First Year, First 1000 Pontoons

Barletta Pontoon Boats, located in Bristol, Ind., has met and exceeded their company goal of building and shipping one-thousand pontoon boats in their inaugural year of production. 

The one-thousandth pontoon boat was a Barletta E-Class 24U which features the wildly popular ultra-lounge seating configuration. Lewis Boats, Inc., located in St. Peters, Mo., will have the boat on display and for sale at the St. Louis Boat Show coming up in January of 2019.

Aggressive, yet attainable, the goal that was shared with their current dealer network, dealer prospects, and select industry insiders was generally dismissed as unachievable given current workforce and supply chain constraints. But, as has been the case since Barletta’s beginnings in June of 2017, they continue to turn non-believers into believers.

“It’s been an extremely gratifying roller-coaster ride,” stated Bill Fenech, President and Co-Owner of Barletta Pontoon Boats. “When we started in 2017, they said we couldn’t have a production boat ready by January 1, 2018. But we did it. They said we couldn’t build a boat that stood out from the “sea-of-sameness” in the marine industry, but we did and were awarded a 2018 Innovation Award by the National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA). And they said there would be no way we would be able to build and ship 1,000 boats in our first year of production. We’re here to tell you that we have accomplished that goal, too.”

Barletta seemingly came out of nowhere, but has quickly transformed into company that has captured the attention of competitors, dealers and the boating community as a whole. Featuring a unique customer-focused/dealer centric approach that Fenech brought with him from his 30 plus years of experience in the RV industry, Barletta has amassed a dealer network that is arguably the envy of the industry including one 2018 Boating Industry Hall of Fame dealer inductee, four 2018 Boating Industry special recognition dealers, and twenty-two Boating Industry Top 100 Dealer award recipients. And they haven’t stopped there. Recently, Barletta signed their first international dealer with Walkers Point Marine in Ontario, Calif.

“Could we have built more than 1,000 boats in our first year? Absolutely,” said Gene Chastain, VP of Manufacturing & Operations.  “We have the workforce. We could have sacrificed quality. We could have skipped our independent pre-delivery inspection and short-cutted the process. But then we wouldn’t be building Barletta Pontoon Boats. We’ve built 1,000 pontoon boats of the highest quality this industry has seen in a long time. We won’t chase numbers just to feed our egos.”

“This team has worked their tails off over the past year-and-a-half to build, what we believe to be, a spectacular product, culture and company,” continued Jeff Haradine, Vice President of Sales at Barletta. “It gives a sense of accomplishment to achieve this goal, but it’s really just a small step towards our ultimate goal of being the best manufacturer in the industry. We’ll celebrate the day we see boat #1000 roll off our property, but then it will be back to work in the morning.”