I am currantly working in a marine service company. We want to create some more passive income. We want to set up an online marine store on the website, but we don't want to sell common stuff. We are looking for marine products that may not be available in the states but are common overseas.

So far we have Dock Catchers which are very cool. I also want my boss to offer backing plate kits for Pearsons. The decks on those things rot out and the stanchens move. He has created a really cool backing plate kit that not only looks good but makes the stanchens rock hard. You can hang off them with the plates installed. I think something like this would do good online.

So say we find product X in Japan or Italy how would one go about getting product X to the market in this country?

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

If it is for a sailboat, it's going to cost about 4 times more than if the same product was for an automobile.
The sailboat community seems pretty international already. Are there a lot of products available overseas but not in the US? I thought I saw Dock Catchers in a catalog recently??

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Maybe you should buy a certain quantity and see if it sells well. If it does, you can certainly plance anotehr other and another. Maybe have a website and pay for it to be linked to the google or yahoo, etc, etc, search engines and see how far it goes?

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Before you start thinking that a product is not sold in the US, you might want to go
through both the Defender catalog and the West Marine catalog. As for backing plates,
I recently installed all new backing plates on the pulpit on the Ranger 26. Believe it or
not I used carbon fibre key fobs. I know it sounds stupid but it worked great. I sanded
of the varnish the the manufacturer but on to make it look nice and shiny, then recoated with west system epoxy then bonded the fobs to the underside of the deck
using west system epoxy then drilled new holes for the pulpit. Cheap, quick, lighweight and worked well.

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One thing to consider when selling safety gear (life jackets, immersion suits, etc) is the Type Approval. I was at a seminar at ABS (American Bureau of Shipping) in Houston last week. Safety items manufactured in Asia are commonly being sold with counterfeit Type Approvals. One of the latest scams is immersion suits that supposedly meet the requirements for life jackets that mean you float face up. ABS has seen no immersion suit that meets this requirement, yet suits are being sold with phony Type Approvals that say they meet the requirement. The Chinese are by far the worst offfender.

The backing plates are made out of stainless steel and polished to perfection. Since Pearsons use inner cabin liners it is very hard to tighten the stanchens. if you stick a plate on the inside and on the deck and create a sandwich then you have something.

"Before you start thinking that a product is not sold in the US, you might want to go
through both the Defender catalog and the West Marine catalog."

I have been in this industry for years I know the West Marine/Port Supply, Defender, APS, Lewis, Kellogg, Donovan, Hall, Hamilton, Jamestown, Land and Sea, and Oyster bay catalogs front and back. Dock Catchers are a regional product. They are made in a guys basement in Maine and have taken off in the past couple of years. I forget his name I talked to him awhile back about them. The margin on them is nice and they are extremly popular. I think be better exposure the market is their.

You guys are right though this industry is already pretty international so their isn't much that isn't available state side. Well except for some real awome bottom paints that the EPA would shoot you if you had them in this country!

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

No I didn't, West Marine bought Boat US. They just keep the name around.

West Marine/Port Supply/Boat US are one in the same.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

I keep waiting for West Marine to start closing some of the Boat US stores. In the
Alameda/ Oakland area there are two West Marine stores and a Boat US within a couple of miles of each other, not to mention Svendsen's. Seems like the market is saturated
with recreational boating supply stores. I always try to shop at either Svendsens if I need something immediately or Defender if I can wait. I avoid West Marine like the plague.

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I didn't know that, about Boat US. Man, everybody is buying everybody.

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http://www.backwoodsmanmag.com

I think West Marine is keeping Boat US alive for the general public for a few reasons:
1. The Boat US name has value.
2. West doesn't want to be called a monopoly.

West Marine is one of my direct competitors but I will give credit where credit is due. They run a tight ship and are a decent store. Most seem to be staffed by pretty smart people. However in the past year West has been jacking up their prices.

The marine industry is being bought up by a few large companies.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200