see west marine ltd. peel engineering not to be confused with west marin . west marine type public nasdaq wmar industry specialty retail and wholesale founded 1968 headquarters watsonville california number of locations 278 1 key people randy repass founder matt hyde president & ceo products boating supply number of employees 5 000 varies by season website www.westmarine.com west marine is an american company based in watsonville california which operates a chain of boating supply and fishing retail stores . the company has nearly 300 retail stores in north america including puerto rico and canada and previously had seven franchised stores in turkey . contents 1 history 2 operations 3 references 4 external links history edit the company was founded in 1968 by randy repass in sunnyvale california with the name west coast ropes selling nylon rope from his garage . the first retail west coast ropes store opened in 1975 in palo alto california . with the acquisition of assets from west products in 1977 the company changed its name to west marine products inc. in 1978 west marine established a wholesale division called port supply . in 1991 the first west marine stores opened on the east coast of the united states in miami and annapolis and in 1993 the company went public on the nasdaq exchange symbol wmar . in 1996 west marine merged with e & b marine to target a larger customer base of power boat enthusiasts . in 2003 the company acquired the boatu.s . product division . by 2009 the company was more than three times as large as its nearest competitor boater s world which closed that year shutting all its stores nationwide . in december 2007 geoff eisenberg replaced peter harris as the company s president and chief executive officer . 2 in april 2012 the company announced that eisenberg planned to resign . in june 2012 matt hyde a 26 year veteran of rei became the new president and ceo . 3 matt hyde joined west marine in june 2012 as chief executive officer and president . previously matt served as executive vice president of rei where he was responsible for marketing direct sales real estate and retail . operations edit west marine currently provides over 75 000 products online in stores and via mail order catalog . in july 2008 west marine opened its first franchise store in istanbul turkey . the newly formed company east marine denizcilik ve turizm a. trades as west marine turkey and is majority owned by rahmi ko and i brahim yaz c . in march 2009 the second store was opened in kalam and june 2009 saw the opening of the third franchise store in bodrum . the fourth store in marmaris opened in october 2010 with more stores planned around the coast of turkey . on january 1st 2015 all seven west marine franchise stores in turkey separated from west marine and became eastmarine . 4 west marine will be closing all of their canadian stores by 2019 as their leases expire seven of the ten stores in canada leases expire in 2015 5 6 references edit west marine to open world s largest boating superstore in fort lauderdale the yachting capital of the world usa . west marine appoints geoff eisenberg as president and ceo to succeed peter harris . bym product and industry news . december 11 2007 . retrieved january 10 2013 . matthew hyde to succeed geoff eisenberg as president and chief executive officer of west marine . west marine press releases . may 17 2012 . retrieved january 10 2013 . http www.eastmarine.com.tr t hakkimizda west marine announces canadian store closures . west marine closing canadian locations . external links edit west marine official website west marine turkey turkish only retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title west marine & oldid 736431425 categories companies based in santa cruz county californiawatsonville californiacompanies listed on nasdaqhidden categories pages using infobox company with unsupported parametersofficial website different in wikidata and wikipedia navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 27 august 2016 at 12 53 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view