“Cost Efficiency” is what the CEO says Malibu is focused on.
if you've gone through an 80/20 exercise in business, then you know that driving cost efficiency is about focusing on growing the 20% of products that make up 80% of your revenue to the 20% of customers who make up 80% of revenues. That is where you get cost efficiency. Typically a company makes their best profit here, and that subsidizes the smaller contribution products to the smaller customers.
slalom boats are a minutiae of Malibu’s business, and competition skiers are a minutiae of their customer base. This isn’t about asset utilization, it’s about eliminating the variable costs.
Unfortunately, this is how math of profitability works.
I think Malibu intended to discontinue the TXi but was caught off guard by the noise it generated so this decision to continue without spending any money is the fallback.