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West Marine is an American company based in Watsonville, California which operates a chain of boating supply and fishing retail stores. They operate over 380 retail stores in North America.
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. West Marine merged with E&B Marine in 1996 to target a larger customer base of power boat enthusiasts. In 2003 they acquired the BoatU.S. Product Division and have since grown over three times as large as their nearest competitor, which was Boater’s World, before they went out of business and closed all stores nationwide in 2009. West Marine currently provides over 100,000 products online, in stores, and via mail-order catalog. In July of 2008, West Marine opened its first franchise store in Istanbul, Turkey. The newly setup company, East Marine Denizcilik ve Turizm A.Ş trades as West Marine Turkey and is majority owned by Rahmi Koç and İbrahim Yazıcı. June 2009 saw the opening of the second franchise store in, Bodrum, Turkey with more stores planned around the coast of Turkey. Fishkeeping is a popular hobby concerned with keeping fish in a home aquarium or garden pond. There is also a fishkeeping industry, as a branch of agriculture. 
An aquascaped freshwater aquarium
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : Wholesale of marine equipment and fishing articles |
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