So Whatever happened to..

Originally posted by Noah How to end up with a small fortune in the marine industry: Start with a large one!

What you're describing is a dealer network which sadly the marine business lacks and was the reason when the guy that set up the original windsurfer network acted the way he did back in the day and an entire industry of actions sports sprang from his embryonic thinking.
At the time a dinghy business, Racing Sailboats he used the dinghy market as an example of how not to run a business model and encouraged entrepreneurs to sell windsurfers with a basic 30% margin which is the minimum a small business needed back then to survive.
So if you want someone to invest 150k the very least they would want is £258k turnover to result, which is a minimum of a 25boat annual turnover at 10k per boat (inc vat) and 7k per boat unit cost also inc vat. Or 50 boats at 5k and ex works cost of 3.5k.



Edited by iGRF - 30 Aug 18 at 12:47pm

Well what a manufacturer needs and often lacks, is a guarantee of firm forward orders delivered over a period so he/they can gear up the production.

Dealers on the other hand want to sell the product before they buy it and get paid in advance, once upon a time they might have invested in stock but these days with the internet and fast fashion changes forward orders from dealers are becoming a thing of the past.

As a start up, if you have a credible business plan there are quite a few sources of finance, some banks are still offering overdrafts at outrageous interest rates, there are web companies like crowdfunding, and funding circle which are not as expensive but not as cheap as money once was (Itself shocking in the light of low interest rates which have never been passed on to small entrepreneurs).

Yeah - I agree - I am not looking at this as something to pitch to investors as such. I am sure that could be a model but not one I would want to follow as I have had enough of that game, have cash and am just interested in whether a model of focusing sales in a clustered way enabled a small class from a niche builder to get traction.

Originally posted by Keith_Callaghan Originally posted by getafix there's a potential customer down here, he's been waiting ages to even see one, talks of some event might about to be going on at Herne Bay which is an hours drive and a day out of his life and unlikely even a chance to try it. I have nobody from the Kent area who is on my list of applicants for a demo sail of an H2. Perhaps you could advise your contact that he is very welcome to come to our national championships at Herne Bay, by arrangement, on 7-9 September to talk to H2 owners and have a sail in one.

That was me, and a chum of mine, we talked about it again tonight and will probably come over to Herne Bay on the friday so he can get a look, he only really knows about it from what I've told him, another phantom sailor fed up with being on his knees all the time, that boat would be ideal for him.

But it also shows the problem, how would he even know about it if I hadn't told him?


Edited by iGRF - 30 Aug 18 at 8:24pm