Last August, Iconic Marine Group announced its plans to restructure several boat brands, including Baja Marine, Donzi, Donzi Classic, Fountain Powerboats and Pro-Line.
A year later, the company is getting ready to flesh out an additionally impressive announcement about joining ranks with powerboat racing’s King of Offshore.
“When it comes to making a boat go, there’s nobody better than Reggie Fountain,” said Iconic Marine Group Chief Operating Officer Joe Curran. “It’s kind of a ‘Hull-Whisperer’ sort of thing.”
Curran said his first meeting with the high-performance powerboat industry icon took place right before Christmas. An April dinner meeting followed, and business discussions continued.
“Reggie is influencing things in a strong way already,” he said. “It’s a good, positive relationship. People understand his bandwidth of knowledge, and as time goes on, we’ll develop it even
more.”
Some of Fountain’s initial projects and top priorities will be performance related, Curran said, and his work won’t be limited to outboard or sterndrive power.
“There’s one project that Reggie is absolutely directing, and we are going to start some new things that we’ll announce at a later date,” he said. “We are happy to have Reggie on the team.”
Iconic’s management started analyzing operations last August, Curran said. That review included a look at useable tooling and development of internal resources, he said. Iconic looked at
the tooling on its 34-foot and 38-foot boats and made the decision to sell them into a dealer network over a six-month period.
Rebuilding the company’s talent level and developing a design team that could deliver a full marine system was another requirement.
“Essentially, we’ve completely rebuilt all of our internal talent,” Curran said. “That’s not easy to do in today’s market because everyone is doing pretty well.”
Iconic currently has six new models in the queue, Curran said. “We are designing a new 39-footer that will come out this fall, and we are hoping to make the Fort Lauderdale International
Boat Show with it.” The new company now has the foundation and confidence to move forward, Curran said. Industry expectations are high, and whatever Iconic Marine Group does, it’s
going to be critically evaluated. “We’re in this for the long haul. It’s going to be an exciting company to do business with,” Curran said......click here to read full story.