Small marina doesn't mean disadvantage at boat shows

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By Jim Morris, Staff Writer 8:22 PM Saturday, December 12, 2009

WILMINGTON — When Tom Taylor takes his boats to the Cincinnati or Dayton Boat Shows, his marina usually is the smallest in the place. There are the big guys from Cincinnati, Dayton, Indian Lake, Grand Lake St. Marys, Brookville (Ind.) Lake and others. And then there is Taylor from his South Shore Marina on little Cowan Lake in Clinton County.

But being the smallest marina in the show doesn’t bother Taylor. In fact, he consistently has one of the better displays and offers just as many bargains as others.

From March until October, you will find Taylor, 53, at the marina on the south shore of Cowan Lake, selling bait and renting boats. In the afternoon he is likely to be repairing boat motors or maybe working the marina’s showroom right down the road on Ohio 730 with his son, Chad. Tom’s wife, Lisa, is the business manager and Chad handles boat sales.

Taylor’s history at the same marina goes back to his high school days in the early 1970s. While attending Blanchester High, he worked at the marina in the summers. After working construction and then for a Cincinnati marina after graduation, he heard the lease was available at South Shore. So in 1985, at age 30, he took over the business.

“In the beginning, I rented boats and sold bait and gas and did a little repair work for people. The business began to grow little by little through word of mouth,” he said.

In 1992 he was able to sign a long-term lease with the state and that’s when he got into the boat sales business.

In his words

“I think you would be hard-pressed to find a better little fishing lake than Cowan. It has nice bass, saugeyes and still has some muskies, and there are plenty of catfish and crappies. But the handicap – for us – is that it is a 10-horsepower limit lake. If they would go to unlimited horsepower, no wake, it would mean a big difference to our business.

“I don’t worry about competing with the larger boat dealers. We work at what we specialize in and don’t worry about what everybody else is doing.

“People will come to us who have looked for a boat at one of the bigger dealers and they realize we offer the same things. I go to the same service schools and buy my parts from the same places. We’re more of a mom-and-pop dealership.

“The boat business is up and down. Some years we don’t make any money at all and other years we do very well. Right now if it weren’t for rentals and service, we’d be in the bread line. But like they say in baseball or football, ‘We’re still in the game.’

“I don’t see the boat business getting much better soon. I think next year might be a little better than this year. I’ve been in this for a while and I have noticed that when the boating industry goes down, it stays down. It never comes back in a big leap. I don’t think we will see any more years as bad as ’08 or ’09. Recreation and boating is something we don’t have to have, so it will recover more slowly than the rest of the economy.

“With all the work, I don’t get to fish as much as I used to, but I did get out a couple of times this year on Cowan. I have another son who works for Mercury in Wisconsin. He wants me to go up there and fish for walleyes on Lake Winnebago. Maybe I’ll do that in the spring.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2409  or jmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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