How collaboration is transforming the boat business

The industry appears to be evolving with product manufacturers and boatbuilders working more closely than ever. What is driving that change? 

I think it is being driven by a certain group of builders, the ones that feel the need to differentiate with their brand; they have been inspired by the trends in automotive. Getting into a car 20 years ago you would see brands from everywhere – from the sound system and speakers to the clock on the dashboard… today everything is fully integrated. It’s about keeping the customer fully immersed in the one brand. So, if you’re a manufacturer and you are making off-the-shelf products, that doesn’t exactly answer everything the boatbuilder need. They want to work together with manufacturers to create something that’s either semi-custom or entirely unique to them, and certainly keeps that full brand immersion on the boat for them.

Tell us about your collaborative process.

It starts by having those informal discussions ­– a client sitting down with us and saying, ‘we’ve got this problem, we want to solve it, but we don’t want a bolt on product off the shelf…’ So, you end up going down a pathway that a consultancy would. It’s listening to the voice of the customer, putting a brief together, then starting to do the development.

It’s good old-fashioned customer relations – spending time with your customers and getting on the production floor; walking around with the engineers and designers and seeing where the problems are. It is a bit of a push and pull process. Some clients will show you concepts they have been working on; you walk through their production, and you see where you could integrate something and that’s the spark. You realise then you have something that needs exploring.

You have a minimum list of amenities that every boat should have. So, how can we contribute to making their boats different? How do you help to make it really stand out for your customers? That’s super important.

The expectations of customers today are way higher than they used to be. If your boat only ends up looking like a collection of everybody else’s items all bolted together, you’re not going to compete with something that looks thought through.

Customers now expect that consistent, integrated you and feel – you now get that on a Ford today just as much as you do on a BMW 7 series.

Where does the inspiration come from?

We look at the broader market. Our Scanstrut, that picked up a DAME Award and anInnovation Award at IBEX last year, came off the back of being on beaches and seeing so many people struggling to blow up their paddle boards with those exhausting hand pumps. That’s step one. What you’ve got to do then is turn that into something that works brilliantly, answers the need of the boat builder, is at a price point that works for them, is reliable, and is going to still perform in ten years’ time.

You can’t just be an amazing ideas organization if you can’t execute. That’s the key bit. You’ve got to be able to do all of those stages and bring it to market sustainably. And what I mean by that is at a price point that means that you can still supply in volume. Everybody wants a Bentley until they look at the price. The idea is 5%, but it’s the execution that is the major part. That comes down to time with the builders, being good at listening, and asking the right questions. - hearing where the pain points are and trying to work out how we can get a solution that will be adopted. Because we are not a one-off custom business. We want to make product that answers a volume problem.

The key is you’ve got to deliver. The chat’s great and it’s interesting and fun, but builders need a practical solution. They need something that’s tangible that they can get on the boat.

The pressure on builders to deliver innovative product is mounting. How is that impacting the process? 

Builders have competitive pressures from everyone else in their space launching new product with new features. They’ve got to continue to innovate and add something new and exciting for next year’s model. We’re able to help by collaborating on innovation and delivery to keep them moving forward with their brand goals. There’s pressure everywhere, particularly when the market’s challenging, because you need a reason for consumers to upgrade from a model they bought three years ago, or to pull somebody in that’s totally new to the joys of boating. You need something that suddenly sparks their interest, particularly because theaverage age of boaters is coming down. Those guys aren’t traditional boaters, so there has to be something new in there that’s a trigger – cues and user experiences that are more akin to technology in their home or from what they see in their car. That’s been a significant shift.

As a manufacturer, what are the key ingredients you need to deliver award-winning projects?

It’s high pressure, because the timings are always tight, and the model year deadlines are critical, so you’ve got to have the resource in-house to be able to manage multiple projects on various tight time scales.

Innovation is a challenging and unpredictable master! We’re lucky to have outstanding designers and project managers but it’s not easy, it’s not for everyone. However, we feel confident that the proof is in the end result. Nautique got exactly the product they wanted, adding another innovation to their amazing boats and more enjoyment to their customers’ experience. We’re happy, they’re happy and their customer is too.