From Stellar to Storable

‍Marina World speaks to the general manager of Storable Marine about their rebrand from Molo/Stellar, expansion into the marina industry, trajectory of the company and the future of marina management software.

Could you give an introduction to Molo/Stellar and why was the decision taken to rebrand under the new name of Storable Marine? Will the company’s focus shift slightly or remain the same after the rebrand?

Molo and Stellar have been serving marina operators for years. Molo handles slip management and service operations, Stellar focuses on boat rentals and clubs. Bringing them together under Storable Marine gives operators one connected platform instead of piecing together separate tools.

Marina operators are juggling a lot. Slips, rentals, service, payments, customer communication. The rebrand reflects our commitment to building a system where all of that works together, backed by Storable's resources and deep technology expertise from self-storage and outdoor hospitality.

The focus stays the same: marinas, boat clubs, rentals, service operations. Molo will continue to power marina and service operations within Storable Marine, while Stellar becomes Storable Marine Rentals, still the go-to for rental and club operators. 

Why was now the right moment to consolidate Molo/Stellar under the Storable Marine?

We've had a few years now to integrate these products and teams. The technology is ready, the teams are aligned and our customers have been asking for tighter integration between the marina management and rental sides of the business.

Being part of Storable also means we can pull from what's worked in self-storage and outdoor hospitality. Things like dynamic pricing, automated marketing, better payment systems. Marina operators want those tools and now we have the infrastructure to deliver them faster. So, in that sense, the timing for this consolidation felt right.

‍What have been the key turning points in Molo/Stellar’s growth and how have those experiences shaped the vision for Storable Marine?‍

There have been a few moments that really stand out. Bringing Stellar into the fold was huge for us. That acquisition gave us the rental and club side of the business and set us on the path toward building something truly unified. Landing the full Suntex portfolio was another major milestone as it validated that we could serve large, complex operations at scale. More recently, Hinckley Yachts chose Molo to power their nine service locations up and down the US east coast. Hinckley operates at an exceptionally high level, and the bar for quality and usability in that environment is incredibly demanding.

Over the years, we've also brought on a number of enterprise groups such as Grove Point Marinas, Allied Strategic Partners, Topside Marinas, Integra Marinas and Nautical Boat Club. Each of those partnerships pushed us to level up and build something that could scale with their operations. 

All of those experiences have really shaped how we think about things now. We now genuinely understand the customer across the full spectrum. Whether you're running a single marina or managing a one-hundred-location portfolio, we've worked with you and understand your challenges. Molo and Stellar were built by people who know boats and that foundation remains central to who we are. Secondly, we've proven that enterprise-grade capabilities don't need to be reserved for the largest operators. A single-property marina can access the same powerful platform that major portfolios use and we can share best practices across our entire customer base.

What originally motivated the company to enter the marina space? How has the team’s understanding of the marina industry - particularly in the US - evolved since those early days?‍

Storable is focused on helping operators run their businesses efficiently. When we looked at the marine industry we saw a lot of parallels between marina operators’ day-to-day needs and the products and services we offered clients in our other industries. We wanted to make sure the management software we offered to marina operators was tailor-made for their needs and saw the ideal offerings to help marina operators in Molo & Stellar.

The industry has been incredibly welcoming and eager to use best-in-class tools to run their businesses. It’s been exciting to see the desire for technology and the partnership with our clients means that we’re consistently evolving our offerings to meet client needs. We understood the seasonality of marine businesses before we entered the market. Yes, our other industries are also quite seasonal, but perhaps we did not appreciate how focused operators can be during the summer months.

We are very optimistic about the US market. As I mentioned we’ve seen continued demand for technology and believe our close partnership with our clients and the evolving preferences of boaters will drive practical innovation for years to come. We see the marina market evolving to adopt hospitality best practices, including digital check-in, marketing and price automations, text message updates, consumer portals, and single-page shopping and checkout. We are also seeing a slow but ongoing adoption of artificial intelligence.

Beyond software, we see the marina industry investing in infrastructure as most marinas are now over 20 years old. To that end, many marinas are investing in the location as a destination, in restaurants, in bars and hosting live events such as concerts.

Finally, we notice an increased desire to engage fractional boaters to bring more people into boating and drive demand. Our main competition in the marina space is not the marina down the road, it is everything else anyone can do on a Saturday, such as camping, watching a movie or sporting events.

‍What are Storable Marine’s priorities over the next three to five years? Will you be focusing on consolidating your position in the US or looking at new markets, and why?

Marinas still lag behind other areas of hospitality, but that's where the opportunity is. There's a great deal that we can do to improve the boater experience and bring in real automation – things like pricing that actually responds to what's happening in the market, or letting people book and check in completely digitally. Those are big priorities for us.

We're staying focused on marinas. We're not trying to move into other industries or chase different markets. We are taking technology that Storable has already built and proven in their other businesses – things like AI reporting, digital marketing tools, website platforms, insurance products – and bringing that over to marina operators. There's no reason to build everything from scratch when we can adapt what already works.

What innovations or product developments can marina operators expect from Storable Marine in the near future, and how will these changes improve operations or guest experiences?

Most of what we're building comes down to two things: giving boaters more control over their own experience and helping operators automate the stuff that eats up their time.

On the boater side, we want people to be able to manage things without having to call the office or wait for someone. In rentals, that means editing bookings, paying and self-launching vessels without needing staff involvement. On the Molo side, the next version of our customer portal lets people update their boat information, go through onboarding digitally, set up automatic payments and all of that without needing help from staff.

For the operators, we're rolling out automation for pricing and marketing. Instead of manually tweaking rates or sending dozens of texts and emails every day, they can set rules and let the system handle it. We just launched bulk renewals too, which saves a ton of time. We're also adding things like mass meter reading and mass dock walks so those routine checks don't take all day.

And then there's AI. We're building out a platform AI chat, AI-driven reporting and a few other AI enhancements I can't get into yet. But it all comes back to the same idea: making things easier for our customers by letting their boaters do more independently and by automating the repetitive stuff that nobody wants to spend time on anyway.

How do you assess the US and global marina industries’ long-term evolution? What role do you intend for Storable Marine to play in this?

The marina industry has entered a maturation cycle but the market remains highly fragmented and dominated by small operators. I believe that people will gradually start adopting more technology while generational ownership transfers, labour shortages, rising costs and higher guest expectations will drive demand for more modern systems. 

I think that consolidation will be gradual but durable. The “mom & pop” ownership might persist but professional operators and multi-site portfolios will steadily grow in market share. In theory, this should increase demand for scalable platforms. We have already started seeing this with some big acquisitions in the US and Europe in particular. Of course, the fact that international marina markets are also fragmented with limited adoption of technology means there is long-term expansion potential beyond the US.

Our ambition is simple, we want to be the operating system that marinas run on. The marina management system remains our foundation but we’ve intentionally added capabilities that support increasingly complex operations. Marinas will need these as they scale, diversify and professionalise.

We also want to lead product consolidation in this category. Marinas have historically had to piece together separate tools for payments, websites, access control, insurance and so on. We're trying to bring those pieces together so operators have one platform instead of five different systems to deal with.

Long-term, we want to encourage operators to adopt more of what we offer. As I said earlier, as they mature and their operations get more sophisticated, they will need more advanced systems. Storable has great scale, expertise and reach and we intend to use that to help define what the marina industry looks like over the next decade.