"Frank Maier" wrote in message
om...
Plus, in the specific instance of Freedom, I'd hafta
guess that the concept just never caught on well enought to create a
solid market demand or niche. (I'm completely ignorant about business
and marketing; so forgive my naive conceptualizations.)

They've sold 1300 of them so far, that at least qualifies as a "niche." Nonsuch
is another builder that went the "easy tacking" route and sold 1000 high quality
boats. Toward the end the new management was trying to "upgrade" the boats by
putting in more modern, but cheaper liners; when I suggested that it seemed like
a rather arbitrary change, they told me that they had to do something to make
them look different because everyone that wanted one of the older designs
already had one. An interesting marketing point, but they only got the chance
to build a few before going under. The molds were saved and several are built
each year on a custom basis.

The builder of my boat (PDQ) has been making three power-cats for every sailboat
for the last year. They stopped building the smaller 32 unless they have orders
for 2 at a time because the profit margin is too low to do a quality job on a
one'sy. However, at Annapolis they took orders for 5 of the new 44 foot
sailboats - an awesome boat because its designed as a family cruiser, not a
charter condomaran.