Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/467551
www.BoatingIndustry.com 14 | Boating Industry | March 2015 BY JONATHAN SWEET n avico — the parent company of the Simrad, Lowrance and B&G brands — recently hosted the boating press at an event to show off its latest products and what's com- ing later this year. Boating Industry was there and while we can't share informa- tion on many of the products for a few months, we did take some time to sit down with Navico's executive team – CEO Leif Ottos- son, deputy CEO Marc Jourlait and executive vice president Louis Chemi – to gather some intel. Boating Industry: One thing a lot of people don't necessarily know is the scope of Navico. Can you talk about all of your brands and how you see them fitting together? CHEMI: We basically have three consumer brands of elec- tronics that we focus on. We focus each brand on a con- sumer type. What does the consumer need if he's a cruising guy? If he's a wake boarder, if he's a fisherman? We develop feature sets specific to the brand that's appropriate to that type of consumer. Lowrance is focused on the fishing side of it, the Simrad brand is focused on the cruising/offshore sportfish market and B&G is purely on the sail side. We've now introduced GoFree across all those consumer types. [Editor's note: GoFree is Navico's digital brand encompassing mapping, telematics, apps and software solutions] OTTOSSON: This was the result of three companies being brought together and that was done some years ago now. In 2009, we made it a little easier in our brand portfolio and bought seven brands down to three. A couple years later we said we are [going to] designate these by user type. That is also good for the industry, because the message become clearer. The fact that we have different brands, [boat builders] can create a very clear message of … what you want to offer with that boat you are building. For retailers, we told them that they can clearly address each customer market, make it easy to explain. In our messaging, we can talk about the features that customer likes. And of course, business-wise, it was a way to create a bigger entity out of what was a very fragmented industry. with Navico's executive team LEIF OTTOSSON LOUIS CHEMI MARC JOURLAIT