The Joy of Cruising Podcast
The Joy of Cruising Podcast is a conversation with one of the dozens of amazing cruisers with fascinating stories that have been featured in The Joy of Cruising Trilogy—The Joy of Cruising, Cruising Interrupted, and new, The Joy of Cruising Again. In addition there will be conversations with global cruise personalities and cruisers I encounter with fascinating stories the cruise community would enjoy hearing. Order here: The Joy of Cruising; Cruising Interrupted; bit.ly/TheJoyOfCruisingAgain; Contact Me
The Joy of Cruising Podcast
Mike Jirout, Founder, Ship Mate/Cruise On; Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Gangwaze
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Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast; I am delighted to welcome Mike Jirout. Mike is one of those entrepreneurs who transcend consumer cruising history. Along with his brother he created Ship Mate, which I’m sure many of us remember: the first mobile app for the cruise industry in 2009 when Apple first opened up its infrastructure for third-party developers. They grew Ship Mate to millions of downloads before selling it. Then Mike virtually invented the "cruise accessories" market with,
Cruise On, a line of 100+ products (lanyards, luggage tags, cruise power strips, hanging organizers, etc.) and sold millions of items before selling that business in 2023. The brand remains the leading cruise accessories line.
Though Ship Mate and Cruise On have been sold Mike continues to innovate. He told me, “We're currently growing our consumer-facing cruise platform Gangwaze (Gangwaze.com) offering detailed cruise port and ship data down to the individual cabin level. We also have some business-to-business offerings, like custom made, vectorized deck plans—the hope is to make it as easy to filter/book a cabin as it is a seat on a flight. We also offer cruise agent products like a "Cruise Quote" tool for providing client quotes and a "Cruise Kit" for all post-booking info. At CruiseKeeps.com we customize cruise keepsakes (mugs, puzzles, canvas prints, etc.) with your ship itinerary map, port list, ship, sail date, etc. We have the Cruise Deals App, a mobile app for easily finding and booking cruises. We are currently launching the Cruise Quest Mobile App. It's a fun way to gamify your cruise experience with Bar Bingo and other fun games. I've built these with my brother, brother-in-law, and cousin as co-founders.
Our family's love of cruising started with annual family reunion-cruises, where 50+ of us would get on a ship with our fluorescent t-shirts, numbered by age. It was our favorite way to reunite.
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