If you’re looking for a very fast sailboat, you’ll find it at Venice-based MultiMarine. The company deals in multi-hulls boats with more than one hull, like a Catamaran or a Trimaran which sell for between $80,000 and $120,000. Michael Leneman, owner of the company, talked with Lauren Hollingsworth about how he has improved his business by creating his own customization service for the boats.
It’s always a struggle. A lot of people are still hurting (from the recession). People are still cautious. These boats are expensive, and the majority of my customers are engineers, or science and engineering professors. I may sell five to 10 boats a year, and at that price, that’s not too bad. This is a technical, mechanical boat. They see that this is a brilliant design and are willing to invest in it.
But I really have not discovered where to find (customers). The top-of-the-line boat is a 31-foot boat, and it costs about $120,000. For a while they weren’t moving very well. (Customers) either wanted it to go faster because they were going to race it, or they wanted more passenger accommodations.
Most of the boats we sell are made to order, and because of that I’m dependent on the manufacturer. Most people end up waiting six months (for their boat after placing an order). The boats are too expensive and variable to keep them in stock here. No one has the cash flow to have a $120,000 boat in the parking lot and hope that someone comes in and doesn’t want a different one.
We found that a lot of customers wanted special features that the manufacturer didn’t provide, so we offered a customizing service, and that pushed a lot of people over the fence. We made it 15 percent faster for people to get their boats, which is a tremendous amount, and we made the interior more friendly, and our sales tripled.
The designer is very, very headstrong and didn’t want me messing with his design because we have created a demand that didn’t exist before. It’s against his own economic interest to argue, but I’ve seen this in various industries where someone has a design and they become attached to it. The designer and I have come to verbal arguments, (but my changes) are not patent-able. In the end, the (manufacturer) took my design and didn’t give me any money for it.
