Instead of going after a big online retail market, Bend-based Wakemakers Corp. focuses on a small one.

It sells inflatable bags, or ballasts, that make boats heavier and produce bigger waves for wakeboarders to ride or jump over. It also sells pumps and kits that enable boat owners to inflate the bags at the push of a button.

Since starting in 2009, the company has scaled up its inventory and selection. This year, company headquarters moved from Lake Oswego to Bend. Now Wakemakers is building a small retail shop for local customers.

Beside ballasts, the company has started stocking the warehouse with wakeboards and other wakeboarding products. Wakemakers continues to add to product lines and recently created a parent website, wakeshops.com.

Jason Craveiro, the company’s president, forecasts more expansion ahead, and the company could start manufacturing its own products in the near future, too, not just selling other companies’ equipment.

So far, though, Craveiro attributes the company’s success and consistent profitability to being the dominant business in a small market, rather than trying to survive in a big and trendy one.

Wakemakers is “the big fish in a very small pond” in the ballast market, he said.

Spending time with his family sailing, water skiing, wakeboarding and participating in other water sports was a fun part of Craveiro’s childhood, most of which was spent in Bend.

For a class project while attending the University of Oregon, Craveiro built an online discussion board for owners of one brand of boat. A retailer based in Clackamas, Wakeside.com, ended up buying Craveiro’s site in 2005, and he worked for Wakeside for two years, overseeing business development and efforts to bring the discussion board onto the Wakeside website.

The information Craveiro saw while working at Wakeside led him to think the ballast market was full of opportunity.

So, while getting a mechanical engineering degree from Oregon State University, Craveiro and one of his former colleagues at Wakeside, Spencer Welch, launched Wakemakers in 2009. At first, they worked at sales and marketing for other companies and had none of their own inventory. But that changed a few months after they started. The company has been profitable ever since, said Craveiro, 30.

Q: Is a facility or employment expansion on the horizon?

A: It is. We added hard goods this year. The intention is that we’ll be positioned (for expansion in) 2013, just because of the seasonality and when product is available. … We’ll have 2013 to grow with the hard-goods industry, to sell wakeboards, surfboards, bindings, life jackets, handles, lines and all the stuff that goes along with it. My expectation is, based on our current growth rate, that we will need more space both for inventory and for personnel at the end of 2013.

Q: You’re an engineer. Are you planning to make anything?

A: Yes. I would love to. That’s the way my mind works — I see opportunities in terms of how other companies have done things and maybe not done them as well as they could have. Beyond what we already have, … we’re talking about producing our own products and having our own product lines. It just comes down to (whether) our core competency (is) as a retailer, and being able to fulfill products efficiently, or (as) a manufacturer.

Q: What kinds of products are you dreaming up?

A: It’s not a stretch of the mind to imagine that we’ll start out with products that are in the categories we already operate in. Ballasts are a natural extension for us. … We have a lot of knowledge about the product, and I have no doubt that we can make a better version of what’s available already. We’re actually looking at that right now. That’s the first thing that we would do. Outside of that, we don’t have any immediate plans.

The basics

What: Wakemakers Corp.

Where: 615 S.E. Glenwood Drive, Suite 120, Bend

Employees: Seven

Phone: 888-338-6085

Website: http://wakeshops.com