Spa Dealers and 2021 Product

[BullFrogSpasMN]

To those who are dealers...just wondering how your year is going so far and are you confident in product availability for 2021 and are you guys confident you'll have enough product to sell for 2021?  Just curious, we were fortunate enough to pick up (2) new manufacturers and get on order hundreds of spas, but I still have my doubts as to having enough product on order and increased delays in manufacturing....just curious how everyone else is getting along and what are you thoughts for the new year and how are you planning ahead?

Hope you're all getting by, I know a lot of dealers are getting pushed out of the business unfortunately

[Hottubguy]

Year has been strong overall on the sales side of things. Availability has been a challenge and I expect that to be the case for all of 2021. For 2021 I don’t think anybody will have enough. I have sizable orders in with both Watkins and Nordic. Caldera side I basically added 20% to what I did this year and ordered all at once at end of June. Have added a number of trucks to my order since. On the Nordic side I typically do about 60+ - of their tubs a year. I have 6 trucks of 20 tub orders with 2021 dates on them. I also sell Marquis. They are a bit more challenging with lead times. Expect to get one more truck from them this year and have a decent amount of there tubs on order for 2021. Have also been dealing with another line that has been filling in the gaps for me. If I get what I am projected to get for 2021 I should be fine. That being said I don’t know how much faith I have in getting what I have on order in by the end of 2021. Hopefully the supply chain improves over the course of the year.

[d00nut]

I feel like we are in decent shape if the projects hold.  Of course, I have little faith the projections hold.  What happens if we shut down again?  Good grief...

It's been strong, all year.  I think it will probably continue because we are bound to see another spike... which sucks, but I just don't see us competing with the vacation dollars out there.  I think we got a good foothold.

[BullFrogSpasMN]

Year has been strong overall on the sales side of things. Availability has been a challenge and I expect that to be the case for all of 2021. For 2021 I don’t think anybody will have enough. I have sizable orders in with both Watkins and Nordic. Caldera side I basically added 20% to what I did this year and ordered all at once at end of June. Have added a number of trucks to my order since. On the Nordic side I typically do about 60+ - of their tubs a year. I have 6 trucks of 20 tub orders with 2021 dates on them. I also sell Marquis. They are a bit more challenging with lead times. Expect to get one more truck from them this year and have a decent amount of there tubs on order for 2021. Have also been dealing with another line that has been filling in the gaps for me. If I get what I am projected to get for 2021 I should be fine. That being said I don’t know how much faith I have in getting what I have on order in by the end of 2021. Hopefully the supply chain improves over the course of the year.

Same here on most accounts, the year to date has been incredible/overwhelming...we also do about 60-75 Nordics a year and have probably 50-60 or so on order, but we were late to the game and some of those orders are into late summer/fall of 2021 already.  In the meantime we picked up Wellis and Aspen as well, we've been flirting with both for awhile so we figured now was the time and have around 65 Wellis on order and around 40-50 Aspens + our Bullfrog 'allotment' for the year, for some reason I don't think it will be enough as I agree demand will hopefully stay high through most of 2021 but it's def. nerve wracking laying out that much cash on projections during a  worldwide pandemic but what are the other options? Let's all hope supply chain and labor can 'catch up' a bit and maybe we'll see some of these delays come down around Qtr. 3-4 of 2021 hopefully.  Stay Safe All!

[Jag8]

Stock will be challenging for some. I feel eventually the inability to get inventory might be the demise of some smaller dealers. It's already happening, the largest accounts are taking priority from the manufacturers.

Word on the street has it that Sundance / Jaccuzzi added a full production line recently actually shortening lead times in some situations. They are also producing their top end spas with an optional insulation downgrade, in turn for a shorter lead time.

[Hottubguy]

Stock will be challenging for some. I feel eventually the inability to get inventory might be the demise of some smaller dealers. It's already happening, the largest accounts are taking priority from the manufacturers.

Word on the street has it that Sundance / Jaccuzzi added a full production line recently actually shortening lead times in some situations. They are also producing their top end spas with an optional insulation downgrade, in turn for a shorter lead time.

Do you sell Sundance/Jacuzzi?  Out of the big brands that I see they use the least amount of insulation already. Doesn’t sound like a good plan to me, then again I’m in the Northeast where you need max insulation   

[Sam]

What are you guys seeing for expected lead times on new orders?  I heard maxx is 22 months!  That can't be true is?

[Hottubguy]

Caldera 47 weeks
Nordic January 2022
Marquis January-February 2022

Those are brands I carry

[BullFrogSpasMN]

What are you guys seeing for expected lead times on new orders?  I heard maxx is 22 months!  That can't be true is?

A lot of companies are out until 2022, I just ordered swim spas a couple weeks ago projected for December 2021...a lot of dealers aren't even getting product built at all and for those that haven't been ordering over the past 3-5 months they'll be lucky to see any product in 2021 at this point.  It's not good for a lot of dealers at this point, really sucks

[Red MC]

Back in July when I was shopping, most manufacturers were saying Nov/Dec.  Just three months later, dates have moved out by a whole year.  How much of that is due to demand vs. supply?

I would think that production ought to be back to pre-pandemic levels by now, if not higher as manufacturers look to increase their capacity to keep up with demand.  Those hot tubs have to be going somewhere.  If you guys aren't getting product, where's it going?

Or is this the lone industry that hasn't gotten back to work?  Seems unlikely.

[Hottubguy]

Back in July when I was shopping, most manufacturers were saying Nov/Dec.  Just three months later, dates have moved out by a whole year.  How much of that is due to demand vs. supply?

I would think that production ought to be back to pre-pandemic levels by now, if not higher as manufacturers look to increase their capacity to keep up with demand.  Those hot tubs have to be going somewhere.  If you guys aren't getting product, where's it going?

Or is this the lone industry that hasn't gotten back to work?  Seems unlikely.

Most is due to demand. Some is due to parts availability. I know of a couple of manufacturers that had more hot tubs ordered in August then all of 2019. Pretty wild in the spa
Industry right now

[Sam]

Caldera 47 weeks
Nordic January 2022
Marquis January-February 2022

Those are brands I carry

That's insane.  How are small dealers going to survive this?  If you didn't order a bunch of inventory this summer, I'm not sure what you can do to keep the bills paid.

[BullFrogSpasMN]

Caldera 47 weeks
Nordic January 2022
Marquis January-February 2022

Those are brands I carry

That's insane.  How are small dealers going to survive this?  If you didn't order a bunch of inventory this summer, I'm not sure what you can do to keep the bills paid.

They won't survive unless a big % of their income comes from 'other' items: pools, fireplaces, game room stuff, patio furniture, saunas, etc. etc. My various reps have told me they were begging their dealers to place large orders months ago and for those that didn't listen or simply didn't have the financial means to lay out that much cash they are basically at this point 'cutoff' from getting any product at all until late 2021 or 2022.  Can we just fast forward through this dumpster fire of a year?

[Red MC]

Are you suggesting that the biggest and/or weathiest dealers pre-emptively placed large volumes of orders and are effectively monopolizing the supply, and dealers who placed orders when they had buyers (as in a normal year) are screwed because they're backed up behind all these mega-orders?  If so, I think it's short sighted for the manufacturers to allow that, because they're going to come out of this with a smaller dealer network.  Wouldn't it be better for them to make sure all of their dealers get some share of production based on their sales volume in prior years?

[BullFrogSpasMN]

Are you suggesting that the biggest and/or weathiest dealers pre-emptively placed large volumes of orders and are effectively monopolizing the supply, and dealers who placed orders when they had buyers (as in a normal year) are screwed because they're backed up behind all these mega-orders?  If so, I think it's short sighted for the manufacturers to allow that, because they're going to come out of this with a smaller dealer network.  Wouldn't it be better for them to make sure all of their dealers get some share of production based on their sales volume in prior years?

depends, there's like 75-100 spa manufacturers probably more if you figure global manufacturers overseas and 98% of them privately owned so they can do as they please...but most of the 'big dogs' have setup order allotments therefore allowing all dealers to get some product like you said all based on sales volume in prior years so they are attempting to make it as fair as possible. Bottom line though demand is 5x normal and supply is 5x less or rather taking 5x longer to build the product so someone is going to get 'left behind' unfortunately