g&Amarine
Most indications of the boating industry’s current or imminent recovery from the recent recession have been, at least at the local level, in the form of anecdotal evidence or modest boosts in sales. But that was enough to convince a pair of Lexington-area men to jump into otherwise murky waters.
George Luton and Andy McCarty have partnered to form G & A Marine Repair, a company the pair says fills a niche missing in Lexington.
“There’s not a full-service boat shop in Lexington — period,” said the 39-year-old McCarty, who runs G & A’s day-to-day operations. “There’s five in the Nicholasville-Danville area around Herrington Lake, there’s one in Winchester, and there’s one in Paris. But as far as full-service service shops in Lexington, there’s been a gap there and we’re wanting to fix that.”
Luton, who had been a boat-service technician in Annapolis, Md., for a dozen years before relocating to Lexington, met McCarty, then an operations manager for a bearing sales company and a former salesman for Stokely’s Marine in Nicholasville, Ky., through a mutual business contact. After talking, they agreed there was a market for a full-service repair company and developed the model for a prospective business.
G & A opened in September at a modest pace, at first performing only basic boat winterizations and minor jobs. That pattern continued through January before an aggressive push was made toward expanding to other services, such as selling parts from a 3,500-square-foot office on Cutters Court near Blue Sky Parkway and prepping to make those parts available online.
G & A also has expanded to include a pick-up and delivery service for repair jobs, with a nominal fee factored into the overall billing along with the first service hour.
McCarty said business has been steady, though far from eye-popping profits have been reported. There have been only minor marketing initiatives, and those have been limited mainly to materials sent to existing customers. He’s planning a focused marketing campaign that will rely on word-of-mouth via existing customers. The plan, McCarty said, is to keep customers happy during the prime three-and-a-half-month boating season in hopes that they’ll return for repair work during the offseason, allowing the business to survive and, he hopes, thrive during the winter.
“There’s definitely a need in the Lexington market for this,” McCarty said. “We service all makes and models, while some other shops or dealers only service what they sell. Boats are expensive to own and operate, so when you want to go boating, you want to go boating. When something goes wrong, you want it ready by next weekend. If you do a good job with service work, they’re probably going to come back for winterizations and tell their friends. And that’s what businesses like this are based on — repeat business.”