Dennis Anderson: Lund boats enter fiberglass market

At first blush, the entry by Lund boats of New York Mills, Minn., into the fiberglass boat market after a generations-long love affair with aluminum would seem to be counter-intuitive, at least in the current economic downturn.

The recreational boat market has been tough in recent years. A number of factors have played out in the marketplace. One is the seeming ever-increasing price of boats -- you can drop 50 grand in a heartbeat for a fishing/family boat at the Minneapolis Boat Show, running through Sunday at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Boat industry financing that often puts buyers in debt for as many as 15 years -- a duration that can make upgrading to a new boat difficult if not impossible -- also has adversely affected boat sales.

Market saturation also seems to have played a role, as have declines in some states in the popularity of fishing and a difficulty some boat owners seem to have finding free time to be on the water.

Now comes Lund, owned by Brunswick, manufacturer of Mercury Outboards and a host of other boat brands, including Crestliner and Triton, throwing its weight and considerable dealer network behind four fiberglass models, each made in Tennessee at the Triton plant.

Two of the new boats are 18 feet 6 inches long; one is 19 feet 7 inches; and a fourth is 20 feet 8 inches. Matching outboards for the shorter models will be in the 175-horsepower range and up, while the largest Lund fiberglass model is rated for 300 horses.

Lund caught a break, it can fairly be said, when it signed Ted Takasaki, president of Lindy Fishing Tackle in Brainerd and a noted competitive walleye angler, to leave Ranger boats, where he has been a pro-staffer for some 20 years. Fishing the FLW walleye tour this summer, Takasaki will run the 208 fiberglass Lund, with a 250 Mercury Virado swinging from the stern.

Lund sales and marketing vice president Tom Mac Nair acknowledges the boat market is tough. But he is cautiously optimistic, he said, that fiberglass boats eventually will make up 5 percent of Lund sales.

"We basically made this move after hearing from our customers," Mac Nair said. "In the last three to five years we've had customers at boat shows, tournaments and dealerships say that they love their Lund boats, but they really like fiberglass."

Market studies confirmed that interest, Mac Nair said, and design -- which was led by Lund, with help from others -- was begun.

"The hulls under the 18-6 foot models essentially are copies of our Tyee hull," he said, "and hulls under the longer boats are copies of our aluminum Pro-V models. We wanted to build the Lund 'DNA' into these boats."

Because the fiberglass models primarily will compete for the walleye fishing market, Mac Nair said, it was important they be designed so they forward troll and backtroll as efficiently as Lund aluminum boats do.

Price also will be a factor in determining the new boats' popularity. The two shorter Lund fiberglass models will be comparable in cost to their aluminum counterparts, Mac Nair said. But the bigger boats will be $3,000 or more than comparable aluminum crafts.

Bigger outboards -- whose costs easily can run $15,000 and more -- also might be preferred with the heavier fiberglass boats. And bigger outboards in most cases use more gasoline than smaller motors.

"We're proud of the new boats," Mac Nair said. "We could have delayed introducing them until the economy improved, but we're a market leader and we thought this was the right time. If we waited, we'd just be delaying our customers' buying decisions."