We went looking and found more than a million boats are registered in the state, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
WATCH BELOW: 'When a boat pops up, they know someone in their system is looking for it,' Brian John tells WPTV
Boating is big business, and a big purchase. While you can buy a car now with the click of a mouse, would you do the same thing for a boat?
I spoke with one entrepreneur hoping to make a big splash in the area.
Brian John showed me a 53-foot center console Suenos he has for sale. John is the CEO of Off The Hook Yacht Sales, the largest wholesaler of boats in America. The company is planning to open a new headquarters in Jupiter before the end of the year. John tells me in this economy, used boat sales have soared.
“Because of interest rate hikes and things like that, the new boat market has been terrible, where we’ve really excelled over the last couple of years," he said.
I learned the company uses a proprietary AI sales system to match boaters with their boats.
“When a boat pops up, they know someone in their system is looking for it. It tells the sales rep, this guy is looking for this boat, here it is, matches them together, alerts the sales rep," said John.
But John said they’re going to give the public similar access to the program.
“It’ll make the boat buying process seamless. We’ll have a bot, or whatever it maybe, and when they want to buy a boat, a bot will walk them through the process.”
In essence, one click towards becoming a captain. John tells me they’ve made sales where a buyer has purchased a boat, sight unseen.
I went out to Burt Reynolds Park to talk with boaters to see what they thought of the idea.
“I can appreciate outsourcing the mental processing to a computer. That would be a lot easier than to obsess and wait a year or two to find 'the one,'" said Holly Frisosky.
“I want to see the boat in person, I want to touch the boat," said Jackson Fairchild.
While Jackson Fairchild had some reservations, he did use the internet to buy his most recent boat two years ago on Facebook Marketplace.
"Called the person who was posting it, had a few conversations. Took a test drive and that’s how it worked,” Fairchild said.
Off the Hook Yachts hopes to improve its’ revenue by 40% this year and in the next couple of weeks, it plans to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.
