Yachting Industry News | June 2022

June Highlights: IYBA Sales Summit, 130 Westport, 121 Numarine, 120 Custom Line, Going Above and Beyond for our owners, and showing appreciation to our Service Department.

This article is a transcription of Denison’s June 2022 monthly recap video. Tune in monthly to discover the most recent yachting industry and superyacht news from Denison. Watch the full video above.

Hey, it’s Bob Denison and we’re going to talk about the month of June 2022 here at Denison Yachting. The first thing we’re going to talk about is what we did. And I’m not going to bore you with all the different things that we did, but I’m going to highlight one of the important things here at Denison, which are training and seminars, which sound like very boring things to talk about, but I’m going to try to make them sort of interesting.

We do a lot of training here; we do seminars. But one of the cool things we did was IYBA (International Yacht Brokers Association), the biggest, the best, and the coolest yacht brokers association in the world. We had a sales summit here in Fort Lauderdale in June and we had not only the highest-attended series of brokers and listening admins and just support staff there, but we also had three analysts—myself, Josh Valoes, and Peter Quintal—talking about things like ethics, talking about things like marketing, really getting a sense for what is going on in the world of yacht brokers.

One of the topics that came up was NAFCB (Not Available for Co-Brokers), and it’s a big kind of hot potato issue these days because there are some firms—not Denison—by the way, not just one singular firm, there’s a lot of different firms right now that are taking the position of “we just got a listing and we are not going to allow other brokers to sell it; it’s only going to be an in-house deal”—which is great for them as a company because they might earn more money and they don’t have to share the commission, but it’s a big disservice to yacht owners and boat owners who are going to be limited by the number of brokers that can sell that boat. So it’s one of the things we talked about. By the way, every Denison listing is available for co-brokers, every single one. If you ever trust us to sell your boat, we will make it available to be sold by other brokers all over the world.

But we did a lot of training this month. It wasn’t just the seminar; we also do something called “Tuesday Training”, where we talk about our current marketing efforts, maybe our CRM, HubSpot. We talk about things like…one of them was with John Hommers, who is one of our coaches with management coaching, and talked about just overcoming chaos and just all kinds of important things that you would want your yacht brokers to get better and better at. So training in the month of June was significant and it was awesome.

Also in the month of June, we closed some boats. So I’m going to go over that right now. The first one we’re going to highlight is a 130′ Westport sold by Tom Conboy, Chris Collins, and Alex G. Clarke. There was a 121′ 37XP Numarine, one of the coolest boats ever built. Hull #6 was delivered actually just a few days ago. Also, Gary Hardcastle—yes, that Gary Hardcastle—closed on a 120′ Ferretti Custom 2018 over in Europe. Speaking of “over in Europe”, Erik Mayol from our California office closed on a 115′ Sunseeker in Monaco with Pierre. It was a cool kind of thing to have a California yacht broker at our new office in Monaco doing business, selling boats; it was awesome to see. Also, Peter Quintal sold an 80’ Johnson.

I don’t mention this too much because this is like a sacred space and time and I don’t want to mention other firms, but he did that with Jeff Stanley, just one of the greatest guys of all time. Good job Jeff. Got a plug here. First time ever. Also, a 78’ Buddy Davis was sold by Rush Shaffer and Drew Offerdahl, and a 55’ Filippetti was sold by Brenda Barnes. Ryan Alexander did one of my favorite videos. He did a really neat kind of lifestyle, what is the meaning to own a boat, as a family getting out there on the water. I think it represents the joy and the experience of just being on a boat and capturing it so well.

So, anyway, what we’re going to do. We’re going to talk a little bit about listings. I mentioned before we are in an environment where listings are harder and harder to come by and one of the things that we’re going to be doing this month is working very hard to get new listings. So, we’re doing a lot of direct mail. On the marketing front, on social media, we are doing more creative things to get out in front of the yacht and boat owners to support our brokers and get better and better listings.

Some of those listings that we have that we are going to be promoting this month are: a 140 Alpha—that boat is being built right now and it’s being represented by David Johnson; also one 112’ Westport—it’s Tom Conboy and Chris Collins; 9X Pershing called THE WOLF is also by Peter Quintal; also, the 88’ Ferretti we just mentioned in Monaco a few seconds ago is listed with Pierre; Sidney’s 76’ Riva—if you know Sidney, it’s like the perfect yacht for him to be selling out of our Miami Beach office; and also Patrick Hopkins is selling a 67’ Ferretti—we just got the listing and I think we just did a video on that the other day.

By the way, on the listing front, one of the things that we do, we have something and this doesn’t even fit in here. But I’m just going to tell you, it’s a good plug for why you should list your boat with Denison. We try to use technology in ways that make the yacht-selling process easier and better, and one of the things that we developed—I think we’re the only firm that does this, if not one of the only firms, and we looked to real estate to kind of grab this idea—but we created something called a “Listing Dashboard” and if you have a listing with us, you can actually go in and see all the things that we’re doing on the marketing side. Real-time stats, videos, social media, what magazines it’s going in and it just gives you a glimpse of photography, a glimpse of the specs, everything that’s important and you could have in real-time, when it’s convenient for yacht owners. This could be at 9:00 on a Tuesday night and you might not necessarily want to call your broker and say, “Hey what’s going on?” At your convenience, when it makes sense for you, you can log in and see everything happening on the marketing front.

And we’re also going to talk about who we are and this time we’re going to talk about the people that are literally downstairs from me right now. They’re downstairs because that’s where the boats are and the parts are. All of our service that happens is led by Bob McCann and Gilles and they are the best of the best. They are constantly behind the scenes, working very diligently and working every day trying to figure out how to make the boat ownership experience a really good and fun one.

I hate the phrase or the thing that people say when they say the two happiest days of a boat owner’s life are when they decide to buy and when they decide to sell—I hate it. And that might be true sometimes, but it’s not true if you have good service people, taking care of all the things that might go wrong on a boat. On any given day or week or month, that could be something different, but these guys downstairs and their team—it’s not just the two of them—there are a lot of people down there that are really hellbent on making sure that the boat experience is a good one and a fun one and the people that own a boat—our clients—can you have the boat in great working condition for the maximum number of times. So when you turn that key, it works. The air conditioning and all that stuff. So they’re the best. So that’s very much part of who we are and we’re grateful for that.

Thank you guys very much for watching and I will see you guys next month. Bye.