This year Boatshed.com – the world’s leading online yacht brokerage group with over 1.2m registered users – celebrates its 25th year.
Founded by Neil Chapman in 1999, what started as a one-man crusade to encourage boat owners to embrace e-commerce and buy and sell their vessels via the internet, has grown into a global phenomenon with thousands of daily site visitors worldwide. Boatshed.com’s site traffic has grown to such an extent, it is four times higher than its nearest UK competitor and double* its nearest US rival.
Described as the UK’s first online yacht broker, Boatshed.com has 12 UK-based staff supporting over 120 franchises and brokers in 80+ locations across 18 countries. Covering Europe, Asia, North America, South America and the Caribbean, they support Neil’s business model – to combine local knowledge and expertise with the best technology available.
The company’s transparent sales process, where brokers check and list boats for sale, posting videos and photos in full detail, works alongside data-driven and AI-supported dashboards and internal platforms, which track users’ behaviour, model preferences and best times to contact.
Neil said: “Boatshed.com has revolutionised boat sales; no other broker can track the behaviour of over a million active users and know who wants to talk about buying a boat now, who’s at the research stage and who wants to be left in peace.
“As Boatshed sails into its 25th year we are further developing our ‘friends of Boatshed’ strategic partners’ programme. This initiative shatters the traditional ‘sale, then silence’ narrative, creating a seamless bridge between brokers, service providers, like marinas, engineers and sailmakers, and excited new boat owners. We keep the conversation flowing during sales – ensuring smooth handovers and informed buyers – who because we’ve built trust, become long-term clients.
“My goal is for Boatshed.com to be represented in every port around the world. As tech continues to evolve and our global support grows, we look forward to what the next 25 years will bring.”
