Godfrey Marine Customer Story

Background

“People love having the ability to tweak their boats and make them their own,” says Wally Ross, Director of Product Management and Marketing at Godfrey Marine. For buyers of most of Godfrey’s several popular pontoon lines — which include Sweetwater, Monaco, AquaPatio, Sanpan and XP — that means choosing from a vast array of interior and exterior finishes and colors, plus hundreds of options and add-ons.

Lounge Backrest

Among buyers’ (and dealers’) choices is what kind of insert to put in the back of the forward chaise lounge. Developed in partnership with Teak Isle, these inserts maximize otherwise unusable volume with a variety of configurations: a general-purpose drawer unit, a fishing tackle storage unit, a folding table with or without a dog bowl drawer underneath, and a tilt-out wastebasket caddy.

Inventory Control

With dozens of different possible combinations of configuration and color, though, it isn’t practical for Godfrey to keep them all in stock. “We try to keep a small variety on the shelf,” says Ross, “especially the high runners. But anything that is a low runner or what we call an SSR (special sales request), we’ll call Teak Isle and say, ‘Okay, here’s what the customer is asking.’ Their capability to respond quickly to those requests is a huge deal to us.”

Design & Engineering

It’s not just Teak Isle’s quick turnaround capabilities, though, that Ross appreciates. “We were extremely happy with the process of getting these inserts dialed in exactly how we wanted for each of our lines,” he says. “In some cases, we may not even have been able to accurately describe what we were after, but through the iterative process they got us there pretty darn quick.”

Now, the partnership is entering a new phase. The prominent deck boat manufacturer Hurricane — also under the Godfrey Marine umbrella — is working on a special project to be unveiled at the 2025 Miami International Boat Show and has engaged Teak Isle to provide significant support. “We know their engineering capabilities from working on the chaise inserts,” Ross says, “so we felt comfortable partnering on this bigger project. They’ve shown that they know how to take our vision and execute on it to help us succeed.”