1 September 2026
Marine Match new UK marketplace launches at Southampton International Boat Show this September, offering 200 founding places to marine professionals.
Founder Mark Bonnett explains why he built it: "Owners can't tell a good business from a confident one, and the good ones have no way to prove the difference".
Ask a boat owner what the worst part of ownership is and few say the weather. They say trying to get someone to call them back. Ask a marine business and you get the mirror image: a phone ringing with enquiries that go nowhere, jobs three hundred miles away, work done and unpaid.
No shortage of boats needing work, then, and no shortage of skilled people to do it. What's missing is a sensible way for the two to find each other, and a way for an owner to tell which is which.
What it is
Marine Match is an online marketplace connecting boat owners with vetted marine professionals across the UK and Channel Islands, covering fourteen trade categories and more than sixty specialisms, from engineering, electrics and coatings to rigging, sails, surveys and transport.
That granularity is the point. A rig surveyor and a sailmaker are not the same business, and an owner who posts “rigging” when they want a sail repaired wastes everybody's morning. Jobs route to the specialism, so what reaches you is work you actually do.
An owner posts a job. Verified professionals in that trade and area see it and submit a private quote. No public race to the bottom, no undercutting in front of an audience. The owner sees up to three quotes, picks one, and the job goes ahead. Bidding closes on a set day, so quotes don't drift.
The part the trade cares about
Every marine business I've spoken to while building this raised the same thing first: getting paid.
So the money is handled through Stripe. The owner pays up front, before work starts. Stripe holds it and releases it once the job is complete. Marine Match doesn't hold your money at any point. Owners accept it because their money isn't released until the work is done. You get to order parts and block out a week in the yard knowing the money exists.
That removes the two worst outcomes in the trade: the job that evaporates at settle-up, and the deposit nobody sees again.
No joining fee, no subscription, no charge for quoting. Commission applies only when a job is booked through the platform: 8% of the job value, reduced to 5% for six months for founding members. The customer pays a separate 3% booking fee on top of the quoted price, covering the payment handling. No tiers, no paid placement, no bidding for position.
This isn't lead generation. You're not buying contacts and hoping. You're quoting on a real job from a named owner, and you only pay if you win it and get paid.
Verification matters more than volume
Anyone can build a directory. Most fail the marine sector because they let anyone in, and within a year the good businesses have left, tired of competing with people who shouldn't be trading.
Marine Match verifies its professionals before they're listed. You submit qualifications, insurance and references, checked before you're given Verified Pro status. It isn't onerous, but it means the badge says something. It protects the businesses who do things properly, the ones carrying the right cover, the right tickets and a reputation built over twenty years.
I saw the difference on my own boat this month. My marina put me on to an engineer who genuinely knew the job, and it was night and day: the standard of the work, the communication, and the faults he caught before they became faults. That gap is what verification is protecting. If a marketplace won't defend it, it isn't worth being on.
And once earned, the badge is yours to use on letterheads, invoices, your website and your van. If you've done the work to get those qualifications, they should be on display rather than buried in a folder.
If you run a marina
Several hundred marinas, harbours, ports and chandlers are listed, with facilities, contacts and restrictions such as maximum LOA and draft.
Owners can also request berthing quotes through the platform, free of charge, and those enquiries go to the marinas covering that stretch of coast. No charge, no commission on a berth, no subscription. Just an owner actively looking for a berth.
Claiming your listing costs nothing. Some entries will be wrong, because the directory was built from public sources. If yours is, claim it and put it right.
Where the work comes from
The fair question any marine business will ask is: will there actually be jobs?
We launch this month, and I'd rather say that plainly than dress it up. What's already built is the part that takes longest: several hundred marinas, harbours and chandlers listed, verification running, and payments live through Stripe. What comes next is owners. The proposition is one every boat owner recognises: post once, get up to three quotes from verified people, know the money is safe.
The launch push runs through the Southampton Boat Show and into the winter, when owners plan spring work and our seasonal reminders nudge them into booking.
No volume promise, then. But early jobs won't be spread thin across a directory of thousands.
The founding 200
There are 200 founding places, and they open with this article.
To be clear what that caps: the platform is open to any verified marine business, and registration is free and stays free. The 200 limits the founding rate: 5% commission for six months instead of 8%, and a listing from launch while demand sits with a small pool. Once those places go, new professionals join at the standard rate.
Which means whoever reads this first has the run of it.
Why me?
I'm a boat owner and an offshore powerboat racer, not a technology person who spotted a gap in a spreadsheet. I've had the quotes that never arrive and the work that had to be done twice.
Marine Match isn't trying to replace the relationships this industry runs on. Most good businesses are busy because someone recommended them. It does the same job for owners who have nobody to ask.
Find us at the boat show
We're launching at the Southampton International Boat Show, 18–27 September. I'll be there for the opening weekend and again at the close, with the team on the floor throughout, so please drop by for a chat -I'd rather talk than send an email.
If you run a marine business and want one of the founding 200 places, sign up at marinematch.co.uk, or come and find me.