Trying to quantify the stand up jet ski industry size

[makejetskiinggreatagain]

This may be unreasonable but it could make for an interesting thread.

I constantly have the same debates with people that I'm sure many of you do. The conversation usually revolves around how big is the stand up industry really? I was hoping maybe as a group we could try and throw some numbers at it to get a vague ballpark number of its size in terms of annual dollar amount (is it a 50 million dollar a year industry? 500 million dollar industry? more? less?). For the sake of argument and to try and simplify a complex question as much as possible I was hoping we could stick strictly to the market in terms of actual stand up jet skis and parts needed to build the skis (i.e. hulls, engines, poles, parts). I would like to exclude things like clothing, riding gear, haulers, event income, etc. Also, take into account ONLY SALES, not a company or product's profits, original investments, etc. Measure this industry only in consumer money spent. This is not an effort to find out who is making a killing on their product or who is price gouging. That's why total sales is the only number I am after not total profit.
The goal is to try and grasp how much people are investing in the actual jet skis alone. I think that task will be overwhelming enough. Given that nearly all of the companies are private this may be difficult or impossible. No need to clutter this with comments about the difficulty of this task. Its a given lol.

Try and avoid phrases like "a lot of money" or "a lot of sales" and replace them with "dollar amount in sales for X company" or "# of skis or engines sold by X company in 201X". Lets try and make a compilation of numbers with input from people with reputable info they may have. Post links to articles or sites if possible. If we cant oh well. It was worth trying.

Go.

 

[Vumad]

This may be unreasonable but it could make for an interesting thread.

I constantly have the same debates with people that I'm sure many of you do. The conversation usually revolves around how big is the stand up industry really? I was hoping maybe as a group we could try and throw some numbers at it to get a vague ballpark number of its size in terms of dollar amount (is it a 50 million dollar a year industry? 500 million dollar industry? more? less?). For the sake of argument and to try and simplify a complex question as much as possible I was hoping we could stick strictly to the market in terms of actual stand up jet skis and parts needed to build the skis (i.e. hulls, engines, poles, parts). I would like to exclude things like clothing, riding gear, haulers, event income, etc. The goal is to try and grasp how much people are investing in the actual jet skis alone. I think that task will be overwhelming enough. Given that nearly all of the companies are private this may be difficult or impossible. No need to clutter this with comments about the difficulty of this task. Its a given lol.

Try and avoid phrases like "a lot of money" or "a lot of sales" and replace them with "dollar amount in sales for X company" or "# of skis or engines sold by X company in 201X". Lets try and make a compilation of numbers with input from people with reputable info they may have. If we cant oh well. It was worth trying.

Go.

A good place to start is how many aftermarket hulls have been sold over what period of time. Bob claimed to be the largest hull producer at over 600 hulls sold. At a generous average of 4000 per hull, thats 2.4 million in hull sales. i had that conversation a few years back, prices have gone up, it assumed all sales were glass, and no extra expenses for shipping and assembly. Im sure companies will not openly discuss their revenue streams but i may be realistic to get ball park numbers on how many hulls, pipes, etc sold times an average price point. Itd all be estimates but its a realistic starting point. You will never get accurate investment numbers due to the large amount of one off or short run investments. I have hundreds if not thousands in one time composite projects.

 

[masterblaster]

good luck with this one... market is smaller than most, But even if the market was that big,The big players wouldnt want you to know that the prices didnt need to be astronomical in the market economics for potential to recoup investment and R&D to produce a product. Facebook is the best indicator of standup market share,the entirety of us are wayyy too narcissistic to own one and not have pics on fb of them and be connected to others in the same interest

 

[makejetskiinggreatagain]

A good place to start is how many aftermarket hulls have been sold over what period of time. Bob claimed to be the largest hull producer at over 600 hulls sold. At a generous average of 4000 per hull, thats 2.4 million in hull sales.

You will never get accurate investment numbers due to the large amount of one off or short run investments. I have hundreds if not thousands in one time composite projects.

That's true with regard to short run investments, but we could just assume their sales revenue and not their up front costs.

 

[makejetskiinggreatagain]

Ok lets make this simpler. Assume only total sales, not profits, investment capital, expenses. I'll add this to the OP.

 

[Vumad]

That's true with regard to short run investments, but we could just assume their sales revenue and not their up front costs.

Well, the main thing in that one off is your goal from your estimates. If the goal is to determine if thee are market forces that should drive an investment then i would say those expenses are of little value to the discussion. My composites expenses have come from lowes, home depot, harbor freight, fiberglass coating and will soon expand to various online sources. This is not a place where one could invest in the market as it has nothing to do with the market. The discussion should revolve directly around the market involved, be it hulls, pipes, steering components, etc. I buy jet ski parts so thee is money to be made but my composites expenses are in a way irrelivant.

Ito expand upon that, it also matters how that money is being spent. Is the room in the market for more heavy hitters like xmetal or does the market need more hih production low costs parts.

I presume you are asking the question based on curiosity alone. In which case, the best method may be to estimate the average disposable income over a diverse sample population. Its a power sport. I couldnt tell you how much i spend outside of "as much as i can"

 

[makejetskiinggreatagain]

Yes, simply curiosity. My main goal is to just find out not whether something is worth an investment, but how many complete skis (which would include the parts you mention produced by companies different from the hull companies) are sold and how much revenue does that add up to? companies could weigh investment costs later based on those numbers if they want but if we include initial investment and profit margins as part of this discussion it would be far too complicated if we cant even nail down how many skis are sold lol.

Typically when you read about an industry size in an article it mentions one sentence and includes one number: total sales across all companies in that industry. That's the number I'm after for this discussion. We can dive deeper later

 

[makejetskiinggreatagain]

Ok first number and probably easiest one would be how many 2015 superjets did Yamaha manufacture? I have heard the number 300 before but is that exact or an estimate? Can anyone chime in with exact numbers and maybe cite the article that mentions it if possible?

 

[Quinc]

Call up factory pipe and find out how many bpipes they made last year and how many type 8/pfp/rrp/tnt manifolds.

 

[makejetskiinggreatagain]

Haha I was hoping I wouldn't have homework quinc. I hoped those in the community who are 'in the know' and vendors would be willing to chime in. Like I said I don't care about the dirty private details so companies shouldn't be hesitant to give input. just interested in total sales.

 

[Half flip95]

read some statistical analysis textbooks, do 100s of hours of research / polling, find out that your model is flawed and your results are insignificant, repeat...

 

[makejetskiinggreatagain]

My flawed model you speak of was the simplest definition of industry size I could come up with to satisfy my conversation with a couple of buddies. It doesn't have to be the most legitimate industry analysis. But please, if you have some input that would help contribute to the cause I'm all ears.

 

[Balduccimoto]

So if I made $40 today, and $40 is the only statistic available.. then technically this is a $40 industry. sell out everyone

I think you will be hard pressed to get any accurate estimate. Even some simple data would be next to impossible to find.

 

[Ducky]

It's a low multi-million dollar niche/industry....that's the best way to analyze it. Even if you were to poll every company on sales and transactions, it still wouldnt be accurate....many transactions are not recorded The gubmint wants erthang you record.

 

[makejetskiinggreatagain]

What's with all the secrecy in this industry? Why is it so impossible to figure out how many stand up skis are sold in one year? I bet if you googled how many trucks were sold in the US you would be able to find data down to the last truck. The company I work for can tell you damn near how many millions of tiny bone screws were manufactured last year amongst all competitors in a multi billion dollar worldwide market.

Oh well. I've lost interest anyway. My conversation with friends will continue the same way it always does. "I don't know man, it's a small market with no facts on whether its growing or dying. It sure is fun though."

It was worth trying I guess.

 

[kevbo]

It was a lot easier when there were only two large providers. Now there are dozens of small shops and many hulls are using existing HIN#.

 

[Ducky]

in a multi billion dollar worldwide market.

Government intervention and regulation.....that's why you find out all those little details and measure everything.

It's definitely an industry that is measurable....but you'll never get anything more than a rough estimate.

 

[makejetskiinggreatagain]

A rough estimate is all I was hoping for. It's all good though. I figured it was a long shot to begin with

 

[Balduccimoto]

If watercraft companies start to go public on the stock exchange - it will be much easier to measure. Until then, it is just a niche industry. It is easier to encompass all of PWC and look at Yamaha/Kawasaki/Seadoo sales which should be easy to find. But as we all know, that doesn't say anything for this niche market we have on the x-h2o. I doubt these small businesses care to release their market research (if any). It would only be beneficial to the smaller guys (the competition). It isnt beneficial to anyone to share this because they aren't looking for investors. And any investor knows how volatile it is to invest in this market. *ahem* stunt hulls?

 

[Half flip95]

My flawed model you speak of was the simplest definition of industry size I could come up with to satisfy my conversation with a couple of buddies. It doesn't have to be the most legitimate industry analysis. But please, if you have some input that would help contribute to the cause I'm all ears.

huh???

You misunderstood my comment. I am saying that you can predict the industry size by using statistics. You can even predict the margin of error for your prediction. The problem is that it takes a lot of time and effort to end up with a model that produces significant predictions.