Team transforming boating industry

DRAPER — Boat lovers, start your engines.

With summer fast approaching and reservoirs rising, one father-and-son team is transforming the boating industry, using the Internet to bring together thousands of customers with dealers, wholesalers and manufacturers.

Welcome to iboats.com, perhaps the Internet's largest site for marine equipment and boats.

Bruno Vassel III and his son Bruno Vassel IV started the Draper-based business in 1998, at the height of the dot-com craze.

Seven years later, business is soaring. The company's first-year revenues were $58,000. In 2004, revenues reached the low eight-figures.

Last fall the MountainWest Capital Network named iboats.com Utah's fastest revenue growth company. It also ranks No. 48 on Inc. magazine's 2004 list of the top 500 fastest-growing privately held companies in North America. The company has 50 employees and is hiring.

This year sales again appear record-breaking.

"We anticipate growth this year over last year of probably at least an additional $3.5 million," Bruno Vassel III said. "Sales for the first quarter are up some 53 percent over the first quarter of last year."

Their secret? Instead of competing with dealers, iboats.com made friends, by designing Web sites for boat dealers throughout North America and the world, allowing dealers to list new and used boats on their sites.

"Because we get over 1.5 million people a month — that's not hits, that's people — coming to our Web sites, that's a huge amount of traffic," Vassel said. "When these dealers get a Web site from us they sell more boats, so they love us to death."

Jim Prindle, owner of Dam Bait Shop, a small bait-and-tackle shop in Wilmington, Ill., says his new boat sales have doubled since joining iboats.com.

"I have people e-mailing me from all over the United States to buy boats," Prindle said. "Of course, I wouldn't have that otherwise. It's increased our business from people in the Chicago area, people that normally wouldn't come down. It links the whole world together."

Prindle pays iboats.com a monthly fee for his Web site. If someone, for example, is searching for a 12-foot john boat on iboats.com or through an Internet search engine, Prindle's Web site pops up.

In addition to boat sales, the company offers more than 100,000 parts and accessories, partnering with manufacturers and large wholesalers. Customers purchase their products online through iboats.com. The order is then shipped to the customer directly from the manufacturer.