‘Experience is a trap’ – Minnema on 25 years as a broker
Fraser Yachts' Jan-Jaap Minnema has been a yacht broker for 25 years.
Gazing around at his fellow commuters on the train, his heart sank.
It was the same every morning, but the nagging in his soul was getting worse. Jan-Jaap Minnema was in his mid-20s with a good, solid job at IBM in Amsterdam.
But something was missing. Something needed to change.
“It was too corporate, I’m not really a corporate guy,” the Dutchman tells us.
This year Minnema celebrates 25 years as a yacht broker with more than 100 transactions to his name in brokerage and new build.
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He’s what might be described as an “industry veteran” but the Fraser Yachts stalwart is not resting on his laurels.
“It’s very important to renew yourself,” Minnema tells us. “It’s a trap to be too experienced and overconfident, thinking you don’t need to learn anything anymore.”
Minnema has a global client book but was one of the early pioneers of yacht broking in Asia and is Fraser’s senior adviser in the region. He mentors several younger colleagues but is equally keen to hear their fresh perspectives on the world.
“You need to adapt to new clients, new mentalities,” he says. “If I don’t understand the new culture or the way these younger generations are working or thinking or acting, I will miss out.”
Proactive vs nuisance
From that epiphany on the train, Minnema heard of a Dutch company doing sales and charter in the South of France. He drew on his time working on sailing yachts in the Baltic to talk his way into a job.
“I didn’t even know yacht brokerage existed back then,” he says. He began selling 30-50ft sailing yachts to German notaries and middle-class people “spending a big part of their fortune” on the boat.
“That’s where I learned about the responsibilities of knowing what you’re selling and not being a second-hand car dealer,” he adds.
“There’s a thin line between being proactive and being a nuisance. The goal is a clean, well-managed transaction in all sizes, it’s not the speed of doing a deal.”
His record is 10 years talking to a client before finally completing on a yacht. “I’m not in a rush to sell a boat more than the client needs,” he says. “You need to rather slow them down, educate together and then we do a transaction.”
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Minnema’s move to larger yachts was a “natural process” as clients upsized. He sold a 24m Moonen and was “over the moon”. Then came a client who wanted to buy a 40m for a sabbatical.
“He was a very smart guy but he virtually never slept,” says Minnema. “I had to stay ahead of him in terms of knowledge to be able to add value.”
Together they bought a Codecasa 40m named Bliss but in the latter stages of a “marathon” process, Minnema learned another valuable lesson. Opting to postpone the closing by a week because of paperwork, the “smart” people on other side claimed a week of running costs.
“I’d never thought about that,” he says. “When you’re inexperienced you don’t know what you don’t know.”
With a jump in segment, the time was right for Minnema to move to a bigger brokerage offering additional services. Fraser, with its multicultural make-up, was the perfect fit.
“It was like a candy shop,” he says. “There was so much knowledge. Everybody was successful in their own personal way of doing business.”
An aft render of Minnema’s 50m Sanlorenzo X-Space project. (Photo: Sanlorenzo)
‘It’s like the twilight zone’
It’s this individuality he is keen to pass on to his mentees, who typically have been in the business about 10 years, have “seen black snow” (a Dutch expression meaning to have gone through struggles), are still there and are keen to learn.
“I’m happy to open up my books and show them how I work,” he says. “They can pick and choose what they want. I want them to build up their experience and be a character broker in their own right rather than copy and pasting.”
Based outside Monaco but keen to look beyond the usual hunting grounds, Minnema sought opportunities in Asia.
“First, I went to China. It was seen as the next big thing after the Russian explosion of buyers,” he says. “I learned quickly that the mentality of the Chinese is completely different.” He ran into the Chang brothers, leading figures in the Chinese marine industry and the owners of the Yantai Raffles shipyard. They discussed their plans for a family superyacht project.
The financial crisis of 2008 was a road bump, as was the acquisition of the yard by Chinese conglomerate CIMC. Having to deal with the multiple layers of a “completely corporate” Chinese listed company was like being in the “twilight zone”, says Minnema. But the end product was the 88.5m Illusion Plus, still the largest yacht ever built in China.
Minnema says the wider Asian market is maturing with a “serious appetite” for yachts.
“I’ve seen so many changes in mentality and ownership over there,” he says. “The clients are better informed, they make better educated decisions. Before it was just, that’s a nice flashy boat.”
Minnema is Fraser Yachts’ senior adviser in Asia.
Calling the cavalry
Adapting to the culture and the next generation of wealth in the region is key, says Minnema.
“I’m generalising, but for Asian clients, it’s building up relationships so that they’re comfortable enough to ask questions without losing face, without feeling embarrassed that they don’t know,” he says.
“That’s a big cultural difference. It’s about the empathy you need to have for the clients, to understand what they want, not what I want. My personal opinion is basically completely irrelevant.”
Globally, Minnema sees widespread enthusiasm for yacht purchases, irrespective of any global uncertainty or instability. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, the world’s on fire, let’s not buy boats anymore’. It’s the other way around,” he says.
READ: Buying a superyacht, part II – the Memorandum of Agreement
Another of his learnings is to re-examine every deal once it’s closed.
“How did that happen? Where did it come from? Was it because I’m such a great guy or was it because I was such a lucky guy?” he says. “You need to be very aware of what you’re doing. That’s what I explain to my brokers.”
Minnema is increasingly busy in new build transactions including a recent 65m Royal Hakvoort, an 80m Amels, a 52m Bilgin, a Benetti Oasis and the 50m Sanlorenzo X-Space. Compared with brokerage, the “joy” is managing the complexity of a new build project.
“For a broker, new build is really a completely different type of skillset,” he says. “You have the project management, specification review, discussions with the lawyers to get the contracts in order, because every contract is different.”
But just as in brokerage, the key is to be constantly adding value. It all comes back to empathy and understanding the culture, the language, the person, says Minnema.
“If he wants the cavalry, get him the cavalry,” he adds. “If he wants a small, lone operator, get him that. That is what you need to facilitate as a broker.”
IBM’s loss has been yachting’s gain.
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