blogger - Reputation

Every year during the fall boat show season, a crop of new boat builders seem to enter the challenging yacht market.  Each of these new builders have a different profile, with two usually standing out; you can have the boat owner who turns builder with financing, or an experienced craftsman who after years on a yard floor takes matters into his hands.  Surprisingly even in recent difficult times new boat brands have not stopped coming up, with the Dutch taking first place from the Italians.    

Sometimes the biggest challenge that some of these new brands will face is image, and a reputation of being a solid company. Unlike a decade ago we live in an age where marketing and communication are very important.  In the eighties and nineties companies where growing up with the owners, for both size and production numbers.  At that time much was about reputation, with a balanced growth.  Many of today's famous brands grew up like this, it was a hand to hand owner builder build up, which started in a village, took a regional direction, national, and then international recognition.   

Today on the other hand you rarely see this growth. You can have the super yacht builder starting up with eighty plus footers, or a builder of smaller sub fifteen meters cruisers. That is why sometimes a brand name, even if closed for a few years, sometimes even decades always hold its values, and will have fans turning around and supporting it, even if the product has not yet been released yet.