The Marine Retailers Association of the Americas and the American Sportfishing Association announced a partnership to create an Education Hub for ASA member organizations. Unveiled at the ASA’s International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades (ICAST) show in Orlando, Florida, the MRAA and ASA will house the new custom training hub within the MRAA’s Learning Management System, MRAATraining.com.
“Like recreational boat dealers, these peers in our industry need to showcase the angling lifestyle every single day with every consumer touchpoint,” said Liz Keener, MRAA Director of Dealer Development. “Partnering with the ASA to produce an educational library will help fishing and outdoor retailers enhance their skills to improve sales and ownership experiences with their customers, elevating both the recreational boating and fishing industries.”
The MRAA and the ASA will team up to curate education in the form of courses, resources and programs on topics of interest to sportfishing retailers. ASA Members will gain access to the ASA Education Hub that will include 60-plus sales, marketing and leadership courses, ICAST Lunch & Learn content from 2023 and 2024, advocacy information and more.
The collaboration contains additional deliverables, including: new education in the form of blogs, live webinars, resources and two MRAA staff members to support educational programming at ICAST and the Sportfishing Summit.
“One of the core pillars of ASA’s mission is education,” said Mary Beth Long, ASA Vice President of Communications. “We make it a priority to keep our members abreast of the latest business, government affairs and economic trends as well as access to sportfishing industry experts. Our new partnership with MRAA helps us to provide more robust offerings such as a larger library of sales, marketing and leadership content and on-demand educational opportunities.”
With the synergies between the MRAA and the ASA’s target audiences, it will be efficient for the MRAA to develop, for the ASA, a substantial education program using the same approach that has helped the MRAA achieve world-class Net Promoter Scores for its educational programs and annual Dealer Week Conference and Expo.
To learn more about the ASA, ICAST and the ASA Education Hub, contact John Stillwagon, ASA Director of Communications, Content & Digital Marketing, (jstillwagon@asafishing.org), or Liz Keener (lizk@mraa.com) at the MRAA.
ABOUT THE MRAA
The Marine Retailers Association of the Americas believes that for the marine industry to thrive, the retail organizations that interact with the boaters in their community must thrive. With that in mind, the MRAA works to create a strong and healthy boating industry by uniting those retailers, providing them with opportunities for improvement and growth, and representing them with a powerful voice. For more information, visit MRAA.com or call 763-315-8043.
ABOUT THE ASA
The American Sportfishing Association is the sportfishing industry’s trade association committed to representing the interests of the sportfishing and boating industries as well as the entire sportfishing community. It gives the industry and anglers a unified voice when emerging laws and policies could significantly affect sportfishing business or sportfishing itself. The ASA invests in long-term ventures to ensure the industry will remain strong and prosperous, as well as safeguard and promote the enduring economic, conservation and social values of sportfishing in America. The ASA also gives America’s 55 million anglers a voice in policy decisions that affect their ability to sustainably fish on our nation’s waterways through Keep America Fishing, its national angler advocacy campaign. America’s anglers generate more than $50 billion in retail sales with a $148 billion impact on the nation’s economy creating employment for 945,000 people.
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