LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Under a new agreement with eBay, boats.com's Premium Dealers will be able to place their boats on the eBay Motors with a few simple keystrokes.

"We are very pleased to be working with eBay", said Paul Rabe, president, coo and co-founder of boats.com. "Its leadership and expertise in dynamic marketplace environments coupled with our knowledge and experience in the leisure marine market has created a dynamic opportunity for all involved"

"The success of eBay Motors caused us to think about expanding into boating" said Stephanie Tilenius, vice president and general manager of eBay Motors. "We wanted to work with a company that held a leading presence and had strong relationships with those in the leisure marine industry, and boats.com was a great match for us. Together, we are offering an innovative new tool and resource for the marine marketplace to facilitate the buying and selling of boats and to help grow the online boating arena."

The dynamic environment of eBay Motors provides a marine industry solution comparable to the automotive industry's wholesale auction system; this new channel of distribution will allow dealers to take more boats on trade or on consignment with a higher level of confidence that there is a resale market for these boats. This new ability to take any boat on trade or consignment will directly result in a greater number of used and new boat sales. This new relationship will give dealers an extremely powerful suite of sales and marketing channels including a new and pre-owned listing on boats.com, an inventory listing exported to a dealership Web site and a dynamic marketing listing on eBay. Following its experience in the autos market, eBay Motors expects the majority of its marine listings to come from dealers and wholesalers.

"We want to facilitate more people participating in the recreational marine industry, and through relationships with organizations like eBay we enable boats.com users to reach an even larger audience than ever before," said Rabe. "The listings ?pushed' to eBay Motors by boats.com will be among the most professionally merchandised marine listings on their site. They will be tailored HTML listings rather than basic text listings".

In addition to the online activities surrounding the launch of the relationship, there are also live charity auctions planned for the forthcoming New York and Miami boat shows.