"We have a great business model, but she continuously made it better," he said, referring to how she turned around the business before she decided to buy a franchise with her partner. "That was the last time I questioned Lisa Almeida." "Yes, we went up there to fire her because she wasn’t meeting her numbers," he recalled. The city of Jacksonville also awarded the company, the best boat club of the year, four years in a row since 2017.
When she and Seelig won the franchise of the year award in 2017, he shared the story. John Giglio, Almeida's former boss who hired her and wanted to fire her soon afterward, is among her greatest fans. We've used the membership in different cities on vacation too." It's really that easy, and we can do it anytime. We spend the day on the water and return the boat. We make a reservation at three different locations and pick up a clean, fueled boat. "Owning a boat is extremely expensive, so the concept of hassle-free boating works for us. Here we enjoy boating year-round. We came from New Jersey where we were generally only able to enjoy the water for about four months." We were able to get out and enjoy the fresh air. "We were especially happy about our membership during the pandemic. "It's truly one of the best decisions we've ever made," said. Jackie Resh, 56, said she and her husband, Gary, have been members of the boat club since 2009, and she's thrilled about the service and working with Freedom Boat Club employees. "So we really had to manage the number of members that were coming and leaving." Creating fans is a result of hard work "We could have probably sold 40 to 50 memberships in a month, but we couldn’t add that many boats because we couldn’t get equipment," Almeida said.
The business keeps a strict 10 to 1 ratio, meaning that for every 10 members another boat is added to the fleet. More people than ever wanted to get a boat club membership. Soon after the partners felt like they had everything under control, they saw a different challenge. "When we closed, it opened up the door to see weaknesses in our business that we didn’t even know we had." “The pandemic forced us to look at all of our processes,” Almeida said. The company was not able to open for six weeks. But during that time, they worked on processes that included ways to keep the boats sanitized while being used by different people. Meanwhile, the company's ratings dipped for the first time. We didn't want to mess around by taking any shortcuts." I wanted to know how employees and members would be protected. "At the same time that it was scary to think about the business, I was facing my own fears about COVID. The company prorated the number of days lost when the business was shut down and spread it out over the year so that the business wasn't impacted financially all at once. Financially we knew that we couldn’t afford to not charge members. “It was all new territory and initially, we just didn’t know what to do. It was like this perfect storm,” she said. “Members were mad, and we understood their frustration. At the same time, Almeida said everyone else was on the water, from individuals to competing companies. COVID changed everythingįollowing corporate decisions, Freedom Boat Club was closed for six weeks soon after COVID started. People not wanting to make that big purchase are often turning to boat clubs. Despite pandemic-caused supply chain disruptions, the continuing popularity of boating has caused boat prices to continue to rise. I reached out to Freedom Boat Club because boating overall is among industries that experienced an uptick in business during the pandemic.īased on various boating platforms, the last two years have been very good for the boating industry. Augustine. Now the company has 110 boats in three locations, including Jacksonville Beach. The partners went from working with just four boats in 2009 to operating 12 boats two years later with a second location at St. “We have a boat named ‘Perfect Partnership.’” We are complete opposites in every way, and that’s what makes our partnership so great,” she said. Most people who buy a business with a partner think that they should find someone who is similar to them. She turned to Kevin Seelig, a recent college graduate who worked for her at the time at the Julington Creek and St. After a lot of consideration, she decided to buy the business with a partner who was good at doing everything that she didn’t enjoy doing.
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