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Hotboat.com - 2013: The year in review
I know its not quite year end yet, but I know the next few days and couple weeks will be hectic, so figured I'd better get this out now.
First of all, thank you all who have taken the time to sign up and contribute to our site. And I'm even going to thank those who've signed up and haven't yet posted, because I know eventually you will. So thank you all!!!
It's been a very busy year. I honestly can't believe its almost Christmas. This year has raced by so fast my heads still spinning. Even though the site already had its one year anniversary, I kind of look at Jan 1 as our first full year in operation. And what a year its been.
Early on it seemed it was everything we could do to keep this place from crashing. The initial issue with Network Solutions, then I think I signed up with some other host only to find out we would eventually have the same problems there. To finally signing up with GoDaddy. Even then we didn't do dedicated hosting and had some issues early on. It seems we've at least got that kink worked out, thank god.
Over the course of a year, our course has changed directions a few times. Hopefully for the better. I've posted a few visual aids to help in case you've missed some of our not so finer moments, and the corrections that were made. Keep in mind, this was a quickly evolving deal. Our first hats and cozies were ordered, printed, and shipped in 24hrs LOL. Our first T shirts were iron on's. Yeah, that's how desperate we were LOL.
So here you go:
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Anyone remember these? We printed this on banners we hung all over creation late last year. They were horrible LOL. To our surprise someone has a couple of these hanging in their garage, either that or they're in the trash. Well those didn't last long before we graduated to these:
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Another award winning design LOL. The original version of the site used this as the home page banner. At the time I thought it was badass :D
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With the help of Dennis, WMC & Wendi came up with this. I think all I did on this one was move the prop from the bottom to the side. What a difference a professional graphic designer makes. Thank you H20Ski2fast or whateverthehellyournameis :D
Here are a few of the proofs that didn't make the cut :D
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And then there was this.....
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Believe it or not, this was the first hotboat.com T shirt. I'm almost embarrassed to show this. Sometime last year Mrs HB and I went to one of the big car auctions in Vegas with our friends. I decided I was going to get some free TV time by standing on the stage for hours with my back turned to the TV cameras. LOL
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Sometime before the logo change, our real first edition T-shirt came out. And what a classic it was. I must admit, I selfishly featured my boat on the first edition T. Early on these were hot sellers and even today I think we get requests for the old skool shirts. Old skool huh?? LOL.
This was our 2nd edition T shirt. Pretty cool don't ya think? WMC, Wendi & Zubric to the rescue.
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And the latest design, badass for sure. It doesn't have my boat on it, but I still like it :D
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Some of you may never have seen this. Its also a collectors items. Way back (LOL) at the Long Beach Sprints, we had a page inserted in the program. A lot of people liked this, a few didn't. I thought it was kind of cool.
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Kind of cool (to me anyway) to see the very short evolution of things come to fruition. And we're not done yet, not even close.
The journey this year has taken us to numerous boating events. One of the most memorable for me was LOTO. Not because of the size or speed of the boats, because of the people. The people of LOTO were incredible. I guess I didn't know what to expect, so I was prepared for almost anything. As it turned out, we could have showed up with no luggage and I'm confident we would have been taken care of. What a great gathering of people and some incredible boats.
We've attended so many boating events I've honestly lost track. Each and every time we were welcomed and greeted with smiles. I can't remember even one single solitary bad experience. That's no coincidence, that's what boating is all about. And it shows every time we attend an event.
This year we've been fortunate enough to meet hundreds of incredible people who all have at least one thing in common, they absolutely love boating. They love driving them, being in them, around them, watching them, cleaning them, racing them, fixing them and towing them.
We absolutely hoping to do much more next year while we attempt to revitalize hotboat.com to even more than what it was in its former glory day. And I'm hoping to have as least as much fun as we had this year, if not more. And of course, take you along for as many rides as we can possibly get in over the course of 2014.
One last and very important item. I would like to dedicate Hotboat.com 2013 in memory of Kyle Bement. Taken way before his time, but doing what he loved to do, race PS/SS 550. May you rest in peace.
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