Boatparts: How the online store uses Treyd to time the seasons

The background

"It's no surprise that I ended up working with boats," says Lars. He's always been a boat person, and back in the 90's, he noticed how expensive boat parts were, and decided to import them directly instead – and thus, Boatparts was born. This was long before e-commerce was the default.

What started as a hobby quickly found its audience. Norway has a strong boating culture, and Lars made sure that enthusiasts could find what they needed. Boatparts has grown steadily ever since, and is now the largest pure-play online actor in Norway for motor parts and related products.

Built around the seasons

The boat business in Norway is intensely seasonal. The season kicks off around Easter and winds down in September – and once the snow arrives, it's undoubtedly over. That creates a very specific cash flow challenge: Boatparts needs to place large purchase orders months before the season starts, with goods arriving from Korea, Taiwan, Spain, and Italy on long lead times.

"We need to time things very carefully," Lars explains. "We order goods in September for delivery in April – but sometimes those goods don't arrive until the end of June. That's inventory we should have been selling, and it ties up a lot of capital."

The company imports 98% of what it sells, and managing the gap between order placement, delivery, and revenue collection requires both discipline and the right financial tools. With a bank overdraft facility that often gets fully drawn just keeping operations running through the off-season, Boatparts needed something more.

Timing is everything

Treyd first reached out to Lars in 2024, and after an initial period of light use, Boatparts has steadily increased its reliance on the facility. The appeal is specific and practical: the ability to place larger orders at the right time, with up to 150 days to repay.

Lars has found a rhythm that works particularly well for his business. He places orders using Treyd's financing, times deliveries so that goods arrive early in the season, and calculates that the bulk of the inventory will have sold before the 150-day payment window closes. If cash comes in earlier and he wants to pay down the invoice sooner, he can – and he gets the unused portion of the fee refunded.

This flexibility turns Treyd into something more than just a credit facility – it's a planning tool. Lars uses his own cash and overdraft for the 30% deposits typically required at the time of ordering, and Treyd covers the larger balance due on shipment. It's a clean division of financial resources that lets both work harder.

A platform that keeps up

Lars handles the Treyd orders himself and describes the platform as straightforward to use. Orders are easy to place, and when additional information is needed for a new country or supplier, the system flags it clearly.

When asked to compare Treyd with a traditional bank overdraft, Lars is pragmatic: the key difference is that Treyd is tied to supplier invoices, while an overdraft can be used for anything. For Boatparts, that's fine – the use case is inventory, and for inventory, it works.

What's next

The biggest impact Treyd has had isn't in the raw order numbers – it's in what Boatparts has been able to do with the working capital freed up elsewhere. By financing inventory purchases through Treyd rather than drawing on its own cash reserves, the business has been able to invest in rebuilding and improving its website.

"We're not as vulnerable to having to use large amounts of liquid capital for inventory," Lars says. "And for us, that means that we've been able to get our web solution finished. The improvements we've made from 2025 to 2026 – I expect those to drive around a 25% increase in turnover."

With a revenue budget of 26 MNOK for 2026 – up from 16 MNOK in 2025 – Boatparts is entering its next growth phase. And Treyd, Lars says, will be a bigger part of the toolkit going forward.