Winter storage, booked from the sofa

Winter storage is one of the oldest services in boating. The boat goes ashore in autumn and back in the water in spring. In between, the owner phones the yard, the yard writes it in a book, and the manufacturer hears nothing about any of it.

On c.technology the same service runs in the manufacturer's app, on the vehicle it belongs to. In January, with the boats in the shed, that is where owners book their way back out.

How the owner books it

The owner opens the app that came with the boat, under the manufacturer's name, and picks a service: launch, preparation or winter storage. Storage is two bookings, one into storage and one back out. The owner chooses a day the yard offers and pays through Stripe checkout.

The yard gets the request with the boat attached: its history and its open error codes. A yard that knows about a weak battery before the boat comes out plans the job instead of finding it on the day.

The yard sets its own days

Each service belongs to the organisation that runs it, a dealer, a workshop or a service partner. That organisation picks the days it offers, day by day, and how many vehicles it takes per day. Into storage and out of storage have their own days and their own capacity. A full day is no longer offered, so nobody books a slot that does not exist.

When the job is done, it lands on the vehicle's record. The owner sees it in the app, the manufacturer sees it in the OEM Suite, and the next workshop that is given the vehicle finds it in the history. Nobody types it in twice.

Revenue on a vehicle sold years ago

For a manufacturer, the sale used to be the last time money changed hands with the owner. Bookable services change that. Connectivity and services go out at prices the manufacturer sets, per organisation, and the platform takes a fee on what is sold. The money is the manufacturer's.

There is a second gain. An owner who books the boat into storage every autumn and back out every spring opens the manufacturer's app at least twice a year, on a boat bought long ago. That is a customer relationship the manufacturer did not have before.

The services were built for boats first. They work for any vehicle that is stored, launched or prepared: motorcycles over winter, campers before a rental, e-bikes before a season.

How the services, the calendar and the prices work is on the services page. To see a booking from the owner's side and from the yard's, talk to our team.