Redundancies Confusion

With the new building market looking quite healthy for the most part of 2014 it was interesting to see what happen just after the big fall European boat shows ended. In fact some of the most popular motor yacht brands from Europe announced redundancies to there staff. 

The question to this comes automatic, has the market performed below the expectations of these top European brands, or the competition of smaller more custom brands is gaining ground. It is interesting times, with totally new or revamped classic brands entering the larger sizes, with a different vision and a bigger ear to client demands.

In recent years it has been an evolutionary market and the scissors thanks to today various type of media is also faster in spreading latest design, and technology ideas. In the eighties and nineties it used to take about five to ten years for the latest feature to hit the market to arrive into other boats. 

For example when in 1985 Ferretti presented the first tender garage on the 35 Porto Rotondo, it took a year for the first to be seen on another Italian boat. The second boat with tender a garage will be the Italcraft C51 Classic, and after that in 1991 came the Sunseeker 60 Renegade. Still up until the mid nineties only a handful of boats offered a tender garage.  Same goes for the integrated windshield by Pershing with the first example the 40, appearing in 1988. It will take five years for the Italian competition to catch the bug and about six for the others.  

Today unfortunately for the strike of genius of a designer, naval architect or engineer an edge in design does not last much and patents are still a bit unheard for in the most part of the nautical industry.