I’d like to share with you my personal overview of what Boatshed is all about, along with the opportunities that it presents.

I’ll be covering topics such as our history and growth, franchising, the diversity and scope of our services – and an insight to why joining Boatshed is such an exciting prospect!

-Getting to know Boatshed
You can discover a broad base of information about Boatshed by visiting our various websites – such as our main site at www.boatshed.com .
But take a look also at our geographical franchised locations like www.boatshedseattle.com
www.boatshedphuket.com
www.boatshedbrighton.com .
These Boatshed businesses are run by partners, some of whom have been operating for over 15 years.

While Boatshed sells a whole range of different boats, we have our special broker websites as well. There’s Boatshed Performance and Boatshed Classic, for example. And Boatshed International, for some of the really cool and larger vessels that we’re selling. Plus we now work with Rightmove to promote our Houseboats business.
https://houseboats.boatshed.com/
https://international.boatshed.com/
https://performance.boatshed.com/

We’ve been really lucky to attract a fantastic mixed group of talented people who’ve not only come forward and invested in the Boatshed franchise network, but have utilised their skills, experience and knowledge to grow and benefit the group as a whole.

-Re-inventing the future of brokerage
With a major emphasis on utilising best available technology, Boatshed has not only revolutionised boat sales over the past two decades but also has become an industry leader.
We’ve now built a platform that manages not just boats, customers and marketing, but every process and element of selling a boat. The platform handles all of the contracts, all of the financial transactions, all of the training and all of the support. And, through our growth strategy, we’re now represented across 16 countries in more than 70 geographical locations.
While our international expansion was not without its challenges – setting up our platform to deal with different legal requirements, currencies, languages and understanding a whole host of cultural differences that happen when you’re selling boats in different locations – we’re proud of our achievements, it's made build more functionality into the platform and we are now building on that success.

-Technology that really delivers results
It’s not just our technology that’s impressive at Boatshed, although when you see what our platform can do, you’ll realise that it is way ahead of anything else in the boat or marine marketplace. Our statistics are worth considering too.
We’re now selling more boats than any other yacht broker. We’re selling boats twice as fast as other yacht brokers and despite our open, no commitment offering, we’re selling 67% of the boats that we list.
It’s interesting because the processes that we’ve developed have made the selling of boats much easier for all our members and partners – and now the business is more about utilising our skills, enthusiasm and technology while offering to attract people to list more boats.
Many of the outcomes and results that we’ve experienced are counterintuitive. Originally, the business did lots of physical viewings leading up to the sale of a boat. But after introducing transparency with (for example) images of the bilges and wiring – and showing the boats “warts and all” – we found that we’re actually selling boats twice as fast as other brokers.
And, previously where we were doing an average of 16 physical viewings per boat sale, in the majority of cases that’s now down to just two. Notably, feedback and comments from sellers was how surprised they were that it was the first person who viewed the boat who purchased it.

-Building our business by building relationships
We’ve worked for many years with partner listing portals in the industry. Our friends at The Yacht Market, Yacht World and Boat Trader – and a host of international boat sales portals – receive boats directly via our data feed technology. This enables no duplication at the Boatshed end, but also makes sure that data is accurate in the marketplace and is updated automatically and in real time.
All of our dashboards and internal platform systems are specifically designed to save broker time. The most important part of being a broker is generating listings and these come from making friends and building relationships amongst customers and the wider industry.
Therefore, the ability to run the entire business from a smartphone or a tablet really means that it’s about spending very little time in the office and more time in amongst boats, boat owners and other industry players.
We developed many new ways of working with other members of the industry. Our Preferred Partners platform, for example, drives customers from Boatshed who are interested in specific boat services. Typically, these are transportation, sailmaking, boat delivery, servicing, insurance and finance – direct to companies and partners who we are proud to work with. https://www.boatshed.com/preferred-partners-information-for-customers-and-partners--blog-27436.html
This isn’t about creating small revenue streams from these individuals or companies or trying to sell advertising. It’s about building solid long-term relationships where we direct customers to them and, in return for that, we want them to send their customers to us when they’re selling a boat.

-Making waves with new ideas
Yacht brokerage still represents one of the most lucrative opportunities in the boat industry. Boatshed charges between 6 and 10% of a boat’s value when we sell the boat. This makes even medium sized vessels from 50 to 100,000 a lucrative, profitable and sustainable business opportunity.
On the sales side, we’re not just tracking customer behaviour and using AI and ‘big data’ to work out relevancy in terms of which customers we should be talking to about boats and which customers are simply at the research stage and want to be left in peace.
We’re also building intuitive models such as our BoatBid auction system, enabling us at no extra cost to offer a no-commitment, bid-with-confidence package. The platform combines the online convenience of platforms such as eBay and the personal auction approach of a traditional auctioneer with the flexibility of a traditional brokerage service enabling people to inspect before they finally purchase. https://www.boatbid.com/
Boatshed has a whole set of tools that are unique in the marketplace and over the past 20 years the business has proved its success in selling thousands of boats and generating significant commissions for all of our partner franchisees and businesses. A Boatshed franchise offers a proven business model that offers significant commercial advantages over competing brokers.

-Cool stuff counts as well!
We’re also doing plenty of cool stuff around the boat industry.
Outside of our sponsorship of events such as Antigua Classics and supporting a variety of regattas and worthy causes, we’re also exploring other opportunities around the marine industry and giving our partners and businesses the opportunity to stand out in the marketplace.
Our Boatshed Archive gives anyone full access to all the boats we have sold in the past. We now have over 25,000 boats available with all the photos, video etc. Great for research and boat nerds https://www.boatshed.com/archive
The Marine Drone Network, for example, enables novice boating enthusiasts to learn, develop and plug into a group of professional drone pilots, specifically focused on filming boats and water-based events. This is a potential additional income stream for Boatshed franchisees and partners. https://www.marinedronenetwork.com/
Equally, before a boat is sold, we’ve worked with a group of professional surveyors and Marine Technicians in Europe and the USA to develop an independent pre-sale assessment, a bit like a 52-point check on a second-hand car. Buyers get very frustrated if basic stuff does not work and the IPA enables Sellers to make sure their boat is really ready for sale.
This is not designed to replace the standard full condition survey that we recommend you undertake after a seller has accepted an offer, but it does enable people who are selling their boat to make it stand out at the marketing stage for a small fixed fee.
In this case, Boatshed has designed the processes and built the technology for Surveyors and Marine Techs to use, it's independent of Boatshed, but again it makes selling boats faster and easier for everyone! https://marineinspectionassociation.com/
Plus products like our ‘Boat for Sale Parking’ initiative enables us to work with marinas and yards that add value to those operations, as well as being able to offer our customers sizeable discounts and flexible mooring opportunities when they are selling their boat. https://www.boatshed.com/boat-for-sale-parking-blog-30577.html

-Boatshed is shaping the future of boat sales
As you can see from some of the exciting products and processes that we’re introducing and how we’ve invested in our platform, Boatshed is a business that is truly focused on the long term. We see Boatshed Headquarters’ role as creating the best technology, best processes and generating the best ideas, putting them into action to make our partners, franchisees and customers utilising the platform to be able to have something different, commercially effective and, we like to think, a refreshing change from the traditional approach of many yacht brokers. To get a fuller understanding of what the platform does have a look at the detailed features listed under Website, Technology, Platform, Support https://www.boatshedbusiness.com/system/ (click on each section on the blue banner halfway down the page)

A Boatshed in every port !
Our services are only available in areas where we have a Boatshed partner or a franchisee. We will not sell boats in an area where we don’t have representation. Therefore, our strategy is simple: A Boatshed in every port !
We offer a full Franchise that you purchase from us for an initial franchise fee and where you take 90% of the proceeds and have an exclusive license to operate the Boatshed system in a specific area of the world.
alternatively we offer a more flexible, non exclusive, Modular arrangement where 20% commission is awarded for each of the 5 main processes and you can generally earn 40% of the brokerage commission, with Modular there are no fees to pay.
We will also consider a 50/50 revenue/cost joint venture for the right person or organisation.

Have a good look at my thoughts and the information above as I am not in the business of chasing folks to join us. I work on the principle that if you feel it’s a good fit then let's keep talking. Perhaps tell me a bit more about you using my profile links below?

Thanks :)

Neil

Neil Chapman

Who am I ? My Boatshed Page is here - http://www.boatshed.com/contact-neil-chapman