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Topic: RTM's First Year in California  (Read 4098 times)

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Spike

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Today's the one year anniversary since Chadrock and Sara met me and Bart at the barn to help unload the container from France.  I thought the timing was right (so did RTM) but with the recovering economy and a saturation of "top of the line" fishing kayak manufacturers and models, I only established 2 RTM dealers in 3 shops so far and still have a lot of boats in the warehouse.  The California RTM Dealers are Outback Adventures with shops in Fremont and Marin plus American Sportsman, a gun/fishing/bow/kayak shop in Windsor.  I also attribute our higher order minimums and longer lead times to the slow pace of establishing RTM dealers.  Plus a vibrant used market for just about every popular fishing model out there.  It should be a good thing for new RTM dealers that it will take years to generate a used market of RTM kayaks.

Direct sales on my end amounted to only a handful of kayaks so I'm going to leave sales to the dealers and stick to the areas that keep me afloat.  I am discontinuing direct sales.  I really thought it would only take 3-4 months to sell alll my boats and we'd have a half dozen top quality dealers spread out in California in a year.  Most of the kayaks sold have been upgrades to veteran anglers in all the popular models.  The Ocean Duo and Quatro tandems and Tempo Anglers sold out fast.  There are still 20+ Abaco 4.20s awaiting homes, I thought they'd go first.

While RTM Kayaks are competitively priced with other models, the other brands generally sell for a lot less than their list price.  The cost of shipping, just to get RTM Kayaks to the U.S., negates that kind of discounting but quite frankly, the cliche "you get what you pay for" really applies here.  RTM is far and away a better line of boats in my experience.

The RTM K Largo- After billing this model as an upgrade to the Malibu X Factor (no longer in production but available from Pacific Sportsman in Windsor, I suggest you get an extra one if you love this model), I gotta retract that.  The K Largo is a great Big Man Kayak by virtue of construction, design and fishability.  It will not comfortably hold as heavy an angler as the X Factor though and the K Largo does not afford internal access to the hull for rod storage.  IMHO, what you lose in internal storage, you more than make up for in deck space, dry pod gear storage and product quality with the K Largo.  For anglers up to 275#, the K Largo was designed to be used with the scupper plugs inserted...something to do with seaworthyness and design.  I've never run this model with plugs but most reviewers commented on the wet ride without it.  I took a K Largo return because the aft tankwell was reported to flood in calm water.  We were never able to reproducing that effect and the current owner is without complaint.  I can come close to filling the rear tankwell by paddling backwards without the plugs in, not a factor with plugs in the aft well.  RTM is looking at this and I'm wondering if this happens with other models.  With 6 K Largos in my fleet for 3 years, the boat and design are sound and seaworthy.  I forgot to mention, RTM now makes scuppering scupper plugs we are evaluating now. 

All of that said, we are gathering Spring orders from the dealers and now offering a $100 discount on a new Abaco 4.20 with Rudder Assembly (MSRP 1395.00).  There are 6 kayaks available at that price. 


Jeffo

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Cool man, they are nice fishing yaks for sure.
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Helped a guy launch an rtm at this year's arw event. It was definitely a beautiful boat.

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