july2017

148 149 was part of the deal when they hired him to be their General Manager. My father is still heavily involved; he works part time five or six days a week guiding me to be my best and live up to my potential; he’s a great visionary and mentor.” Today, in addition to its flagship location, Giant Recreation World has two other outlets, both of which were recently moved from their original sites to land that the company bought during the 2008 Great Recession. “We pur- chased a couple of highly visible properties, one of which was bank-owned, that we felt would be a great investment for the future of our company,” McNamara explains. “Our end goal was to move our dealerships to better locations to better fight the big name-brand, national dealers. Our previous Ormond Beach location had been there for over 20 years; now it has GIANT RECREATIONWORLD been moved about a mile down the road to Destination Daytona. The new facility has good I-95 frontage and is a popular location with several anchor retail establishments that cater to outdoor enthusiasts. It was the perfect fit. The third location is in Palm Bay and it has ex- cellent I-95 frontage as well. Prior to the move it was in Melbourne, and before that it was in Cocoa. That location had also been around for 20-plus years. Both of those buildings have a similar design, minus a couple of service bays. The new locations allow potential customers driving by on I-95 the opportunity to notice us and increase dealership traffic on the lots.” In fact, even though the new locations have only been open for several months, McNamara says, “I only expected a 25 percent increase in sales; pleasantly, business has almost doubled I cut higher-level employees’ salaries; we made a lot of hourly employees, part-time, and we struggled through the hard times. We were still doing business because of our great reputation, quality service and loyal customer base. LARRY MCNAMARA PRESIDENT AND CEO