What About Those Two

In a conference held in Milan on the tenth April, the Ferretti Group CEO Alberto Galassi was very proud of the financial results achieved in the last six years.  Today the Ferretti Group is looking very positive into its future, is debt free, has a 600 million EUROS plus of total order book, and a double digit growth from 2016 to 2017.

Galassi and his team are very satisfied of the work and the results achieved, remembering that in 2012 Ferretti Group was at the brink of bankruptcy.  It is been a long and difficult journey for Ferretti Group and now in the last year we are also seeing a wind of change in some of the brands with new designers replacing popular long standing names.  Pazkowski has taken over from Zuccon in the Ferretti Customline range and Filippo Salvetti has replaced Zuccon for the latest project of the Ferretti Yachts 670 model set to launch this Summer 2018.  Zuccon designed all Ferretti Yachts since 1990 and all Ferretti Customline since founded in 1996 till 2017 have been created by him. 

In the interviews Galassi spoke about all the positives about Ferretti Group but two brands who have been rather successful in the period 2004 till 2009, Itama and Mochi have not been mentioned.  Both Itama and Mochi, have an important history in the Italian nautical World; the first doing traditional open cruisers and yachts and the second was re-branded under Ferretti Group as a traditional down East lobster boat with Mediterranean amenities designed by Zuccon.  Previously to this and before Ferretti Group purchased Mochi, it was Ferretti biggest competitor in the eighties and nineties for the flybridge cruiser design in sizes from eleven to twenty meters.

Since 2013 both Itama and Mochi have been left just as a name and we have seen not much novelties and investments being put into both brands since then.  Mochi has not even participated in recent years important boat shows, while Itama does participate here and there as it still sells a few boats a year. 

With Mochi the current problem is that the traditional modern lobster boat design is not in demand as it was in around 2005.  But Mochi had a genius idea in 2008 with the explorer yacht 23m Long Range model which was the way to go for the future.  It is a pity that with all the innovation and investment put into that model it seemed to stop there.  When the 23m was launched I was imagining a future with a complete line up of smaller Long Range models. 

Itama is on the other hand a different brand.  Amati has build the brand around simple innovation.  Itama's have been rather the same since the yard moved into the open sport cruiser range in 1979 when it launched the 38. which stayed in production till 2002.  Itama in itself does not need much changing and the current three model format was how the brand lived for the eighties till the mid nineties.  What Itama needs though is a tailor, which is what Amati was in his company.  Amati tailored each boat build as a suit which fitted perfectly to his clients demands.  

Do boat tailors as Mario Amati exist anymore?  May be that is a question for other times.