Cantiere delle Marche aims to beat Stairway to Heaven
Vasco Buonpensiere is co-founder with Ennio Cecchini of Cantiere delle Marche shipyard.
Losing the family fortune could lead to ruin for some, but Vasco Buonpensiere says he is thankful for it.
His family was wealthy and privileged, but unfortunate circumstances brought it all crashing down when he was seven.
Buonpensiere, co-founder with Ennio Cecchini of Italian boutique shipyard Cantiere delle Marche, is Buddhist so he doesn’t believe in luck as such, but he says the disaster laid the foundations for his life.
Chatting with his 80-year-old mother recently he told her: “Mum, what was a very difficult event to overcome has been my biggest luck because we had to roll up our sleeves and do it fast.”
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He began working in high school and did everything from hustling as Santa Claus and house removals to sanding wood in a boatyard and working as a bodyguard given his boxing prowess. “Working every kind of job has been super useful,” he adds. At school, though, he focused on his books, saying he “owed that” to his mother. It worked, and he went on to a successful career as a lawyer.
Now, he and Cecchini run one of yachting’s most up-and-coming brands, with a carefully calculated niche in explorer yachts in the 30-50m range for mostly experienced yacht owners. The 44m Flexplorer 146 class Maverick, with its ice-ready hull and collapsible A-frame hoist, created quite the buzz at the Cannes and Monaco shows. It was built for majority CdM shareholder Tom Schröder to undertake a seven-year voyage around the world with his wife and four sons.
The RAW project, an unashamedly rugged explorer yacht targeting the 30m (100ft) sector, has also sparked significant interest.
Part of the strategy is a deliberate attempt to “intersect the future”, says Buonpensiere, who believes the clientele is “changing dramatically”.
“I always start from data and then I use my guts to interpret,” he adds. “But the data is quite clear about one thing; the curve of ultra-high-net-worth individuals is growing steep, but not the number of new owners of yachts.”
Maverick was named after the character from Top Gun, a favourite film of owner Tom Schroder.
Men of the sea
To better understand the disconnect and tap into a new generation, Buonpensiere sounded out owners and his network of wealthy individuals, many in the 35-50 age bracket. He discovered that unlike the older generation, who were passionate sailors first, the new breed on the whole sees the yacht purely as a holiday tool, like “a beach club of the Four Seasons”.
“One thing that changed completely my perspective was when I was in Porto Cervo in a beautiful bay on a boat,” he says. “And there were people – 25, 30 years old – on a 45-footer with a captain and a stewardess serving drinks. And it was all about music, getting drunk and dancing. Our generation, we would never allow a captain to drive a 45-footer for us. It was about showing our friends how good we were, that we were men of the sea.”
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Taking time to “learn their language”, he also realised that the sense of luxury is changing. It is no longer impressive enough to own a €500,000 watch because another millionaire could easily buy one, he says. He cites his grandfather, a “very typical” rich Italian man, who told him never to wear cashmere, only vicuna because it comes from the rarest sheep with the softest wool, explaining that the “pure sense” of luxury is “exclusivity”.
“Can you call Louis Vuitton exclusive? No. My hairdresser has a Louis Vuitton bag,” he says. “It’s hard to say it, but luxury is supposed to exclude people.”
Exclusivity
And luxury, increasingly, is having experiences that others can’t.
“These guys, they love to impress each other and tell stories, saying, ‘I was with this guy who brought me into this cave ... only five men have been there. I saw this little fish, which was prehistoric, completely transparent. And then we had a barbecue on the rocks with a salmon, which we caught,’” he says.
“So I’m giving these guys the opportunity not to buy a boat, but to buy the tool to make those experiences happen.”
He points to Fiat chairman Gianni Agnelli, who pioneered the explorer yacht concept with a unique design based on a commercial vessel back in 1984.
“If you arrive in a bay with an explorer yacht, everybody’s going to look at you,” he says. “Every explorer owner will say they don’t like to show off. But it is exactly the opposite. Because they like to say, ‘We’re both as rich as each other, but I know something you don’t know’. And that’s exclusivity.”
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Maverick is set for a seven-year global voyage with the Schroder family.
Story to tell
Buonpensiere’s philosophy is evident in the gifts he has given clients. One year, instead of a generic expensive bottle or luxury item, he went to his favourite antique bookshop and searched out old books linked to the name of clients’ boats.
“I’m very passionate about books and when I see an old book, even the smell makes me feel happy,” he says.
“But the fact that I thought about the clients and researched these books, that made them feel very special. And they had a story to tell their friends.”
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Life as a lawyer was lucrative but Buonpensiere yearned to follow his passion for the sea. He landed a job as a broker in St Tropez but it wasn’t for him. He reached out to a friend from back home, Lamberto Tacoli, the then president of CRN, and rose quickly to brand manager and sales director. After five bumper years, CRN was set to be acquired by the Weichai Group and the culture changed. “I was spending more time thinking about company politics and Excel files than boats,” he says.
He also noticed that he was dealing with a lot of “super-cool London School of Economics, suit-and-tie guys, who talked about what they learned in books” in contrast to the visionaries of the past such as Enzo Ferrari or boatbuilder Carlo Riva who were true to their ideas and built iconic brands.
“The real difference is I know the client’s world very well. But not because I read it, because I come from that background anyway,” he says.
Invisible wealth
In 2010, he and Cecchini set up their own shipyard, Cantiere delle Marche in Ancona. Buonpensiere courted Italy’s “invisible wealth”, financiers working under the radar in places like New York and London. “It took five years of dedicated work to enter in that circle,” he says. “These are very powerful people. This quiet luxury is very subtle to detect, but they recognize each other. That’s very CdM.”
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The pair had a vison for the yard which didn’t mirror that of the owner and decided to pursue a management buyout.
One day, as Buonpensiere tells it, a German client, Schröder, was visiting the yard for a progress meeting of his new yacht, Maverick. Walking back to the office, Buonpensiere told Schröder he had to leave for a meeting with the bank. Schröder wondered, only half-jokingly, whether they had enough money to finish his boat. Buonpensiere disclosed the buyout plan. Schröder thought for a minute then told him to cancel the meeting. “I’m going to be your bank,” recalls Buonpensiere. “I love the people here. I love the way you run it. I think you can do a lot better.”
In 2022, the buyout was done and Schröder’s FIL Bros Family Office took 75% of the shares. CdM mark II was born with Cecchini as president and Buonpensiere as CEO. Earlier this year, another client, Giovanni Cagnoli, founder of the Bain & Company consultancy in Italy, serial entrepreneur and “really close” friend of the Loro Piana family, offered a few thoughts on the business over lunches and dinners. After deeper discussions and a meeting with Schröder in Palma, he and the Loro Piana family ended up acquiring 30% of CdM shares through his Carisma Holding company to add further expertise. “He’s one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met,” says Buonpensiere.
Project RAW is the new explorer yacht from Cantiere delle Marche.
Stairway to Heaven
In the early days, Cantiere delle Marche was treated like the “new kid on the block” but now it attracts clients who have been owners of yachts from big-name northern European yards such as Amels, Lürssen and Feadship.
“It’s rewarding, but only someone who has had a shipyard can understand the magnitude of the effort,” says Buonpensiere.
“Even when you are super successful, it’s a very complex business with very low margins. So you must be very passionate.”
The way ahead is consolidation and becoming better, not bigger, says Buonpensiere, who feels strongly about encouraging the 60-odd workforce plus contractors to feel proud and part of the business.
“The biggest thing is to keep your feet on the ground and don’t become too greedy,” he says.
“We reached our critical dimension. We want to be very loyal to our identity and DNA.”
Despite general economic headwinds, CdM has had a busy year, with four yachts launched and 12 boats sold from January to September.
He adds: “We’re very proud, but we feel under pressure. We don’t want to let our clients down and lose our reputation. I couldn’t stand it if people said they are not what they were. That happens in restaurants or rock bands. People don’t like the new stuff and keep on listening to Stairway to Heaven. I don’t want to be the Stairway to Heaven.”
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