Behind the Scenes of the New York Boat Show

BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE NEW YORK BOAT SHOW:

THE MOVERS & THE SHAKERS

KEVIN WINES, longtime Transportation and Logistics Manager at Strong's Marine, gives you a peek behind the curtain: here’s what goes into setting up the New York Boat Show -- we call this event our “Super Bowl.”

The week before the show is organized chaos: we have four days to get every booth ready for its close up. We’re fortunate to have an amazing crew, and we put a ton of effort into preparing beforehand to make sure everything goes smoothly during load-in and set up. I’m proud to work for Strong’s, and I really care about how we represent ourselves and our boat manufacturers. I know that if we do a great job putting the booths together, we’re setting the sales team up for an awesome week of meeting customers and presenting all we offer in the best light.

We’ve got to get 12 boats from 21’ to 40’ into the Javits Center, along with truckloads of staging materials and supplies, then set everything up perfectly before the show starts. Our first haul to the Javits Center starts early Saturday morning the weekend before the show. Show management organizes load-in; first on our schedule to enter the building are the Pursuit boats. Moving the boats in is a big job. For the bigger boats, we need to use one of two travel lifts they have on-site. Every manufacturer has a designated time to use the lifts, so we’re careful to get there at the right time. We drive in, unload, then get our Strong’s trucks out of the building as soon as we can.

We bring an 8-man crew in with us Monday; Cobalt moves in first thing, then it’s back to Mattituck to load up Regal and get them to the convention center before lunchtime. Each trip, we’re coordinating with the manufacturers’ load-in times and travel lift availability.

Tuesday morning all 8 of us head back to the city at 4 AM to set up the Strong’s, Sunseeker and Cruisers Yachts booths and get everything together in the Cobalt, Pursuit, Regal and Grady booths. Setting up the manufacturer booths requires a range of strengths. Dean Elliott, my right hand man, and his team build all the displays, staging and steps for the show. He’s been with Strong’s over 22 years, so he knows the drill! I’ve got guys who are expert at installing radars; some excel at staging the boats on their stands and skirting them. We go task by task until everything is crossed off the list sometime Tuesday evening. The show starts the next day, so we don’t leave until everything looks perfect. Sometimes that means a late night for our team!

Move out is 24+ hours nonstop, starting at 6 PM when doors close on Sunday. As you’re walking out of the show, our 9-person crew heads in! We’re breaking down the booths and putting boats on dollies for the first part of the evening, at around 1 AM we finish and leave the Javits Center with the first load of boats. After offloading the boats in Mattituck, we refuel and head back to the city to grab the second group of boats. We load up the last boats from the Javits Monday afternoon for our final trip back to Mattituck. We’re done just about 24 hours after the doors close! Then we start planning for next year.