This three-part series profiles three Syracuse University student entrepreneurs — part 3 of 3.

Two summers ago, Anthony DiMare visited New York City to spend time with his girlfriend. He wanted to take her sailing — a hobby he picked up at age 14. But he became frustrated when he couldn’t find a sailboat rental store with reasonable prices.

He thought the only solution was to invent a portable sailboat that he could take with him everywhere. Now, almost a year and a half later, he’s close to achieving that dream.

He discovered a “wildly successful” Kickstarter page that funded a portable, foldable, origami-esque kayak called Oru Kayak. DiMare researched the design and immediately went to his off-campus apartment to make a similar model out of cardboard.

His roommate thought he was nuts, but DiMare didn’t care. He was onto something.

“Why don’t I put two of those together with some carbon fiber tubes, throw a mast on it and some rudders, and I’ve got a sailboat that can fit into two suitcases,” said DiMare, a senior mechanical engineering major. “That was the ‘Aha!’ moment.”

But it needed a name. DiMare started with “regatta,” a sporting event consisting of a series of boat or yacht races, and then “portable.” His roommate fused the two words together and created the name for DiMare’s invention: Regattable.

“If I had really put some time into it, I probably would have incorporated my last name, which means ‘of the sea’ in Italian, but I didn’t think of that at the time and I had already moved on,” DiMare said.

Originally from Hopkinton, Mass., DiMare grew up around sailing. His first job was as an assistant maintenance repairman with a local boating company, helping out with odd jobs. When repairing certain parts of the ships, he said he had to climb under the hull into cramped, sweaty spaces that no one else could fit into.

But that didn’t deter him from learning to love the makings of a sailboat. During high school, he advanced within the company and became the head maintenance worker, sometimes designing and repairing entire sections of sailboats. Then, he became a summer camp counselor for a sailing camp, furthering his love for working on the water.

Sailing became a part of his life that he wasn’t quite ready to give up when he became a mechanical engineering student. But it wasn’t until he created Regattable that he realized he could have a potential career in it.

“Where people would think I learned a lot of what I did didn’t really stem from this,” he said. “I learned most of this through a company internship two summers ago, and I learned almost none of it in school.”

Regarding the design process, everything was either self-taught or learned through summer internships, with the exception of skills from his minor in the School of Information Studies. DiMare is a part of the IDEA program, and credits it with helping him learn the business side of his project.

Although DiMare created the concept of a foldable, portable sailboat, he co-founded the business side of Regattable with Nick Poorman, a recent computer science graduate from the State University of New York at Oswego. The two met last fall at a weekend startup entrepreneur event. DiMare asked him to come on board and help with the technology side of his business.

Now, Regattable is Poorman’s full-time job, and he’s excited to see it become a tangible product.

“Sailing has been around since the Vikings, so it’s not anything new,” Poorman said. “But we haven’t begun using our space-age engineering to build new boats. We’re still building them like the Vikings did.”

Wednesday marked the national sailboating competition America’s Cup. Team USA won by sailing a cabana sailboat, similar in design to Regattable. While classic sailboats generally have one hull, cabanas have two. Thinking of this victory, DiMare and Poorman are excited for the future of the company.

Though the product is still in its early stages, Poorman said it has come a long way from when DiMare first conceptualized it. It has won awards, including Seed Round Winner for the L.C. Smith Invention and Creativity Contest and first place at the Student Sandbox Demo Day. Syracuse University even offered DiMare a grant.

One of DiMare’s goals — besides making the product portable — was making it eco-friendly. The hulls are made of plastics that can be recycled and, thus, won’t fill up landfills. DiMare said Regattable is one of the first companies to use these materials in the marine industry.

“It’s green, but it’s a big advancement in the boating world,” he said. “The big problem with boats is you use them for 10, 20 years and then you move onto another one. Your boat rots and sits there, but your hull never degrades. They’ll sit in a landfill forever because they’re made of fiberglass, which never breaks down.”

Graduating soon, DiMare said it’s hard to balance being a student and running a company with other activities like the ski team and spending time with his girlfriend.

Even with all the work, DiMare isn’t ready to stop — not when it’s still just the beginning.

He dreams of shipping orders for Regattable worldwide. But what he really wants is to open a shop in SoHo, in New York City. Then maybe, one day, he can sell portable sailboats to couples looking to go sailing around New York City.

Published on September 26, 2013 at 12:52 am

Contact Kristin: klross01@syr.edu | @kriskross22