Becoming a sailboat distributor/manufacturer

[diesels12]

My dream is to find an existing or start a sailboat manufacturing yard in either the Far East or Latin America, where labor is cheap and manufacture custom yachts for American buyers. I was a commercial truck dealer for many years and was involved with the introduction in the US marketplace with a Korean made truck that was not too succesful due to an unscrupulous importer, but I was the #1 dealer in the country for this truck for the 2 years they were in the market. Anyway the concept with sailboats is essentially the same as marketing a car or truck or any big ticket item so I feel I have the experience to start this venture. The ideal situation would be to find a manufacturer who is looking for a US distributor to market his product. With prices being as expensive as they are on yachts I feel there is a nice profit margin to be had.Does anyone have any feedback or interest in pursuing this as my knowledge is more in marketing than the technical aspects of boats.

John Degnan

[Chief Engineer]

I have had personal contacts with people who wanted or tried to do that.

Question "How do you make $1,000,000 in the Marine Industry?

Answer: "Start out with $2,500,000."

[Ex-Calif]

I'd love to get involved with this. I have lots of Asian contacts. Please send me the $2.5 million and I'll get the boatyard set up.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by diesels12

With prices being as expensive.... I feel there is a nice profit margin to be had.Does anyone have any feedback.... as my knowledge is more in marketing than the technical aspects of boats.

John Degnan

Just a little bit of free advice John from an actual sailor’s perspective….

People like you are considered….the Enemy!

[diesels12]

I am sure there are many people who have not been succesful in similiar ventures as in any business there are winners and losers. I am not looking to build a boat factory. The perfect situation for me would be to find a boat manufacturer who is looking for representation in the USA and become the sole distributor for that particular boat line. My plan would be to purchase a couple of boats for demonstration purposes and some marketing material and advertising space. Worst case business fails and I get stuck with a couple of boats. I would give one to my wife so I don't have to sail with her and I would have one for myself. Seriously, its an idea that would be based on not producing a boat without first selling it. I would not produce spec boats as that would be financial suicide.

[Chief Engineer]

I have some "Nigerian" contacts (I'll forward their e-mail addresses to you)

[delmarrey]

I have a friend who's brothers wife has a cousin that owns this junk yard that's for sale.

Seriously, there are so many boats out there for sale it would be like selling ice in Alaska.

[Ex-Calif]

Diesels - Sorry a bit about everyone taking the p&ss outta you. I normally try to maintain a postive attitude but in this case I'd like to point out some current road blocks.

- It's a terrible economic time to start a business selling new boats
- If I wanted a presence in the USA, why would I limit myself to one person and two boats - exclusive dealership
- I have a boat yard that has 12 boats a year in production. Let's say they are $500,000 boats. So lets' say I have about $4m tied up in inventory. Maybe the same again in fixed assets & equipment. I have 40 people on staff and a payroll of $80k per month. So let's say I have $250k in cash laying around for payroll. I also have 3 months of receivables @ $1.5m. So I have ~$10m tied up in my business.

My distribution network is basically the internet, boat show presence, sailing magazine advertising and you come and see the boat at the yard.

What does an exclusive dealer bring to the table?