The Cannes Complex: Easy as A, B, C
The Monaco Yacht Show in full swing. Photo: Monaco Yacht Show.
Noted wit Groucho Marx once said he doesn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. The same logic pervades yacht shows where everyone is busy being busy. If they’ve got time to talk, they’re not worth talking to.
That’s not strictly true, of course, but as a general gist it works. Apart from it doesn’t. Because everyone wants to talk to the actual clients (the As, for convenience) but they’re only interested in the people with the shiny stuff – the brokers, yards or manufacturers (the Bs). The lawyers, insurers, yacht managers, corporate structurists and other key parts of the ownership journey (the Cs) want to talk to the brokers, yards or manufacturers (and the As, obvs) but the Bs say they haven’t got time because they are consumed with clients and trying to make a sale to claw back some of the vast investment they’ve made in being at the show.
So the Cs meet up, renew relationships, make new friends and do their business away from the shop floor. C to shining C. Except they’ll be playing the busy card too, so good luck chatting to anyone.
“It is a big old circus really,” says Will Christie, founder of sales and charter brokerage Christie Yachts. “Everyone is there for all manner of reasons.”
READ: Will Christie on the art of a deal, slow burns & bear markets
Fringes
The back-to-school big top pitches in Cannes next week, followed by the princely Monaco Yacht Show at the end of the month. Two frantic weeks of trying to be your best self on no sleep, looking sharp with no socks and saying all the right things. If you can find anyone who will listen.
“It’s about being present and available and connecting,” says insurance broker Mike Taylor-West of Partners&. Most of his time will be spent in “meetings on the fringes where the rest of the ecosystem really bubbles away”.
Of course, selling and chartering yachts is one of the mainstays of the shows – about 700 yachts up to 50m will be at Cannes, with 120 superyachts and 60 top-notch tenders at Monaco – but they don’t exactly fly off the pontoons and anchors like merch at a Taylor Swift gig.
“The reality is that not many yachts are actually sold at the show, they’re sold before or after,” says Ian Petts of Jaffa Prive, the multi-family office arm of yacht and jet lawyers Jaffa & Co. “Although it’s a brokerage show and they are the big spenders, we should not underestimate all the other players in the supply chain.”
READ: Ian Petts on the whims of the rich & other tales
The 2024 Monaco Yacht Show will include 120 superyachts.
Richest client
Given the scarcity of actual sales, particularly towards the larger custom end at Monaco, Christie says it is difficult to quantify a direct return on investment. But he admits “nobody wants to be the only one who doesn’t go”.
“I’ve only sold two boats in my whole career that I showed a client specifically at that show,” he says.
One was at Palm Beach when a client flew in deliberately to view a yacht because the timings worked. “He pretty much looked at one boat and then bought it. Was that because of the show?” he says. The other one, he reckons, was a client he took to view a number of yachts in Europe and America before offering on one in the 50-75m range at the Monaco Yacht Show.
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Petts remembers his first ever Monaco show about 20 years ago when “someone walked in and offered 30 million for a boat and the family office said it had the cash ready there in Monaco”.
Another time, a client spent four days in Monaco being entertained by a yacht company before putting in an offer for a 60m boat. “He’s the richest client I’ve ever worked with and was wearing sandals, shorts and a T-shirt it looked like he’d slept in,” says Petts, who reckons to have done “an awful lot of business” at Cannes where people are more relaxed.
Laugh at the idea
Christie is showing the 40m Baglietto Club M, asking €19.9m, at Monaco this year, which he says will be “useful” given the boat has been based in the US and hasn’t had much exposure to the European market.
However, he reckons some buyers are “allergic” to viewing yachts at busy shows.
“Some clients do want the world to know they are buying a yacht and that is important to them, they feel a sense of arrival,” he says. “But there are quite a lot of clients who want discretion and confidentiality.”
READ: Yacht brokers brace for revolution. Or not.
At the very least, he says, he can get other brokers on board, but “that becomes a very expensive brokers’ open day”. Otherwise, he’ll take prospects around a variety of yachts “to get their eye in” and “really understand what they want to buy”. Except that when it’s hot and you’ve shuttled around four or five, the clients start flagging and it’s easy to become “boat blind” (which one had the fold-out balcony again?). “It’s hard work,” he says.
Petts adds: “Everybody underestimates how much energy and expense it takes. When I was at a brokerage house I used to go to Hugo Boss and spend €3500 on a new suit, plus a back-up suit, brand new shirts, the full monty, to look good.”
Guerilla tactics
Over the years Petts has fine-tuned his tactics. “Guerilla marketing, my friend,” he says. “Spend as little as possible for the highest return on investment.” Leaflets, out-of-show events and old-fashioned dockwalking when the yachts turn up have proved successful but there are other “secrets of my tool box”, he adds.
Petts once calculated that to have a broker at Monaco costs companies “about €2000 an hour”. No wonder they pick their chats carefully.
As the chief bean counter at Y.CO 15 years ago, Petts says he budgeted about €400,000 plus €50,000 expenses for Monaco and thinks some firms will be around the “million euro mark” this year. Burgess alone is showing nine yachts with an average length of 65m.
“You can easily drop €15-20,000 entertaining a client but it’s peanuts when you think of the margin you’re going to make if the yacht is sold or you get the management contract of a new build,” he adds.
READ: ‘Inwardly bullish: James Jaffa on evolution & reinvention
Regardless of your place in the purchase puzzle, you’ll need to practice your busy face before next week.
“It’s the ultimate melting pot of people who can assist each other on any principal’s journey,” says Taylor-West. “Mostly it is about creating opportunities for meaningful future collaborations.”
PS Superyacht Investor will be at both Cannes and Monaco so if you’d like to act too busy to chat then let’s hook up.
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