New-look Arnold’s Boat Shop back in business

But rather than buy the entire business, the consortium has instead picked over the choice bits – including a Sydney warehouse full of unsold stock and the arnoldsboatshop.com.au website that will act as the virtual shopfront for consortium members.

The consortium said the website, which would adopt the business model of providing “fast, efficient ordering and dispatch across a massive range of products”, would replace a “series of new retail shopfronts” planned for the brand, and operate as a separate entity to the owners’ existing businesses.

However, the big benefit for the site’s new owners is the cache of stock that has sat idle in a warehouse since Arnold’s Boat Shop called in administrators in April this year. The new owners are now eyeing it to help fill stock shortages in their own businesses brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Waiting times for some marine products have blown out to weeks, months and in some cases, possibly a year,” a spokesman for the consortium said.

“Boaties are understandably unimpressed when told they have to wait unheard-of times for the arrival of parts, some of which are required before they can get their boats back on the water.

“Thanks to our acquisition of the unsold stock, as well as access to our existing resources, we will be able to cut those waiting times in some cases,” he said.

A key target for the new business is previous clients who visited the site for its “outstanding value-for-money offers, an increased diversity of products as well as efficient and transparent sales processes”.

Any customers who have inquiries relating to the business’s former owners, Nold Trading, can contact Andrew Blundell at Worrells Solvency & Forensic Accountants, the group called in as the administrator of the failed Arnold’s Boat Shop.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Australia’s marine industry hard, with product distribution and manufacturing shortages both creating shortages in everything from the fibreglass resin needed to build boats to the steel and aluminium to build the trailers that boats sit upon.

Marine electronics also have been hard hit, with chartplotters in increasingly shorter supply as the production-constrained chips needed to run them are diverted to the automotive industry.