BoatDeals.com – Will It Float?

By | July 12, 2016

“If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?” – T.S. Eliot

You may have heard of Beepi.com, which is a new way to buy and sell cars. They will get your car sold in 30 days or less, or they will buy it from you themselves for the same price. See this article about Beepi for details about how they work. I want to create a Beepi for boats at BoatDeals.com. They recently raised $300 million to expand, and are valued at $2 billion. This is amazing, as they just launched only 2 years ago are only in 7 cities so far. They do not own the cars; they sell them on behalf of the owner (kind of like how a real estate agent sells houses) . This makes it easy for them to expand to new cities because they don’t need to have the money to buy the cars, and they don’t need a car lot to store them. They just need to deal with taking the order and delivering the car to buyer. Two other companies also do something similar: Carvana.com and Carlypso.com. But, both of these get their inventory from wholesale sources (like auto auctions), not individuals. The main innovation with all 3 sites is the entire sales process is handled online, and the customer does not get to test drive the car. It is delivered to them, but if they don’t like it, they can return it with no fees. eBay Motors also does something similar like this, with the eBay Motors Advantage Program.

As far as I know, nobody does anything like this on a nationwide basis for boats. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about boats. I am sure there is good money to be made wholesaling/brokering boats, but what interests me is the potential to create a billion dollar company like Beepi. The key is making it an Internet company (like Beepi), not a boat company. I did something similar in 2002 when I bought a flower shop in California (I am on the East Coast) to set up my CheapFlowers.com website, even though I knew nothing about flowers and had never owned or worked in any type of store before (if you want, you can read that story in my blog posting about it) .

The reason I am taking a look at the used boat business is that a friend of mine and her husband recently bought a boat, but they hate it. The husband spends a lot of time dealing with it, and the whole thing turned into a bad situation for them. They never use the boat at all because they hate it so much. Plus, every month they are paying fees at the marina for a boat they never use. They want to get rid of the boat ASAP for any price. They contacted a local boat broker, but he is taking a long time to come and take photos and even when he does, there is no guarantee it will sell. They also are trying Craigslist, but they have no idea how long it will take to sell a boat there or what price they will get.

I told my friend that there must be a better way to sell the boat fast, as there are lots of “we buy houses” and “we buy cars” type places that pay cash on the spot for real estate and cars, so somebody must do that for boats. I checked into it for her and although there are of course many local boat brokers, there are not any local places that advertise they pay cash for boats. I found a few in other states, like webuyboats.org and yachtauctions.com. Interestingly, I did find out about an entire new industry where boat owners can make money by renting out their boat through peer-to-peer boat rentals, because according to a recent U.S. Coast Guard survey, the average recreational boat gets used only 17 days per year. Some of these “Airbnb for boats” companies include getmyboat.com, boatbound.co, and boatsetter.com.

I created a demo site for the project at BoatDeals.com. What I wrote on the site though is just one of several ways it could be set up. I don’t really care how exactly it is done; the key is doing something in one location and then replicating it nationally. Something different than how things are currently done.

Because I was just creating a demo site, I actually started off using the domain BoatSave.com, which I was able to hand register after around half an hour of searching for boat domains. I was really very happy with this name, but at the same time I had sent out some emails to owners of premium boat domains that were for sale, one of which was BoatDeals.com. I didn’t need to buy a premium domain for this project, since I already had a decent one (BoatSave.com) and there was a good chance I might never even launch the business. On the other hand, I figured having a killer domain would give me instant credibility, so it couldn’t hurt for me to make a low offer. After several hours of intense negotiations, I ended up buying BoatDeals.com for $5,500.

All this happened right at the end of last summer. I was very happy with my industry leading domain and my great demo site, but a year has now passed and I have somewhat lost interest in this project. I like all my ideas for it, I just really feel uncomfortable being in the boat business when I am not a “boat person.” So for now my BoatDeals.com business is on hold, but at some point in the future I might try something with it.

11 thoughts on “BoatDeals.com – Will It Float?

  1. Anticareer

    Few differences…

    Cars are easier to transport, unload, and deliver.
    The market for cars is exponentially bigger then the market for boats.
    Not sure you want to offer “return the boat for free if you don’t like it” because a ton of people (like your friends) want a boat until they actually get one and realize the amount of time/effort/money you need to put into it.
    That said, not sure how many people want to buy a boat without testing it or walking on it.

    If you do want to pursue it, go to Craigslist and contact everyone selling a boat and why they should list their boat on your site instead of Craiglist. If the value proposition is there they will sign up. If not, then your idea doesn’t hold water.

    Reply
    1. Eric Borgos

      Some sites like popyachts.com already call the people who list boats for sale by owner on Craigslist. I don’t think getting boat owners to sign up is the hard part, the hard part is making a profit from all of it.

      Reply
  2. RaTHeaD

    change the name to boatymcboatface. with a name like that you could not go wrong.

    Reply
  3. Michael

    It feels like on the internet people already know where to go, if they’re looking for a used boat they will more then likly go to ebay or craigslist. And if you are looking for a new boat you would just go to a boat dealer in the town or city you live in. If you are selling a boat you can do it old style and stick it in front of your house with a for sale sign on it lol! Boat do seem like something better rented for the day I had a boat for five years and maybe used it 5 times.

    Reply
    1. Eric Borgos

      You could say the same thing about used cars, but Beepi.com started 2 years ago and it worth a billion dollars now.

      Reply
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  5. Rich

    What happens when Beepi decides to enter the boat market? They have a generic domain that would allow them to start selling boats like they do cars, with a flip of the switch it could wipe you out if you’re not an established player or even if you are. Secondly, if Im buying a boat I would want to visit the marina and take it for a test drive…same w a car, so I dont even know if I would be a customer for Beepi, but hey, you never know until you try.

    Reply
    1. Eric Borgos

      Yes, that is a possibility. But, selling boats works very differently than cars, so I would guess that they have no plans to do that.

      Reply
  6. Michael

    I just tried to sell a car on beepi and it’s not where I live plus they don’t take a car with more then 60k miles! Mine has 88k so site is no good!

    Reply
  7. Ron

    The idea might sound good but cars are in millions in number while boats aren’t. To buy a boat or not, you might need a team to verify the quality of it. Your domain name might get you good value in return if you sell it, IMHO. But that boat buying and selling might sound good in terms of beepi but those have millions of seller and buyer while boat will only be sold at near beach or sea or river place and with less number.

    Reply
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