Erick Pinzon did not set out to build an electric boat dealership. He and his business partner Erin Gatling, were looking for a small apartment complex. Then she found a marina and suggested a different kind of property investment: buy it, add Airbnb houseboats and make the numbers work.

Erick knew real estate, his partner knew boating. It seemed worth exploring.

The houseboat plan stalled over zoning and a rental fleet became the next idea. But Erick, a former BMW technician who had moved into electric vehicles at Tesla, had one condition.

He had grown up fixing things. He did not want to spend his leisure time doing it, and he was reluctant to build a business around the maintenance demands of combustion engines.

His partner suggested looking at electric boats, and that conversation became the starting point for Electrified Marina.

Speaking at the Cannes Yachting Festival for Series Two of the Founder Podcast, Erick described a business shaped by successive pivots: from property to rentals, from rentals to sales, and now towards a wider network helping customers make the move to electric boating.

“None of it was planned,” he says. “We just kept pivoting.”

The electric car guy meets the boating world

Erick is quick to acknowledge that he arrived without decades of marine experience. “I got my boating licence when we got the LLC for the business,” he says.

His business partner brought a sailing background, whilst Erick brought an enthusiasm for electric propulsion that had begun with a ride in a Tesla Roadster in 2011.

At the time, he was working at BMW. The experience convinced him that electric vehicles offered something worth leaving an established job to pursue. The attraction was rooted in engineering: fewer moving parts, fewer wearing components and a different approach to maintenance.

That preference extended beyond cars. His motorcycle was electric, so was his landscaping equipment. When the marina venture began, electric boats felt like a natural fit.

Choosing which business to build

Electrified Marina began taking shape around the end of 2021 and early 2022, initially with rentals at its centre.

After roughly two years, Erick and the team faced a decision. Sales and electric repowers were gaining momentum, but they could not give both the rental operation and the dealership the attention they needed.

They chose sales. The shift reflected their view of where the business could scale and where they could have the greatest influence on the market.

By the Cannes interview, Erick described representing more than 20 brands across the business, with activities spanning sales, service and converting existing boats to electric propulsion.

It was a long way from the original property plan. It also brought a challenge that would come to define the company: selling an unfamiliar technology takes considerably more work than displaying a boat and waiting for a buyer.

Finding the right use case

Erick’s enthusiasm for electric boating comes with an important qualification. Battery capacity, range and the way an owner uses a boat all matter. He sees clear opportunities in shorter trips, lake boating and tender journeys between an anchorage and shore. Other applications remain harder to serve.

“There’s a lot of people that don’t go very far on their boat,” he says.

His approach starts with understanding those patterns. How far does the customer travel? Where will they keep the boat? What charging facilities do they have? What do they expect from a day on the water?

For the right owner, he believes electric propulsion can make boating easier and more enjoyable, with reduced maintenance demands and a quieter experience. The environmental benefit adds to that appeal.

He also recognises that enthusiasm alone cannot close every gap. During the interview, he described customers with substantial budgets and specific performance requirements for whom a suitable electric boat was still unavailable.

Matching expectations to what the technology can deliver is part of the job.

Education before the sale

At a conventional dealership, a customer may already know the brand, understand the propulsion system and be ready to move up to the next model.

Erick’s customers often arrive with a different set of questions: what’s the battery capacity? Charging speed? Range? Software? Warranty? Support?

Some are electric vehicle owners with detailed technical knowledge, but others are first-time boat buyers who need guidance on both boating and electric propulsion.

“There’s so much education,” he says. “The sales cycle is so long.”

Even a seemingly straightforward question from a customer, such as “how long will the boat take to charge?” requires more information. It depends on the customer’s dock power supply, the boat and the broader infrastructure available to it. Understanding that combination is one reason Erick believes specialist knowledge matters.

It also places demands on his team. Representing multiple manufacturers means learning a broad range of products, often for customers who have already researched the specifications closely.

A choice of boats, with the customer at the centre

Electrified Marina’s approach is to represent multiple brands. Erick wants the team to be able to recommend a boat around the owner’s requirements, whether that means a small lake cruiser, a coastal boat or an electric repower.

“We like to be brand agnostic,” he says, “because everybody’s use case is going to be different.”

The comparison extends beyond size and performance, because charging capabilities, service arrangements, warranties and budgets can all affect which product is appropriate. Offering that choice creates complexity for the dealership, but Erick sees it as central to serving customers well.

It also gives manufacturers a route to buyers who need to see the boat, ask questions and experience it on the water before making a decision. A manufacturer selling directly cannot be present in every market, and a local specialist can help bridge that distance.

Bringing new people into boating

One of the patterns Erick finds most encouraging is who comes through the door. “Our average buyer is now considering boating because it’s electric,” he says.

For some customers, the perceived demands of conventional boat ownership had been a reason to stay away. They wanted time on the water without the maintenance worries they associated with an engine. Erick sees that as an opportunity to bring more people into the market.

He is careful to acknowledge that electric propulsion does not remove every responsibility of owning a boat. Hulls, onboard equipment and other systems still need attention, but reducing powertrain maintenance can change how ownership feels.

That is the proposition he wants customers to understand: “It’s just better boating.”

Turning experience into a playbook

The next stage of Electrified Marina’s development is about making its experience available beyond one location. At Cannes, Erick described licensing discussions with rental operators, marine service businesses and prospective partners in other markets.

Some wanted to add electric boat sales to an existing business, others were already carrying out electrical refits and wanted to move into propulsion conversions.

The idea is to give those partners access to the knowledge and processes the team has developed, rather than asking each new operator to work everything out from scratch.

“I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars learning what not to do,” Erick says.

He also discussed raising capital through a SAFE to support expansion into further cities, with international conversations under way.

Those ambitions sit alongside the reality of an early market. Education, marketing and building familiarity with emerging brands require substantial work before they produce a sale.

Getting more people on the water

Erick is optimistic about growth, but realistic about the time required for electric boating to become mainstream. Lower prices, more available boats and greater awareness all help – so do rental fleets, boat clubs and opportunities to try the products.

“We need exposure,” he says.

His own business offers a measure of that progress. At Cannes, he expected Electrified Marina to move around 40 to 50 units during the year, across a mix of boats, personal watercraft and repower projects.

That was a forecast, rather than a completed sales figure. It nevertheless reflected how far the business had travelled from a few rental boats intended to help a marina pay its way.

Erick repeatedly returns to the prospect of looking back on this period. It is exciting, demanding and full of uncertainty. Some customers are ready before the products they want exist. Some manufacturers need help finding their buyers. The dealership is working between the two.

What began with a property search has become a business helping that market take shape.

Erick did not enter boating with a grand plan to transform it. He found a route in, kept responding to what he learned and discovered a role he wanted to build.

Erick Pinzon was interviewed as part of Series Two of the Founder Podcast, a collaboration between the Ben Taylor Podcast, Yachting Ventures and Marine Industry News, filmed at the Cannes Yachting Festival in 2026.