See It, Like It, Rent It: Siliri looks to float your boat

What would you do in a state with 15,000 recorded lakes but no way to finance a boat? Welcome to your 2014 summer pastime with Siliri boat rentals … and just in time for the outdoor vacation season.

Siliri, which is short for “See It, Like It, Rent It,” is a peer-to-peer boat rental website servicing the $2-billion recreational boating industry in Wisconsin by allowing boat owners to list their boats for rental.

With the goal of tapping into an underserviced market, entrepreneurs Thom Lemmenes and Warrick Bell molded Siliri to benefit both renters and owners, without taking on large capital costs for the company.

“People want to get in the lake, and we want to make it easier for people,” Lemmenes said. “Traditional logistics are a nightmare.”

Co-founder Lemmenes has been on the ownership side of boat rentals for 13 years and Bell has a strong marketing and sales background. Combined with their passion for Wisconsin summers on the lake, Bell and Lemmenes seek to provide young to middle-aged families the opportunity to use a boat rental for a specified time and return it to the owner.

“Our target market for renters is 30- to 55-year-old married couples with children spending time on Wisconsin lakes,” Lemmenes said. “This is the demographic that spends the largest amount of money on recreational goods rental. Roughly half of these people will be tourists from out of state.”

To launch Siliri’s website, Lemmenes ran a beta test a few summers ago with positive reviews from users and owners alike.

They also have broad contacts from more than 14 years of business in Wisconsin. Local publications will play a large role in advertising to untapped communities, as they do for other peer-to-peer rental companies such as Airbnb.

Unlike the traditional boat rental market, Siliri does not have costs of lakefront property or owning boats, instead leaving that to customers who already have it. About 60 percent of the rental revenue goes directly to the owner, with Siliri retaining the other 40 percent to cover insurance and operational costs.

Rental cost is determined by an algorithm taking into account boat size, horsepower, condition and length of rental.

This provides a vast variety of watercraft, on more lakes, and with more flexible rental agreements than traditional renting. Renters’ identities are verified and there is a feedback option on the website where renters can leave reviews for owners, much like a product on Amazon. Reviews build after each rental and so can the trust between both renters and owners.

Siliri aims to remove the middle man, allowing owners to list their rentals, or renters to search for the perfect vessel for their vacation on Wisconsin’s 15,000 lakes.

“Own the experience… rent the boat,” Lemmenes said. The company was a semi-finalist in the 2014 Governor’s Business Plan Contest and is seeking $200,000 in investment capital to expand.

— By Amanda Halverson, for WisBusiness.com . Halvorson recently graduated from the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communication.