“A couple of summers ago we were surveying the landscape of the marine industry and we noticed there had been some consolidation with some of the bigger guys and we felt there was a need for a new and truly independent pontoon manufacturer,” recalls Coley. “We wanted to offer a fresh perspective, customer-oriented, product-driven organization that could come into the market and disrupt the status quo.”

It has been a two-year journey since the summer of 2023, and Coley has spent the time meeting with marine experts and people he felt he could attract to the team, including Jordan.

“I met with Coley and he threw out the idea and what he wanted to bring to the table,” recalls Jordan. “I’ve known Coley from back when I worked on the vendor side with Lippert and Taylor Made and I knew his track record for success. To have a chance to work with a guy like this you can’t say no.”

“The G’s will be the carbon fiber, sporty, twin engine, go-fast models that you know I’m passionate about,” says Jordan with a smile. “Then our model A will be more of our value-driven series.”

The goal from day one for this manufacturer is to establish itself as a provider of premium luxury pontoon boats and develop a best-in-class product before expanding out from there.

“We’re not going to try and do too much, too fast,” states Coley. “We’re really playing the long game and looking ahead 10 to 20 years. We’re going to be strategic in our process and product development.

“We’re going to have dealers pressing us for more stuff sooner, but we’re going to let it play out over time.”

“We have some really exciting new things to bring to the table, including some patented parts,” explains Jordan. “The 2.5-inch D rail has a .090 thickness so we don’t need the vertical supports that you see on other boats because of the strength of our rails. It’s bold, it’s striking and it doesn’t look like a copycat of anything else out there.”

The standard gates are also unique, with each having a quick latch and friction hinge, eliminating the traditional way of lifting up the center of the door to open it. The power Bimini is also standard and helps tie in the exterior sporty look. Another distinctive feature is the billet aluminum docking light that comes standard in black, but was upgraded to gold on our test boat to give it a nice pop of color.

“We believe in standard over options so all of your interior RGBs, and all of your external and underwater RGB lights are all standard,” says Coley. “We want to simplify the boating process. You can see on one page our option list; we’re going standards over a whole slew of options. It can be overwhelming if you’re in the market to buy a pontoon boat, trying to navigate all of the products that are out there and then having all the equipment options to consider. We’ve streamlined that process in a major way with our Model M.”

“We have the industry’s first 360-degree bumper so when you look at the underdeck, all of that is one solid piece.” explains Jordan. “Some manufacturers reinforce the bow or the stern, but we reinforce the entire undercarriage. We went with extra wide foot prints on our C-channels too because we’re going to be hanging a 500hp outboard on the back and running in the mid 60s with some of these models. It needs to be built for what we’re throwing at it.”

All of its lifting strakes are on the interiors of the pontoons, both sides of the center tube and on the insides of the outside ones. The fully extruded lifting strakes are one piece and are sealed with a cap on the end so it’s already saltwater prepped. As for the actual pontoons, they’re beefy as well.

“The industry standard for pontoons is .080 gauge aluminum, but we’re standard with .090 gauge,” says Jordan. “Every 25-inch diameter pontoon is baffled, sealed and pressurized.”

At the actual helm some switches were removed to help simplify the look and instead of using multiple smaller touchscreens, Alera instead went with just one large 12-inch Simrad; you can use the split screen feature if needed. The 3-inch helm riser is also standard on all Ms along with the arm throttle for the captain. Of course your passengers will appreciate the standard wireless charging ports in all the Lippert furniture, as well as at the helm for a total of five wireless charging ports on board.

Another unique feature is the automatic nav and anchor lights that turn on when the sun reaches a certain point in the day to help keep you safe on the water. Also worth noting, Alera is 100 percent exclusive with Mercury outboards, which also simplifies the boat-buying experience. The M23 pontoon we took out on the water was equipped with a Mercury 250 Verado and with some options including MetalJacket protection for the pontoons, it sits at around $129K MSRP to give you an idea on its pricing.

“We’re going to be meaningful in size, but I would anticipate a thousand boats going out the door next year,” says Coley.

With such lofty goals you might be wondering where the boats are going to be built. Well, the company founder has already figured that out. Alera recently broke ground on a state-of-the-art facility.

“I would put this building as the best pontoon manufacturing space in the industry,” states Coley. “It will be approximately 200,000 square feet for our initial building with tall ceilings, great lighting, a place where we can put our team in position to drive the best quality in the industry. It will have state-of-the-art equipment and everything you need in a prime location right off the Indiana Toll Road so it will be easy for our team to get to.”

There are even plans of adding a large body of water on the 46-acre property so the boats can be run after leaving the factory.

We’ll have room to grow if we’re fortunate to be able to grow,” adds Coley. “Lake Alera will be close to 10 of those acres.”

“We are attracting the best talent in the area; we’re not a 2.0 of another company or anything like that,” explains Jordan. “We are attracting high level players from multiple companies. You look at Elkhart, six of the top 10 pontoon builders are in Elkhart county. We’ve been able to pull really good talent from all those builders in the northern Indiana area. Out of the 40 or so current employees they have roughly 250 years of boat building experience combined. I call them artists because the welds are incredible. You can see the passion behind everything we do at Alera.”

“We’re creating our own DNA,” concludes Coley. “We want to create something unique and to differentiate and stand out from the status quo.”

Based on our first sneak peek of the M23, we’d say Alera Marine Group is off to a great start.