The market for virtually everything is absolutely flooded with buyers right now. As the saying goes, “It’s the economy, stupid.” It’s absolutely booming and the consumer market is awash in cash buyers and cheap financed money.
Unemployment is as close to zero as it is possible to get and both the long-term and newly-retired are sitting on top of massive gains in their retirement accounts. Basically, across every stripe of the economy with the usual (and very troubling exception of the lowest-wage workers), there is money everywhere and it is being spent as quickly as people can find something to throw it at.
Predictions of the bust of the recreational toy market haven’t come true and they aren’t going to come true anytime soon. Here’s why:
1. Recreational toy users don’t care about gas prices or a year of higher inflation numbers. This is not an opinion, it is fact and has been researched to death by market researchers over and over. When you put Debbie-downer economics against people having the fun they want to have, guess what? Fun wins. Nobody gets rid of thier walleye boat or ATV because gas prices went up a buck or three a gallon. Makes zero difference in the overall scheme of things. Neither does the purchase price going up buy double-digit percentages YOY. You have to have a full-on depression-style dip like the Great Recession to really impact the toy market.
2. Pent-up demand is still huge. Boats, UTVs, pickups, cars, houses, you name it, there are still people trying to buy it because they couldn’t get it last year or the year before.
3. Financing is still dirt cheap by historical standards. Add to this the fact that financing of recreational toys has become normalized and there is a race to get it before you can’t “afford” it due to rate increases.
If you’re sitting on the sidelines waiting for prices to come down, you’re going to sit forever. Not going to happen. The YOY increases may slow, but you’re never going to see boats priced below the 2019 level ever again.
