JackRabbit Marine’s website seems to be down, and their blog, Ask Jack Rabbit, is just…gone!

Anybody know what’s up? I’ve sent an email to Peter James of Ask Jack Rabbit. Until I hear something authoritative, though, I’m stumped.

Olympic Boat Center is sort of a Puget Sound institution. Even non-boaters know the jingle: “We’ll make a boat nut out of you!” Heck, the URL is www.boatnut.com.

But alas…the economy, the price of fuel, and “consumer confidence” are conspiring to make it a VERY difficult year for boat builders and dealers.

According to The Seattle Times, “The parent company of Redmond-based Olympic Boat Centers, a seller of boats and yachts including Bayliner, Maxum, Meridian and Trophy, filed for bankruptcy protection along with several affiliates.”

You can read the whole story in the Seattle Times. It bums me out, and I’m not even a customer.

Perhaps you clicked through to the post over at Ask JackRabbit that I linked to a couple days ago. If not, take a closer look.

Raymarine’s new MAP (minimum advertised price) policy has really stirred the pot, and in today’s entry, Peter James describes Jack Rabbit Marine’s response to the changing character of the marine electronics business.

It may confuse some consumers, but given the realities of the modern marketplace, it may be the only way to stay competitive. Check it out:

So we’re going to introduce a two-tier pricing system. You can pay a low price, competitive with the internet-only stores if you know what you are doing and need no support. Or you can choose to pay a higher price that qualifies you for full support including technical advice, installation help and a full warranty and replacement service.

As a consumer, I find this arrangement attractive. The fact is that I want to work out electronics installation issues for myself sometimes, while other times I need some extra help. In the midst my varying levels of confidence, I would prefer to do most of my purchasing at one or two places; I value the relationships that are formed when I conduct ongoing business with a firm.

For example, I make a lot of purchases at Fisheries Supply and The Offshore Store. They’re local for me, and I know the people there. For me, price is second to cultivating those valuable relationships; but it’s still a close second, know what I mean? The fact that both outfits are price-competitive with all but the lowest of bare-bones online discounters makes my choice pretty easy.

But I doubt boaters in many parts of the country have the same great choices I do, and Jack Rabbit’s new two-tier pricing structure, appealing to both bargain-seeking and service-seeking customers, could work out really well.

If you have any interest at all in understanding the marine electronics market, I strongly suggest you read today’s post by Peter James over on Ask JackRabbit:

New MAP Policy from Raymarine

Many electronics companies, including Raymarine, set MAP prices for their products. This is the Minimum Advertised Price, which is the lowest price that a dealer is allowed to use in advertising the product or listing it on a website. The dealer can sell the product at any price at all - he just can’t advertise it for under MAP.

The MAP price for an E120, for example, is $3899 (list price is $4600). Most dealers who sell online use a variant on the technique shown above from the Consumers Marine website. They show the MAP price, and invite the reader to click to see the actual selling price (at JackRabbit, you see the actual selling price when you add the product to your shopping cart). Clicking at Consumers Marine opens a pop-up window that shows the actual selling price. The MAP limitation applies only to dealers. Anyone with a web store can open an account with a wholesaler, buy an E120 at dealer price, and advertise it for any price at all. So this attempt to set a floor on pricing ends up penalizing dealers - who are undercut on advertised prices by the scruffy-guy-in-his-pajamas web stores.

Raymarine has decided to get tough.

Click here to read the rest of the story…

For the February issue of Southern Boating, I wrote a survey of the new Faria Maestro, a robust, innovative marine PC that the Thomas G. Faria Corporation bills as “a touch-screen navigation and command center.” It’s an impressive product, combining state-of-the-art touchscreen and CPU hardware with Maptech’s tried-and-true navigation software.

In light of recent industry developments, including the announcement that the entire Maptech company was for sale, and the subsequent announcement (reported by Panbo) that Faria had acquired “certain marine-related software products” from Maptech, I decided to follow up with Faria.

What’s the status of the Maestro product, and when can we expect to see it? Is Faria going to enter the navigation software market, distributing Maptech products such as The CAPN and Chart Navigator?

According to Jason Blackburn, Faria’s Assistant VP of Sales and Marketing, the Maestro is available now. True, there had been some delay obtaining certain parts, but those have been overcome, and all the components are in-house, ready to ship.

He also clarified that Faria’s arrangement with Maptech only includes the touch-screen navigation code used in the Maestro product. Faria did not purchase the other software product lines, and is not planning to enter the stand-alone boxed software market.

Okey dokey, then. Thanks for setting us straight, Jason!

If you don’t check Panbo every day (like I do), you ought to look at Ben’s post about Garmin’s “secret” bid to buy Raymarine. I don’t know enough about the marine electronics business to tell you what this might mean. It bears further study.

Maptech makes navigation software as well as hardcopy "chart packs" ideal as backup charts. We all keep hardcopy backup charts aboard, in case our fancy electronics fail, right?

So Maptech is for sale, apparently, according to Panbo. I hadn’t realized it, but Maptech started out as a sort of pet project by Gary Comer, the founder of Lands’ End.

Panbo discusses this back story in more detail, and it starts to explain why Maptech’s current owners might wish to sell. Very interesting…

So the really big question is: who might buy? I can think of several potential bidders, but I’m keepin’ my mouth shut for the time being. As much fun as it might be to start an unfounded rumor and see where it goes, I’m not going to do that, and I consider that my good deed for the day.