Who owns yachtworld?

[krush]

Who owns yachtworld.com? Seems to be somebody got in early and market penetration and has had a cash cow for the last 15+ years?!?

[Boatsb]

They bought a few competitors over the years like mls did in real estate.

I believe they still have 2 or 3 other companies tied to them.

[Boatsb]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boats_Group

[jim rosenthal]

One of these is the group that owns or owned AutoTrader, I think.

[SeaEric]

YachtWorld began in the late 90's. It was started by the Cobalt Group in Seattle, an internet marketing company focused on the car business. It spun off to it's own company (likely sold) a few years later. In the 2000's YachtWorld was purchased by Dominion Media the Trader Publications organization. Dominion, headquartered in Virginia had a well established long history of mediocrity. The marine industry was quite concerned about that acquisition. Luckily, YachtWorld sortof bumped along while Dominion milked it for cash by gradually raising the membership fees and didn't spend a dime on upgrading infrastructure. Last year in June, "Dominion Marine Media" was purchased by a private equity firm and "Boatsgroup" was born. Headquarters has been moved to Miami and most all of the Virginia employees got the ax. Lots of new people have come in to finally figure out that YachtWorld infrastructure was held together with duct tape, baling twine and not much else. The new group has set about rebuilding the "back end" of the operation. In the meantime, an up and coming competitor "YachtCloser" was seriously threatening YW's MLS position with a (IMHO) much better mousetrap. As could be predicted, Boatsgroup purchased YachtCloser and have begun merging their operation in to Boatsgoup. It was my sincere hope that the acquisition of much better YachtCloser systems would "pull up" the technology at YW. Unfortunately it seems like perhaps the opposite is happening. Other than this, I have no information or opinion.