responsibilities, or can we keep the passion and make it good for everybody?
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Charles Cashman23:38
Great question. I would say good for the industry, question mark, exclamation mark, because there's no easy answer and it depends on your vantage point. Passion: you don't get into the marine industry without passion. Our founder Bill is one of the most passionate guys I've ever met, unwavering in his desire to take care of the customer and provide an irreplaceable experience. That's translated into the company. I'm a passionate person for my company and I'm stretching out into the industry because when you become our size, you have the honor of a voice. I like to spread the passion. Everything we do is about better customer service, take care of the team, take care of the customer, everything else takes care of itself. I'm not a huge spreadsheet guy. We have solid financials, but we don't run the business off spreadsheets. We have data to make good decisions, but at the end of the day, it's about the people and the passion they bring. The future of the industry is good because you don't stay in it without passion. You won't meet anybody in our business that doesn't have passion. If you don't have passion, you don't make it.
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Interviewer25:49
You're dealing with people's play toys, the most emotional thing you'll ever buy. I watched an M&A happen recently. It solved a problem I thought I was witnessing with all the marina takeovers by Safe Harbor. I had captains talk about the corruption corridor, driven by lack of choice as marinas came under the same flag. Then Blackstone comes in with a $5.6 billion acquisition. I did some digging. Blackstone has a real estate part and an infrastructure part. They came with the infrastructure division. That gives me optimism that they're looking at a long-term piece, not a flip.
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Charles Cashman28:09
You would hope so. They acquired some special properties. The best use of waterfront land would lean into development, but we've never bought anything thinking we'd sell it to a developer. The infrastructure aspect came with a lower cost of funds, which takes a bite out of $5.6 billion. Capable, stable, proper ownership is better than ownership subject to the whims of succession in a family. We acquire a lot of marinas and it never enters into our conversation to flip them. We're looking for stickiness with the customer.
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Interviewer30:17
You bought IGY, great marina facilities. Why don't you share the thought process behind that? It ties into the superyacht division.
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Charles Cashman30:42
The seed germinated in the downturn of 2008 and 2009. MarineMax was an accumulation of boat dealers. 90% of revenue came from selling boats, maybe the rest from fixing. Nobody was buying or fixing. Dealers that owned marinas had storage revenue. We said going forward, we should look for dealerships with marinas because in a cyclical business, storage provides insulation. When Bill moved to chairman and his son Brett took over, he wanted more insulation from being just a boat dealer. He said let's look at just a marina. Marinas are expensive but profitable once you get past the cost. The number of slips is limited and the fleet grows, but marina facilities aren't growing to keep up. We started expanding and IGY came in. They had a nice portfolio of marinas in areas we couldn't pass up. We chased it and got it. Now we have great marinas all over the world and a superyacht entity that should frequent them. We stay in touch with the customer wherever they go.
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Interviewer34:28
Fraser came into the fold and then Northrop and Johnson. You always wanted to be in that segment.
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Charles Cashman34:42
Being a boat dealer, we have inventory we have to buy, so we're asset intensive. In the brokerage world, we don't own the boat, just represent it and take a fee. It's a nice clean business. We looked at Fraser a couple of times but couldn't come to terms on valuation. What got us over the hump was that through other brands, our customer was getting to a certain size and then leaving us. We'd had the relationship for 15 years. They bought a Sea Ray, a Boston Whaler, a bigger Boston Whaler. Then they wanted a bigger boat and we couldn't offer it. We said we need to be in that space. We tried to grow it organically but it wouldn't have happened in my lifetime. Northrop and Johnson have been at it forever with passion and relationships. You can't train that in five or ten years. We picked up the legacy brands, got the brokers, the history, the clients, the reputation, the culture. If you lose the brokers, most of what you bought walks away. We retained all the brokers we wanted. We provide them best-in-class tools that standalone companies couldn't build, like Customer IQ and Yacht IQ, proprietary tools developed with the backing of MarineMax.
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Interviewer39:51
In my career I found I needed to be in the superyacht world. We were good at making one or two really engineered machines with a cool designer and builder. That's the large yacht marketplace. It's a different animal than production builders like Sea Ray and Boston Whaler. You're coming out of production building into the big boat market. What's the learning curve for MarineMax?
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Charles Cashman40:54
We didn't know what we didn't know. We're quick learners. By acquiring great companies, we didn't have to learn in the fire. We watched and learned. When we purchased Fraser, Northrop and Johnson called and said they'd be interested in talking. We said we don't know what we've got yet. We want to learn the business first. Taking that approach, we like the space. We like the 360 view with yacht management, crew placement, charter management. We've got it all. They talked their way into the room. We fell in love with their team. We chose deliberately to leave them independent. Fraser will remain Fraser, Northrop and Johnson Northrop and Johnson. We'll build a backend invisible to the customer with shared HR, IT, website development. The superyacht side is amazing. We have all the tools and capabilities now for organic growth.
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Interviewer44:45
MarineMax is a large company at $2.4 billion. If you had a consortium of owners who wanted to start a boat building business in the US, what would that look like?
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Charles Cashman45:20
We are a manufacturer in the US. We acquired Cruisers Yachts and Intrepid. They build about 300 boats a year. We sell about 5,000. People ask if we're vertically integrating. No, I need 4,700 more boats. Both had unique stories. We're happy to be in it, but by DNA we know how to sell a lot more than we know how to build. Manufacturing is tough. I'd say if you build a good one, I'd like to be your dealer.
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Interviewer46:17
From my perspective, it's going to take the brokerage community to influence high net worth individuals. Margins in building boats are really small.
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Charles Cashman47:00
Margins selling boats are small too. It's not the margin, it's the costs. It's very expensive to realize that gross margin. Your net profit is slimmer than you'd like. One mistake is catastrophic. I believe it's why Sea Ray got out of yachts. They built complicated yachts, didn't make enough money, had warranty issues. The timeliness of this conversation could add tariff as an influencer. If you tariff boats, it could bring production back to the US. European manufacturers are talking about putting a footprint in the US because about a third of the yachts sold in the world come to US owners.
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Interviewer49:01
In the large yacht industry, I interviewed Frits of Feadship and Rose Damen. Rose shared 74% of support vessels being built are for American clients. Frits said 65% of Feadships sold are to American clients. Bill Gates built a hydrogen boat at Feadship. That's pretty special. People who criticize large yachts and their owners should see the technologies that start on these boats and find their way down to production boats.
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Charles Cashman50:59
There's disdain for big white yachts, but the boat we're sitting on will keep 75 people busy 40 hours a week for a year and a half. These are craftsmen. Very little robotics go into building a yacht. After delivery, the owner hires a crew, goes to an IGY marina, pays docking fees, power, the crew goes to local markets, guests go to restaurants. It's an economic machine that deposits cash wherever it stops. It's a shame there's wealth shaming. These people care about the environment and do more for clean waters than a hundred random people.
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Interviewer53:20
I work with the International SeaKeepers Society. We bring scientists and universities to yacht owners. The owners love accommodating researchers going to far reaches of the world. When you look at all these yachts at the Palm Beach Boat Show, there are so many ways this industry gives back. It's a shame we don't do a better job expressing the benefits.
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Charles Cashman54:55
Paul Allen's fleet and what he did for environmental research was amazing. He couldn't have done it without his boats. His boat Octopus with the submarine pen, working with John Pinder, was powerful. There are others. Expedition yachts are the fastest growing segment, which warms my heart. People want to get away from marinas, be self-contained, and connect with the environment. COVID turned on a lot of people to the opportunities of being on the water. Something you and I have in common is family boating. I've got a 30-foot boat I love. What's more important than family and sharing a love of the ocean? You're not on cell phones or gaming devices, you're together on the ocean. It's a blessing. I grew up on a 16-foot boat with a 65 horsepower engine. Modest, but the view is the same. That early interaction with the water is why I'm here.
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Interviewer58:23
Chuck, I've admired what MarineMax has done over three decades. You should be pleased and proud. It's not easy.
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Charles Cashman58:47
There's a lot of easier ways to make money, but we're all passionate about boating. Take care of the customer, take care of the team, everything kind of takes care of itself. We hire people who love the water. Now we can look at someone's Instagram and if there's no water in the background, you're not for us. It's that simple as a first step.
I
Interviewer59:56
Chuck, this has been a real pleasure. Keep this conversation going. We want things good for our industry and our business in the US, recognizing it's a world industry.
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Charles Cashman1:00:32
Bill told me a couple days into my career: all boats rise with a tide. It took me years to believe it. At the end of the day, the more we can do for the boating community, we'll get our share. Thank you very much, John. It's been a pleasure.
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Interviewer1:01:26
Until the next time, I'm out of here.