A robust economy has been kind to the boat building industry in recent years, and now, a Boston-based start-up is luring boat builders and suppliers onto the Information Superhighway so they can more easily do business with one another. Boat-Park.com is a new venture being unleashed by the 15-month-old WebPark Corporation in Boston. It will connect boat builders and suppliers beginning later this month. WebPark Corporation creates virtual, online industrial communities called WebParks.
“The margins for the boating community, between the builder and the supplier, are very lean,” said Peter Atwood, a senior vice president at WebPark Corporation. “We are trying to bring profitability back to the purchasing process.”
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The advantages of selling marine products on-line, according to Atwood, include broader market penetration, international exposure, reduced inventories and costs, improved purchasing efficiencies and high company visibility.
WebPark Corporation – because it is not a storefront or intermediary – will not charge a transaction fee for business conducted through its boating community. Rather, it is a developer of software solutions, and generates revenues through software licensing fees. Such fees for Boat-Park.com will range from $5,000 to $18,000 depending on the license and its length.
Boat-Park is described by its creators as an “on-line trade show.” Members will be able to present and sell products and services to customers online, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They will also have access to thousands of marine businesses that provide products in a wide range of categories, including electronics and engines, components, hardware, entertainment systems, plumbing and safety equipment.
Companies do not have to be members of the group to be listed. In fact, WebPark has built a comprehensive database of companies that serve the marine industry.
Boat-Park.com, said Atwood, will provide the infrastructure that enables business-to-business marine customers to engage in newsgroups, e-letters, and expert forums through live events.
Users will find the park through a dedicated portal, wwwwebpark.com. As a result, said Atwood, it takes no more than three clicks of the mouse to find a supplier within Boat-Park.com; one click on the respective industry, one click on the member button, and one click on the desired product or company name.
Atwood said Web parks such as this one have been developed in Europe for years.
“We formed a U.S. corporation based in Boston to take this technology to the United States,” he said. “And the first vertical market we have attacked is the boating industry.”
Why boating?
“The statistics we’ve seen show that in the past three years the boating industry has made a remarkable comeback,” said Atwood.
Simply put, the economy is strong – and wealthy folks are once again buying boats.
Michael Silverman, director of sales and marketing at Little Harbor, a boat yard in Portsmouth that does refitting and designs large, custom sailboats, speaks to the health of the industry.
“Our business is as strong as we can remember,” Silverman said. “The industry as a whole is really robust.”
Busy marinas and shipyards should bode well for ventures such as Boat-Park.com.
Atwood is confident that the on-line trade show will thrive. The timing, he said, has never been better.
”We’ve seen a huge demand from the industry to deliver to it this technology,” he said. “We just came back from the IBEX boat supplier trade show in Fort Lauderdale – and everybody was excited.”
