Pure Florida Thrives In Challenging Waters With Groupon
"Groupon really helps us get visibility on the marketplace. In the last 4 years alone, it provided us with 20% of our total bookings and 1043 units sold every month."
– Captain Harry Julian, Pure Florida
About Pure Florida
Pure Florida is a water sports rental service that offers a plethora of water vehicles, tours and overall breathtaking experiences. Maritime training has been the life of the family since the 1800s, and the current generation is no exception. Captains Lance and Harry Julian, a father and son team, travelled the world for years with their film company, Marine Team International, before settling in Naples.
This gave them a unique and comprehensive “behind the scenes” viewpoint on tourism, which proved extremely effective when, in 2009, they founded Pure Florida, after working on the water all of their lives.
Tourism is a core element of their business, and offering a great experience to their clients is at the heart of everything they do.
The Challenge
Pure Florida has been a resilient business since its very inception, having started in 2009 in the depths of a great recession. After that a number of challenges kept presenting themselves almost every year.
“We had Hurricane Irma in 2017, we had Hurricane Michael in 2018, Hurricane Dorian in 2019, COVID in 2020, and then we had Hurricane Ian last year. So the last few years, it’s been challenging every year. But through it all, we’ve continued to invest in our employees and our assets. We’ve updated our boats and got creative with new products.”
Every different period and every different challenge required them to keep on finding ways to adapt their yield management strategies to challenging circumstances, recovery phases, and periods of heightened demand. This made them realize that they needed a reliable partner with a wide marketing reach.
The Result
Pure Florida became a Groupon Merchant in 2009 to increase their reach and customer base, and this partnership proved instrumental in generating significant results. Harry Julian finds that Groupon provides “around 20% of the overall bookings. Those customers join, and they might buy a drink or something. It’s kind of like a cruise ship, we get close to the departure date and utilize Groupon to try to fill the boat up. During the last 4 years we’ve been consistently selling over a thousand units per month, which is really helpful.”
The increasing customer base and incremental sales allowed them to steadily grow their business. “We started with three boats and nine employees and now we’re up to 30 employees and 22 floating assets and we offer just about everything there is on the water,” recalls Captain Harry.
"It helps drive volume and repeat customers. Groupon really gives us a ton of visibility in the marketplace to people that we might not otherwise get access to.
You bring to us people that will literally only choose events and activities if they are on Groupon, and we’re grateful for them. That’s one thing that you can’t discount, giving people an experience that they normally would or could not participate in.”
– Captain Harry Julian, Pure Florida
Top Tips for Working with Groupon
“One of the best things you can leverage with Groupon is the flexibility to decrease and increase availability. When we’re busy we have the ability to downscale availability, but during slower times we increase availability and it’s a great way to pull in more customers. Also, the evolution of Groupon with technology, streamlining the process and everything going up in the cloud has been helpful and it makes selling a lot easier.
My main recommendation is to be flexible and patient. If you’re working on super tight margins, it may not be for you. But if you have excess capacity and the ability to be flexible with the customers, then Groupon is definitely a valuable tool.”
SEASing The Day With 360° Sea Experiences
“Our catchphrase is ‘Something for everything on the water’. So whether it’s jet skis, boat rentals, sightseeing trips, fishing trips, eco cruises — we’ve got something for everyone.
We even organize monthly special ‘Bark On The Ark’ dog cruises!”
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