‘I wasn’t a great yacht broker’ – Bob Denison

opinion

by Rob Hodgetts

15 July 2024

Bob Denison, president, Denison Yachting.

He was a reluctant yacht broker, but his father insisted. He quickly realised he wasn’t much good at it either, despite an illustrious yachting name.

But Bob Denison had been working in the internet world at the height of the dot-com bubble and knew a few things about tech and digital marketing.

Now, having built the Denison Yachting brand into a major player, with more than a dozen offices in the US and a base in Monaco, he is still looking to innovate and push the boundaries like his forefathers.

“Tech is the reason I am so bullish on the industry,” says Denison, president and founder, Denison Yachting talking from his office in Fort Lauderdale.

“We are going to win as a company if we are forward thinking on the right stuff that helps a client have a better experience.”

Sold up

Growing up, Denison was “a little too proud” of the family boat-building business Broward Marine, which was founded by his grandparents Frank and Gertrude Denison after they bought Dooley’s Dry Dock while on honeymoon in Fort Lauderdale in 1948.

They secured contracts to build minesweepers for the US Navy, but luxury boats were their passion and Frank pioneered Broward to become a preeminent superyacht builder in the US. “If you build two boats the same, you haven’t learned anything,” became the Broward mantra. Gertrude also started the esteemed Yacht Interiors design business.

Bob Denison assumed he would join Broward Marine in some capacity but the year he graduated in business management at the University of Miami in 1999 his grandparents sold up.

“I felt a little sad because it was such a great brand,” he says. “But I was also a little relieved in that I am not mechanically minded. I don’t know how to change the oil in my car. I think I would have been a horrible builder of yachts.”

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Broward Marine was founded by Bob Denison’s grandfather Frank Denison in 1948.

Family pressure

Instead, he threw himself into the dot-com boom, working in health e-commerce and aerospace. Then came the call to work alongside his dad Kit, one of three sons of Frank and Gertrude, at Denison Yacht Sales. His uncles Skip and Ken were also at the forefront of the yachting industry. The year was 2002, shortly after the terrorist atrocities of 9/11.

“Talk about headwinds. That was a really difficult time, but I had to do it because it was in my bones and blood,” says Bob Denison. “Also, my parents made it well known to me that I needed to do it. It was a very healthy form of family pressure to do it.

“It was weird and scary, but we were able to leverage some of those things that I learned working on the internet side of things to help us grow.”

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In the early days he worked as a sales broker, but having got “a feel for what they look like, smell like, feel like” he discovered he was “wasn’t great at that” because he was “not a very effective salesperson” and he knew that for the business to prosper they needed hardened pros.

“It is a very scary thing to do,” he says. “You are commission only. You are in the middle of a transaction with two very strong parties on both sides.

“The truth of it is, the majority of yacht brokers out there are not making as much money as you think they are. And they are working 10 times harder than you think they are.”

Light bulbs

He did have some early success, and his debut sale of a 31ft Blackfin centre console fishing boat helped set the company on its current course.

“My very first sale was actually an internet inquiry, which was a new concept,” he says. “Somebody in New Jersey sent us an email saying he wanted to buy a fishing boat. The first time we met and he actually saw the boat was when he came down and took delivery. We had dinner, we had too much to drink, we kept in touch for many years, he bought other boats through us.”

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Yacht broking was changing, and the internet offered an alternative to the traditional ways of attracting prospects, such as print or boat shows. For Denison, “a lot of light bulbs were going off”.

“The idea that a relationship is best nurtured the old-fashioned way, I would push back against that,” he says. “Just like dating online, there are a lot of really good and bad stories, but it is very possible to have an awesome relationship with somebody that you don’t meet until after you start looking for a boat with them.”

Seductive

Denison quit broking after about five years to focus on building the business, seeking efficiencies and embracing technology as his grandfather, father and uncles had done before him.

Denison Yachting is now “very active in the crypto space”, having sold or chartered “almost two dozen boats” using Bitcoin.

“We are really proud of that, not just because it is crypto and it is technology, but it is that idea of going to where the client is, not waiting for them to come to us,” he says.

However, he is mindful of venturing into tech for the sake of it after a fruitless foray into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are unique digital assets. He partnered with Cloud Yachts, who were “trying to solve the riddle of the client experience with NFTs”, offering special perks for purchasers such as VIP experiences at boat shows.

“We jumped into the NFT game with very little result,” he says. “Sometimes it is so seductive and tempting to be a little too forward thinking and embracing technology in ways that don’t help the client experience.”

‘Sweaty palms’

However, he thinks artificial intelligence (AI) is “going to disrupt every single part of our industry” at some stage. But he warns that lots of people are “wasting their time, spinning their wheels” trying to be the first to do something “cool” with it.

“Unless it’s creating a massive efficiency or unless it’s radically improving the client experience, it’s not worth investing in,” he says.

Where he does see “extremely meaningful value” in technology is in improving fun and safety onboard, which could broaden the appeal of yachting. One application could be self-docking yachts “in the next five to 10 years”, says Denison. Even now, just the thought of trying to dock his boat in front of a smirking audience hoping for a few bumps and scrapes gives him “sweaty palms”.

“My oldest child is nine years old and when he is going to be taking out our boat with his friends or perhaps going on a first date and he is pulling into the marina or the restaurant, he is very likely going to be able to push a button and the boat is going to dock itself,” he says.

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Denison still loves the “old salty conversations” about yachting and “how you need to tie 32 knots for any given occasion” but this kind of user-friendly technology will strip away the stress and complexity of yachting.

“The broader the market is for people falling in love with boating the better the consequences for the big boat market years down the road,” he says. “That is really interesting.”

Magic

Denison Yachting, including sales, charter, yacht management and crew placement, was acquired by US giant OneWater Marine in 2022, bringing economies of scale and efficiencies in areas such as accounting and marketing.

However, Denison is adamant there is still a place for “the little guy in the boutique firm”, suggesting they are well placed to offer a super-bespoke service.

But he adds: “Where I think the magic could exist is the bigger firms that can leverage things like relationships with marinas, technology, scale on every vertical imaginable, from financing and insurance to crew and yacht ops.”

Day to day, not much has changed for Denison, who makes it his business to support his 100-or-so brokers, as well as his backroom staff, to make the process of buying, selling or owning “frictionless”.

Sitting in front of a black-and-white photograph of his grandfather and a group of employees in white “Broward Marine” T-shirts in 1953, Denison says he is thankful every day to those who paved the way. He admits his name gave him a “ridiculous advantage” but he is also grateful to industry peers and rivals who helped him out in the early days.

“They could have very easily taken advantage of a really dumb, stupid, young yacht broker trying to find his way and instead put their arms around me,” he says. “That was a massive help for me. I don’t know if I would have survived without it.”