Jason Ruegg grew his yacht-flipping business from a college side hustle into a $68 million public firm – ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange last week as the largest pre-owned boat company in the US.
Ruegg’s Off The Hook Yachts buys $100 million worth of used boats each year and operates almost entirely online – calling itself “Carvana for boats.”
After its IPO raised $15 million in November, the company was able to hike its inventory financing floorplan to $60 million – more than doubling its purchasing power.
“It’s been a game-changer,” said Ruegg, 37, who started the business at 23 after years of boating around the Chesapeake Bay with family and friends – dragging his dad to every boat show he could to learn the ins and outs of the industry.
“By my senior year, I was doing like 30 or 40 boats a year, and I was studying to be an accountant,” the entrepreneur told The Post. “I did the math and I was like, ‘I’m making a lot more money on this than I’ll pretty much ever make being an accountant.’”
Now Off The Hook Yachts turns its inventory five times a year – far above industry standards – and makes offers on boats in as little as 30 minutes, sometimes closing a transaction on a new schooner in a single day, Ruegg said.
The company’s website relies on an AI system created by an in-house developer to match buyers with sellers, gathering information from sales on the site and across the internet.
“Think of it as a trading forum, where we have buyers on one side and a group of 60 brokers on the other side, constantly communicating throughout the platform 24/7,” explained CEO Brian John, 57, a Long Island native now living in Jupiter, Fla.
“The system has gotten so smart, it connects the dots. It’ll connect brokers and say, ‘Hey, we just got this boat into inventory, you have a customer John Smith looking for a similar boat, go show him this boat.’”
Off The Hook Yachts, or OTHY, also has its own in-house closing team that can get paperwork drawn up; its own finance arm, which can help buyers set up their financing; and does its own inspections.
“We’ll do everything for you, so we just streamline it, make it super easy,” Ruegg said.
The company marked a milestone last Tuesday when it parked a 40-foot boat on Wall Street and rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange – but starting a business at just 23 hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Ruegg.
After borrowing money from family and friends for the first few months of boat-flipping in college, he scored a “life-changing” million-dollar credit line from a bank.
“We were trying to get [a credit line] increase to 7 million, and I remember I waited and waited and that Friday, my rep finally called me and she was crying,” Ruegg told The Post.
“She’s like, ‘Not only did we not get your increase to 7 million, we decided we’re going to be getting out of the marine industry and they want you to liquidate your inventory and we’re going to be shutting your facility down.’ It was just heartbreaking,” he recounted.
Ruegg called his original bank rep, who had moved to a new bank after helping OTHY land the $1 million credit line, and flew down to Atlanta to meet with the institution’s CEO.
Within a month, Off The Hook Yachts had accepted an offer for a $12 million credit line.
“It was just incredible, the way that I [thought] my company’s going out of business, and within a month, instead we got almost double the amount of money we were looking for,” Ruegg said.
Despite consumers reporting higher levels of economic anxiety, business is booming for OTHY, which has been profitable every year for the past 13 years, according to John.
“When things get bad in the boating market … it’s actually better for us. New boat dealers aren’t set up to deal with used boats,” John said, calling the company’s business model “recession-proof.”
Ruegg said there’s been a notable shift in the marine industry, with customers who would typically buy new models turning to used boats.
“We’re selling them like crazy. We had the best December in the history of the company,” Ruegg told The Post. “We’ve had to adjust our prices … People are struggling and we understand that.”
The company is working on an expansion plan, adding onto its three locations in Wilmington, NC, with a “second headquarters” in Jupiter, Fla., which they expect to open Feb. 15.
But the firm is still mostly virtual, with brokers from upstate New York to Tennessee, according to John.
“Being a virtual company is really what we’re all about. We’re creating a Carvana for boats,” he said. “You can sell boats from anywhere.”
The company currently employs about 100 workers and is hoping to reach 1,000 by 2027, with 20,000 inventory units within a year – and there are no plans to slow down anytime soon, according to Ruegg.
