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For all the changes and challenges we in the industry are experiencing, one aspect of the market remains immutable and, in our press to capitalize on growth opportunities, inviolable.
by Jim Gilbert
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03/01/2005
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I ran into yacht broker Andrew Cilla, of Luke Brown & Associates, the week
after the Fort Lauderdale boat show. We were both at H & E Marina Deli, a
favorite industry eatery on SE 17th Street, ordering an early breakfast, trying
to get a jump on the day in the hectic wake of the show.
I asked Andrew, a
respected professional with more than two decades’ experience in the luxury
yacht industry, how the show had gone for him. He took a thoughtful second
before answering. “The same as usual,” he said, before adding, “But you know,
the show doesn’t mean as much to me now as it used to. It’s gotten so big that a
lot of my clients come in the week before or the week after. It’s so busy now I
don’t have time to prospect any more for new clients, so I focus on taking care
of my existing clients who are at the show.”
Having just finished my own
whirlwind, breakneck, 18-hour-a-day boat show frenzy, I instinctively understood
what he was talking about. We joked as breakfast arrived that while the show has
tripled in size in the last six years, our Creator has not given us any more
minutes in the day to capitalize on the business opportunity, which,
theoretically speaking at least, that kind of growth implies.
While
indulging in egg whites and Harry’s famous corned beef hash, I experienced a
little “aha!” from our brief conversation. Whether the industry’s inexorable
trend toward ever-larger business organizations is simply a reaction to, or the
cause of, luxury yachting’s dramatic growth in recent years is debatable. But
certainly the trend addresses the basic time-constraint dilemma that Andrew was
describing. Big companies simply are more capable at managing larger and more
complex workloads and capitalizing on business opportunity.
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