Still Building Them One at a Time?
Posted by Pete Robbins on Jan 6th 2021
As far as I know the boats are still the same, the price is still the same, and the clothing selection is still overwhelming, but when it comes to their business plan, nothing about Ranger Boats seems to resemble Forrest Wood’s original intent. The once- and possibly still-iconic brand has taken what was previously a bloated pro staff, shrunk it substantially, and now created a boiled-down reduction out of that shrunken body.
Virtually every day this offseason we’ve been force fed press releases from pros announcing that they (have left Ranger and) are moving to another brand. Some of them have been with Ranger for decades. At least one vowed that he’d never run anything else.
I don’t know what to feel about this. The bottom line is that things change. This particular change doesn’t affect me directly. While my first (used) boat was a 1995 Ranger 361, I haven’t owned anything made in Flippin since 1999. Surely, Johnny Morris, who lights his farts with bills bigger than my weekly paycheck, has a plan and a strategy. He’s proven to be exceptional at turning the small business of fishing into a big business success. The anglers who were in Rangers will move on. Maybe in some cases they’ll come back, or they’ll be replaced. Or perhaps in a matter of years Ranger will cease to exist altogether. It just feels weird to see a brand go from the most-prominent, with the highest advertising budget, to “just another option.”
