Monaco Yacht Show 2011 - A Superyacht Singapore Association Perspective:
Authored by Jean-Jacques Lavigne, Executive Director, SSA
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For the second year in the row, I flew to Monaco to represent the Superyacht Singapore Association and sell whatever we have to sell:
Monaco Yacht Show, Monaco Harbour
An Asia Superyacht Conference, a superyacht show, a plan to develop a world-class superyacht refit centre, a growing local and regional market, fresh cruising grounds and destinations and of course Singapore's other strengths: reputed superyacht marinas, private banking, security and safety, growth, long term vision, plans and commitment, a central marketplace for most of Asia and the hope of a second Golden Carrots Award ceremony ever being held there. (The “Golden Carrots” Award ceremony debuted its appearance at SSA’s 2nd edition of the Asia Superyacht Conference, a tribute to the hard work of our Members, and literally presented real carrots as their trophies, painted in gold)
With that mandate in mind, I went about my daily business, mingling around, seeing familiar faces, meeting with unfamiliar people, capturing the vibes of the market and collecting a general feel of what's happening and what it will mean for us, dignified and hard-working members of the "illustrious" SSA.
Here are the main points:
1) With fair weather, yacht shows can be fun! As a rule, it seems that whenever the temperature is above 20c and it is sunny, I actually visit the show. Earlier on this year, I attended or rather tried to attend two other shows with less than clement temperatures, consistent rain and wind. If, like me, you live in warm tropical Asia, it is quite likely that there are couples of boat/yacht shows were you wouldn't want to be caught dead. As simple as it is, warm and sunny shows are simply better shows! Monaco 2011 hit the mark. The sky was blue, the sun glorious, the wind mostly inexistent and the skimpy outfitted hostesses happy to be there. In a word, perfect for visitors. I guess that from a broker's standpoint, it is also much easier to sell the yachting lifestyle when a gale is not blowing and penguins don't show up for a swim.
2) Attendance: I have not gathered the updated attendance figures for Monaco 2011, but the overall impression was that attendance was significantly higher than in 2010. There was more buzz to it too. More potential buyers? Probably not. More trade visitors? More likely, as two phenomenon collided; 1) for one the trade professionals of the traditional European and US markets are clearly growing nervous with the extreme slowness of the market recovery and hence need to be far more aggressive chasing after deals and forging strategic alliances; 2) newer players from emerging markets are also getting more visible and more aggressive. The Horizons, Kingships, Sunrises, Alloy Yachts of this world, to name a few are not epiphenomenons anymore, but a real strength to reckon with.
selection of Superyachts at the MYS
Them and so many others want to be among the best ones and will be there. Some observers point out that the new contenders are still "miles away" from having the quality of the top European yards but to make an analogy with the automotive market when first the Japanese's wave and then the Korean's one, one doesn't have to start with a prestigious brand to reach market dominance. To paraphrase IKEA's tagline, "you don't have to be rich to be clever", many emerging builders may not have the depth of experience of their more illustrious competitors but they can nonetheless be very clever about what they do. My personal observation is that tremendous new ideas are brought by the new builders, far less loaded with the weight of tradition and habits. Besides, in the end of the day, having the "best product" is one thing, having a product that people want and that sells is somehow quite important as well. This leads me to point #3 about Monaco Yacht Show 2011.
3) Design 1-0-1: I could be wrong, but less outrageous design concept and scale-models were for display than what I observed the year before. As a matter of fact, I think there is clear return to more settled lines and elegant touches. "Blue Eyes's” beach platform is a good point in case. On the other side of the scale Northrop & Johnson was kind enough to host some of my guests onboard Zepter Yachts’ first creation which is little more than a large floating pop-art showcase. It happened to be the first yacht I was showing my guests and the first ever superyacht visit for most of them. I could assure they were slightly taken aback as the yacht had very few of the normal attributes of a "superyacht". That was neither classic nor posh. That was, hem... "something different", as per Asia-Pacific Boating magazine's qualification in their coverage of the same yacht in their Sept-Oct issue. Ok, my guests didn’t buy... and it cost me a couple of drinks before they fully recovered from their ordeal. That being said, there will be a man who falls in love for the yacht and knows that it is the perfect yacht for him and him family. Who knows!?
SY Blue Eyes Zepter Yachts Big Fish
To finish on the yacht design side of the business, that was interesting seeing "Big Fish" in situ after her world trip and seeing that the explorer concept is gaining ground for motor yachts. In that respect, JFA (France), McCullen (NZ,"Big Fish" builder) are among those boutique builders who are going nicely about developing their explorers’ niche. No doubt that the niche will keep growing as the appeal for distant destinations grows stronger. This will evidently lead to further growth of the Asia-Pacific superyacht traffic and to more yachts making Asia their exploration base for a couple of years.
Exhibitors at the MYS
4) "Cannot tahan anymore" (a colloquial term in Singapore context for “unable to withstand something”; loosely translated as “I can’t take it anymore”): One of the beauties of living in Singapore is that one can learn to speak Singlish, an improved version of Shakespeare's language with borrowed words expression from the Malay, Mandarin, Cantonese, Indian languages, tainted with Hokkien and other China dialects and punctuated with the all too necessary "lah" and "lor”. Very nice. Verbs are optional. If you thought that English was an international language, try Singlish! Anyway, let's not get distracted... One of the flowers of that delicate language that marries to the perfection coarse Hokkien insults with Mandarin sweetness is the expression "cannot tahan", which broadly translated means "cannot support it, cannot bear with it, cannot take it anymore". Well, in Monaco, there was a palpable atmosphere of cannot "tahan anymore” and there were two dimensions to it!
Firstly, there were rumors of over-100m yachts or new projects being ordered. Rumors are fantasies with a mouthpiece. So I took one stepped away from the noise, and met over lunch in the best rumors-culling place I know of, with some industry players not really known for getting carried away by exciting news: no yacht or charter broker (I am one of them!) but an insurance broker, the show organizer and a sail-maker. The place: the Monaco Yacht Club, the only place in town where “zipping it” is rule number one. Actually, for all I know, it could be the only rule... No phone, no visibly sweaty armpits, no laughter allowed above 30 decibels. The place is for discreet people with a taste for discretion. Last year I went with skinny jeans and a Paul Smith shirt, and I felt like Barabbas in a MENSA gathering. Awkward. In that environment perfectly suitable to check whether Karl Marx was indeed Petula Clark’s younger sister, I went about checking the rumors out. And guess what, it seemed that the wealthy of our universe as we know it, really just cannot "tahan" anymore and are happily going about ordering again yachts large enough to bring you from Singapore to Indonesia simply by walking from the stern to the prow. Sail yachts over 100m were mentioned. A few other yachts over 80m also were more or either signed or in final negotiation stage. The information was corroborating some vague impressions I got from visiting the week before Southern Spars' new rigging factory in Auckland. Massive 60m masts are routine now but the prospect of masts well other 100m tall powering yachts over 100m long is simply not pipe-dream anymore. The sail maker didn't seem too concerned over the technical implications for him though obviously my lunch companions all acknowledged that the sky may not be the limit anymore.
Hence, after a devastating 2008, 2009 adjusting to a new reality and starting rebuilding their wealth, a 2010 year when people where buying nothing but time, 3 years was obviously going to be a long time for some of our fellow mortals struggling to control their urge to indulge in new superyachts. Being politically correct and not being seen spending big money may be wise for a while but nothing boosts better an economy that big money moving around. And Superyachts are big money. So, let's praise those happy buyers for deciding that it not worth "tahaning" any longer that decidedly Europe and the USA are no longer that they used to be and there is still plenty of money -if not more than ever- in the so-called emerging economies. It is about time!
5) Looking East: and here we are with the second dimension of the "cannot tahan", with the ultimate realization, the great revelation, the Great Enlightening of Monaco 2011: The Western world is not recovering and Asia DOES exist, even in the boating world. And inasmuch it seems to really utterly dismay some industry players who all along tried to downplay its emergence, Asia truly is turning into a market on its own and the Western world seems to start accepting that the things are definitely shifting East. The shift is not fast but when one is really moving slow, a bit faster really feels faster! So, with too slow a recovery in the US and Europe, builders cannot tahan anymore either and they need to really seriously start looking at penetrating emerging markets more effectively. In effect, this materializes into more key industry players opening to the idea of attending the Asia Superyacht Conference or the Singapore Yacht Show in April 2012 and taking a look at what's happening in the region.
View from breakwater
True, the infrastructure necessary to look after the biggest yachts is more often than not inexistent. To solve this, three things need to be done: a) more marinas to be built, b) better maintenance centers to be developed and just as importantly c) the acceptation by European builders that they need to design and build yachts that can actually be used in the region where they are going to be based: on one hand, captains of the most sophisticated megayachts ask for new marinas that can meet all they (extreme) requirements, and the other hand they fail to realize that it makes no business sense to build marinas from scratch to meet such requirements. So as usual it is a matter of give and take and spending more time communication to understand better each one needs and expectations.
Altogether, an interesting show but more than ever a transition one. The industry is adapting. Is it adapting fast enough?
End.
