West Marine is placing a new focus on the Pro segment of its business with the launch of the first West Marine Pro brick-and-mortar store. A soft opening took place at the end of September in Calumet City, Ill., south of Chicago, with the store’s grand opening scheduled for Oct.11. It’s a nearly 10,000-square-foot location designed from the start with West Marine Pro customers at the forefront.

“The company, over the years, has had different strategies in the Pro business, which is our B2B business,” says West Marine CEO Chuck Rubin. “It’s always been a meaningful part of the business — it’s about a third of the company’s business — but it’s always been treated as a bit of an afterthought.”

Opening the Pro store marks a shift in West Marine’s focus, Rubin says. The more than 200 consumer stores that are tailored to the needs of boaters will not change, but the West Marine Pro store outside Chicago will be the first of two or three Pro stores that the company plans to open, to test ideas.

“The company is shifting to be Pro-led,” Rubin says. “Think about it like a Home Depot. We’re not getting rid of the consumer whatsoever, but as boats get more complicated, we do believe there’s a shift among customers from do-it-yourself to do-it-for-me. The Pro customer needs to have greater focus from West Marine than we have provided in the past.”

Generally speaking, the concept is that a West Marine Pro store will be easier and more convenient for industry professionals to navigate and shop. For instance, unlike boaters, Pro customers need things like bulk parts instead of apparel. Boaters can shop at the Pro store, too, but there will be more of a warehouse feel compared with traditional West Marine stores.

“Home Depot is probably the perfect example,” says Geoff Raymoure, vice president of West Marine Pro. “When you walk into a West Marine, you see clothing, you see lifestyle, and then there are parts for boats in the back. At a Home Depot, you go to the plumbing department, and you see plumbing. It’s the signage and the way the store feels. It’s not going to be, here’s how you choose product X. It’s going to be more, here’s where you find product X.”

The types of apparel in the Pro store will focus on what Pro customers need — foul-weather gear for working outside in a boatyard or marina as opposed to flip-flops. “This was a matter of making decisions around how we’re going to sort the store, how we’re going to build it,” Raymoure says. “The hardest part was, what are we going to leave out? In order for us to accomplish more of the boat parts, we had to have less of something else.”

The West Marine Pro store will have significant depth and breadth of inventory, since product displays don’t have to catch a boater’s eye. Product can be stacked for bulk purchases and sold with case-based pricing that gives Pro customers discounts for higher-quantity purchases. “Ten thousand square feet isn’t that big, but this is going to have more inventory in it than most of our 25,000-square-foot stores,” Raymoure says. “That’s because of how we’re building it and how we’re displaying the product. It’s a lot of product in a smaller space.”

Mike Hoye, vice president of West Marine store operations, says another key element to the Pro location will be delivery capabilities. Same-day delivery will be available at a certain distance from the store, as well as fast delivery across a wider geographic radius. Such delivery services are possible, in part, because a Pro store can be built closer to where yards and marinas are, as opposed to traditional consumer shopping hubs.

“It doesn’t require us to be in a heavy retail trade area, so it’s a little more cost-effective, and we can position closer to where the boating professionals are working,” Hoye says. “We’ll be able to go long distances on delivery too, potentially Indiana, Michigan, maybe even Wisconsin.”

Raymoure says that doing a faster, better job of catering to Pro clients in those states also marks a shift for the company. “Our company is heavily biased toward the two coasts. It’s where most of our stores are and where our distribution centers are,” Raymoure says. “Now we’ll have this mini-warehouse in this market that will let us serve those Great Lakes customers better.”

Hoye says the region is ripe for the level of West Marine Pro business that the company is aiming to provide. “There are a lot of wholesale distributors, some in the area — Land ’N’ Sea, Donovan’s are some of our competitors,” Hoye says. “They use a warehouse model, and this will be that on steroids.”

The West Marine team last year began talking about updating its strategy to better serve Pro customers, Rubin says. The company has added salespeople, a call center and delivery capabilities that will all support the broader Pro vision. The Pro store will have buy-online with in-store pickup, as well as curbside pickup. The infrastructure to provide those services is already in place.

Later this year, Rubin says, West Marine will relaunch its Pro website and create a Pro app, all with a similar vision in mind. “Today, it looks and feels like a consumer site,” Rubin says of the Pro website. “It will get reskinned to look and shop like a Pro customer shops.”

The West Marine Pro app, Rubin adds, will be something an industry person can tap on a smartphone or tablet while working on a boat — perhaps after realizing that a certain part for the day’s job is missing. The app will let the Pro customer order without leaving the worksite and potentially have the part delivered that same day.

“We want customers on the water as fast as they can be,” Rubin says. “That means we want to get that part to the Pro customer. The sooner we get the Pro customer that part, the sooner the boater is back out on the water.”