Starting a Business on the High Seas

SeaBoard Media Ltd is Robinson's business, a variation of the advertising by airplane concept. For example, say you're at a beach or an amusement park, and when you look up, some little plane is pulling around a sign advertising insurance or maybe a local restaurant. This is the same thing, only the SeaBoard is a boat that passes by the crowded masses on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland.

Robinson borrowed an old, existing idea -- advertising by plane and boat -- and married a fairly new technology to it. The SeaBoard, a 72-foot vessel, displays its advertising on a 72-inch digital billboard.

Robinson started finessing his idea into a business plan two years ago when not just the economy was good, but the advertising industry was more or less humming along. So you can see where this story is going.

"It was a very scary thing to have this all in the works and then have the economy stumble as it did," says Robinson, whose boat and signs -- there is one giant digital billboard on each side of the boat -- were finished last October. The financial meltdown that kicked the recession into full gear occurred just a month before, on September 15, 2008, when Lehman Bros. imploded, and like the first in a line of dominos, began knocking everything over.

"When the wheels were set in motion for this business, everything was rosy," recalls Robinson, "but then last Fall, I remember seeing that some of the publicly-held outdoor advertising companies, their stocks had dropped 70 percent during that time."

Making matters even more frustrating, Robinson, who had come up with the idea for his business while completing his MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, had been planning on putting the SeaBoard into the water last summer. "But getting all of the components for the digital screen and boat delayed us -- for instance, the structure to support the signs had to be constructed with custom milled beams."

And that's really what should make Robinson's business so interesting to other business owners. What he does isn't easy. It only looks like fun in the sun. In fact, The Washington Post recently featured an entertaining profile about Robinson that did make it seem like he's truly living the life compared to the nation's cubicle-dwellers.

"He is a T-shirt-and-flip-flops kind of guy," wrote the Post's John Kelly in a bit of beautiful writing: "Which explains why -- while his classmates are slowly dying from Vitamin D deficiencies -- the 29-year-old eases a custom-built, 72-foot, twin engine catamaran away from a dock in West Ocean City."

But while Robinson's view from the "office" is undeniably scenic and surreal to land lubbers, he says that the actual running of the business isn't so glamorous. He kind of misses a regular workspace when it comes to surfing the web on actual surf. "Most of the season, I've been at the laptop all day long, designing ads and bringing in new contracts, sitting at a desk chair, trying to hold onto the desk, trying to stop myself from flying across the floor," says Robinson.

And because Robinson knows that the audience won't be in Ocean City after Labor Day, he is in the midst of determining the feasibility of taking his business south and lining up advertisers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. He isn't ready to divulge what he's making in the business -- "clearly, there's room for improvement," says Robinson, who has only been steering his company in chartered waters since last May. But he definitely sees this as a business that can evolve and expand, and certainly he has attracted advertisers, like Miller Lite and Domino's Pizza.

Someday, he admits, "I hope to have a whole fleet of these things in every market that makes sense. But I'm still thinking that through. Do I want to franchise? Or do I want to own all of them? Or maybe I'll get owner-operator partners in these markets?"

It isn't, after all, an easy business to build. For his first ship, Robinson sought out investors, finding two of them, who were willing to sink over a million dollars into his venture. After all, if you think high-definition plasma TVs are expensive, try digital billboards with screens showcasing 89,600 pixels.

Robinson also seems to be a bit of a romantic. He makes a little extra cash by flashing brief, personal messages for individuals. For instance, if you'd like to have the boat swing by and advertise a marriage proposal to your loved one, Robinson's your guy, and it'll cost you $50. Granted, maybe that's just what the market can bear, but it does seem like a pretty reasonable price for a love-struck suitor who wants to make a big impression on his girlfriend. Robinson may be a businessman who works in the ocean, but he isn't a pirate.