My name is Matthew Hodson – current owner of John Crawford Marine (JCM) since 2004. 2024 marks our 60-year badge of honour respecting the late John Crawford (JC). It is also a year of numerous milestones including a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the people who have shaped JCM, both our employees current and past, and just as importantly, our customers.

This significant milestone could never have been achieved without 3 key principles – incredible staff, non-wavering business ethics and a genuine passion for the industry.

In the late 50’s and early 60’s, the marine industry was being turned on its head with the pioneering and development of fiberglass. This new revolutionary “plastic” allowed the manufacturer to mould a boat and re-use the mould time and time again, with near perfection.

This incredible production efficiency brought pricing down as timber boats were labour and materials intensive and coinciding with the fiberglass revolution, aluminium boat building was also growing as the aviation industry came off its manufacturing high (no pun intended) post-war. The likes of De Havilland turned tack with a highly skilled workforce and produced boats rather than planes!

The manufacturing of fiberglass and alloy boats exploded. To this day, some of our fellow pioneer industry names like the Nichols Family – Cruise Craft Boats, the Whittley Family - Whittley Boats and the Haines family - Haines Signature, Dunbier Trailers, Quintrex Boats founder Terry Quantrill are fellow businesses are iconic industry names standing the testament of time as Australian manufacturers.

Outboard motors were also becoming designed in higher horsepower, as limitations were due to relying on air-cooled engines, hence low HP, but as the likes of Mercury and Evinrude engineered more robust cooling systems, HP range grew hand-in-hand with the booming prosperity of the trailer boat manufacturing.

As entrepreneurs are natured, they seize an opportunity where growth is envisaged, as such John Crawford Marine was started in 1964. Exciting times, post-war household incomes were growing and sales boomed as the middle class devoured the opportunity to get on the water; runabouts, tiller steer boats, then larger half cabins to overnight on and explore further, and not forgetting the trailer sailors and sailing cats.

John Crawford or JC as most people knew him, opened John Crawford Marine, bayside of Brisbane on Glenora Street, Wynnum. As the business grew JC at one stage had three dealerships – East Brisbane, Wynnum foreshore and Gold Coast over a 20-year period. Industry leading brands sold by JCM included Quintrex / Mercury / Hobie cat / Sunmaid / Redco trailers – some of these brands are still in production to this day!

In 1987, John Crawford’s then son-in-law John Russell (JR) then took the helm of the business and traded through some difficult years. Although John Crawford Marine was trading used and selling new boats, JR decided to have the business focus solely on the sale of late model pre-owned trailer boats and forfeit the franchises of new boats and motors.

As the Wynnum foreshore property became “hemmed” in by the urban sprawl, JR had the foresight to seize an opportunity of purchasing a large block of land on Manly Road, Tingalpa. JR developed a portion of this block to be a dedicated retail outlet of quality used boats for John Crawford Marine, still home to JCM to this day.

Manly Road has become one of Brisbane’s busiest road corridors, leading to the southern hemisphere’s largest marina and recreational boating hubs in Queensland. The purpose-built 7,000m2 site allows convenient inspection of all the stock in a clean and inviting showcase of JCM’s bespoke, warranted used trailer boats.

JR launched “Boatshare” out of the JCM sales yard. This concept removed the issues of “Time-share” and developed a business model of fractional boat ownership. This concept involved like-minded owners having equal equity in a boat and Boatshare would manage the vessel and ongoing costs, divided by the number of owners. In short, JR’s pioneering of this concept took off. To this day fractional ownership is a well-respected industry means of a way to enjoy boating without all the burden of the costs.

With this growth, JCM required more staff, as a customer of JCM, I met JR regarding the sale of my boat at the time, and he offered me a sales role and I’ll never forget his words – as smooth as his radio voice is, said “You’re not a salesman, you’re a facilitator, sharing your boating knowledge and experience to ensure our customers purchase the right style and model” to this day, this still is the underlying principle to help new boaters to boating.

In July 1999 I started work at JCM, completely green to sales, but had a burning passion for customer’s happiness, a desire to advance the boat buying experience and help people avoid the dodgy backyarders and had a boss and fellow work colleagues that respected my view that “retail is detail and detail equals success in retail”.

Behind the scenes we work hard, every day as a team to ensure our stock is the best presented stock in Brisbane, with the largest range on offer at any one time of quality, pretested and warranted trailer boats.

Did you know that when I started in 1999, not a computer was in the sales office… the internet was just starting to be bantered around, deadlines for marketing were all to do with two main print magazines… the Trading Post, the boating Bible - Trade-a-Boat where photos were taken on a film camera, submitted by post with a handwritten blurb for each listing!

25 years on, now look at the marketing aided by a smart phone! Webpage / Social media / YouTube video marketing that can take a picture, be edited, uploaded to an online sales site, write the editorial, then contact from a buyer is made from anywhere in Australia! If you had told me that back in 1999 that this tech would be in the hands of almost every Australian, I would have said you are crazy!

Boatshare had well and truly outgrown the office and moved to Sanctuary Cove. In this year my wife and I purchased JCM allowing JR to focus on Boatshare and JCM focus solely again on quality used boats. Over the past 25 years I and my team have navigated JCM through some incredible challenges, without compromising our reputation and high standards – Sept 9/11 | GFC | Brisbane Floods | Aussie & USA Dollar parity issues = grey imports | COVID and now the interest rate cycle hurting many families in our market.

At all times, despite these hurdles being out of our control we remained focused on customer engagement, fair trading reassuring our customers that our standards won’t be compromised nor our moral compass.

John Crawford Marine celebrates 55 years of continuous trading. As a thank you to both John Crawford and John Russell, we caught up with past colleagues, customers, staff, John Crawford and John Russell and made a documentary about JCM. Once completed we handed this to JC as a thankyou for his legacy that we continue to respect to this day now that he has passed.

One of JC’s favourite quotes, one that I’m sure we can all relate to is:

“There is nothing, absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats” by Kenneth Grahame, Wind and the Willows.

Now my 25th year at JCM – 20 years of being at the helm as an owner, and writing this overview reflecting on an incredible history, friendships, wonderful staff that have been part of and/or currently making the JCM story eg. have met at JCM/married/children, careers that started at JCM, customers into their 4th generation of purchases, incredible staff that have been or are currently make up our “day” family – I can’t help feel so proud and so grateful.

If I was to be asked for one dream wish for our used trailer boat industry it would be to design a “seaworthy” style of inspection on used boats, marketed to ensure dud boats are off the water, safety is promoted and buyers with limited mechanical/shipwright knowledge are confident that the fundamentals of their boat are sound.

Whilst I’m still at the helm, I and our team will always do our best to advance our customers boating purchasing and selling experience, remove the hassles and risks associated with selling a late model trailer boat privately and if buying, you can have confidence that our team’s industry leading due-diligence in pre-sale testing, understanding of trailer manufacturing and road worthy standards, hull integrity will always be front of mindset.

I have cherished building friendships and acquaintances with so many of our customers and industry colleagues over my time at the helm of John Crawford Marine. When it’s my turn to hand the JCM baton to the next owner in the future, I will only do so on the basis that our history and high standards will continue JCM’s success and relevance in the industry.

Cheers to another 60 years of Buying, Consigning and Selling Qld’s best used trailer boats.

Yours in boating,