My family has owned a dealership in St. Petersburg, FL for thirty-one years. The rhythm of a dealership year was tattooed onto me before I knew what SaaS meant: spring is a blur, summer is delivery, fall is the Fort Lauderdale Show, winter is slow. "Nobody shops for boats in January."
Here's what I learned running the numbers across 42 BoaterOS dealerships, three years of data, and 1.4 million unique website sessions: nearly everything I learned on the sales floor was directionally right and materially wrong.
The shape of a year
Index is qualified-buyer intent — the rolling volume of sessions that ask a pricing, financing, or availability question (the three questions that precede a deal). Normalized to monthly average = 100.
The macro shape is what every dealer knows: February warms, April-May peaks, summer plateaus, October bumps for close-out, winter dips. April is the busiest month of the year, running 1.6× the annual average.
"The sales-floor folklore is right that April is the peak. It's wrong that the dip is 'winter.' There are two weeks in winter that outperform half of summer."
Micro-season one: Christmas week
Between December 26 and January 2, buyer intent spikes 62% above the December baseline. Volume is still lower than April, but intent quality — sessions per qualified lead — is the highest of the entire year. These are buyers with time off work, thinking about spring, window-shopping seriously.
Most dealers are closed or skeleton-staffed that week. Their competitors' AI Companions are not. Dealers running the BoaterOS AI saw a 3.1× lift in Christmas-week conversions over unstaffed control weeks in the same Dec 26-Jan 2 window.
Micro-season two: tax-refund mid-February (FL + TX only)
Tax refund deposits land mid-February. In Florida and Texas dealerships, we see a distinct 8-10 day spike starting roughly February 14 that doesn't exist in the Northeast or Great Lakes data. Sub-$80K hull sales (center consoles, bay boats, pontoons) surge. Financing inquiries on hulls under $50K roughly double for that window.
If you run a Gulf-Coast dealership and you're not increasing paid search spend on sub-$80K hulls for ten days in February, you're leaving money on the table. A large dealer in Corpus Christi ran this play last year and booked $1.4M in that window alone.
Regional wrinkles
National index smooths over enormous regional variation:
- Great Lakes: season compressed to March-September. October falls off a cliff, down to index 48 in November.
- Pacific Northwest: remarkably flat — peak is only 1.2× the annual average. Covered-moorage buyers shop year-round.
- Florida East Coast: inverse summer dip — July and August run index 138, not 96, driven by snowbird inquiries planning October arrivals.
- Texas Coast: the tax-refund spike is real. February runs index 112 in TX vs 94 nationally.
What intent does and doesn't tell you
Intent is not revenue. A session that asks about financing in February might not close until June. Our attribution window is 90 days, and roughly 43% of April closings originated from sessions in January-March. If you cut your marketing spend in January because "nobody shops in January," you're cutting the ankle that April stands on.
Three actions for a normal dealership
- Keep the lights on Dec 26-Jan 2. If your website's AI is live, you don't need to keep staff in the showroom. But you need the digital front door open.
- Frontload photography and listing copy in February. Every hull that goes live on April 1 instead of April 15 catches a material share of the peak.
- Don't cut January marketing spend. It's the cheapest month of the year on paid search — CPCs are down 40-55% versus April — and intent is rising.
Priya Sharma is CEO of BoaterOS. Her family has run a single-location dealership in St. Petersburg since 1994. She still helps in the showroom at the Miami Boat Show.