While the economy cooled, one of Florida’s biggest boat-sales firms has set an ambitious course.
By Louisa Beckett
As printed in the Spring 2010 issue of Yachtworld.com
Faced with the economic downturn in the yachting industry, many dealerships and brokerage firms have drastically reduced inventory levels, laid off staff and essentially gone into hibernation waiting for boat buyers to return to the marketplace. In the past twelve months, by contrast, yacht brokerage firm and dealer HMY Yacht Sales, which covers the Atlantic coast of Florida and Charleston, S.C., has added two new boat lines: Tiara Yachts and Grand Banks. And in February, it opened a new dealership – its seventh – in Miami’s Coconut Grove, just before the Miami Yacht and Brokerage Show. An eighth HMY office, its location still under wraps, is due to open this year.
“When other people were pulling back or in a holding pattern, we felt it was the right time to expand,” says HMY’s general manager, Tom Sanders. “Expand in Miami; expand marketing opportunities, including online …. We thought now is the time when we needed to grow ourselves, so when the market does come back around, we have a high visibility, we’ve shown our strength, and we are there to meet the boat-buying public’s needs. Whether it’s fishing, cruising; new, used; Miami, Charleston … we try to be there.”
HMY made a significant investment in internet marketing in 2009, including launching an all new website at www.HMY.com. And in South Florida, it raised its profile, as well, by implementing an aggressive, multiple-year cross-marketing campaign with the professional football team the Miami Dolphins. Last October HMY was a major sponsor of the Miami Dolphins Alumni Weekend, which brought thousands of fans together to celebrate the franchise’s 1982 and 1984 AFC Championship teams. “Twice, we brought boats right to the stadium and displayed them at the entrance to the newly renamed Sun Life Stadium, a first for the facility,” Sanders says, adding that HMY’s commercials also ran on the stadium’s 3,000 video screens at every home game last fall. “It gave us tremendous name recognition in the Miami market at the same time we were about to open the Miami office.”
According to Sanders, one of the secrets to HMY’s success is its longevity; the company will celebrate its 31st anniversary this year. Another key factor is the quality of the new yacht lines it represents, which include Viking Yachts, Viking Sport Cruisers and Riviera Yachts, in addition to Tiara and Grand Banks. “We have higher end products with good customer demand, whether it’s on the new boat side or the brokerage side,” he says.
HMY started out as a brokerage firm (see sidebar) and has maintained its edge in that marketplace as well. “In terms of units, we sell more brokerage boats than new boats. In terms of revenue to the company, new boats are a vital bloodline for us,” Sanders says. The two sides of the sales equation are intertwined, of course, as clients who buy new boats from the company frequently return to trade up and trade in their boats, which become brokerage offerings. This Tiara was displayed by HMY in a promotion outside the Miami Dolphins football stadium.
Thanks in part to its longtime relationship with Viking Yachts, which the company first began representing in 1992, HMY has developed a reputation as a sportfishing expert. Each year, at the end of May, it holds the annual Billfish Blast for its sportfish owner clients in conjunction with the Abaco Beach Resort at Boat Harbour in The Bahamas. This year will see the 11th Billfish Blast. “It’s a serious release tournament,” Sanders says, adding that the event is also very family-friendly. “Every evening offers a variety of family-oriented entertainment activities.”
“It’s hardcore fishing,” agrees Joe Schwab, Viking Yachts vice-president of sales, “yet the first time you throw the line on the dock, it’s a party.”
But, as HMY Yacht Sales’ owner Steve Moynihan puts it, “Fishing isn’t all that we do.”
“One of our company goals is to continue to move – not away from sportfishing – but into the cruising market,” Sanders says. In addition to representing Viking Sport Cruisers, he points out “the Grand Banks and Tiara product lines really solidify [that].”
HMY began representing the Grand Banks cruising boat line in February 2010. Rob Livingston, Grand Banks
president and CEO, commented at the time that in addition to its dedicated and knowledgeable sales and service staff, “HMY also offers all the resources necessary to make the purchase or sale of our clients’ new and used yachts a positive experience.” The dealer used to host annual “HMY Great Escapes” to The Bahamas for motor yacht clients in the mid- to late 1990s. “We’re going to reignite that event,” Sanders says. “As we look at all the Tiara and Grand Banks owners, both of those groups are used to having owner events.” Details about HMY’s Bahamas summer cruise will be posted on the company’s website.
The megayacht category is another area of expansion for the company, at least on the brokerage side. Sanders, who was vice-president of sales for Allied Marine before joining HMY in 2004, brings a wealth of big boat experience to the table. He has also served as sales director for Bertram and Hatteras, as well as working with Christensen and Destiny Yachts.
“We just closed on a brokerage 108-foot Hargrave, and we look to do more and more of that,” he says, adding that HMY’s brokerage team also recently sold a 100-foot Benetti. “We’re in that market, and we intend to continue to grow in that market.”
While boats are their stock in trade, Sanders and Moynihan agree that HMY’s biggest asset is its people.
“We have a great, great team … about 80 people between sales, support and service people,” Moynihan says. “The dedication of our team is really our culture.” “Their customer service is excellent,” Joe Schwab says, reporting that Viking is on very close terms with HMY. “We’ve had customers go back four or five times to HMY and have enjoyed our relationship over seventeen years. It’s not so much a manufacturer/dealer relationship as a partnership.”
When asked what HMY’s watchwords are, Moynihan and Sanders both use terms like “honesty” and “integrity”. “We feel like we are a very ethical company,” Sanders says, telling the story of a brokerage transaction that the company handled recently when the surveyor overlooked a serious problem on the vessel. “We did not have the obligation to repair it but we did, and it was for several thousand dollars,” he said. “We strive to do the right thing by the customer.”
Selling a Boat a Day
HMY Yacht Sales owner and co-founder Steve Moynihan got his start in the boat business in 1975 with one of the very first firms to sell multiple-listing services to yacht brokers – a novel concept back in the days before computers. In 1977 and ’78, he went to work for two different brokers, learning the trade until he was ready to hang out a shingle of his own.
It didn’t take long. In 1979, Moynihan founded HMY Yacht Sales with partners “H” and “Y” – Art Holler and Ron Youngdahl. “We thought that we could add something to the industry,” Moynihan says. “There was a new facility out at Marina Bay [in Fort Lauderdale] that was attractive to us. We wanted to be on the water, have a lot of product at the dock.”
From the very beginning, operating out of a waterfront location where the yachts can be displayed in their natural element has been an essential part of the HMY game plan. Today, the company has seven locations, in Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, Stuart, Palm Beach Gardens, North Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale/Dania and Miami, Fla. All of them are on the water; all have display docks. “As a dealer you really have to have that,” Moynihan says.
It was not all smooth sailing for HMY in the beginning. “At that time – that was over 30 years ago – the challenge was getting
past the old guard of the yacht brokerage business industry,” Moynihan says. “They had an unwritten rule about people starting
up companies and not being able to do business with them on a conventional basis until they had been in business for a year.” He adds, “All that has since gone by the wayside.”
For its first four years, HMY focused solely on the brokerage business. Then, in 1983, Moynihan seized the opportunity to take on a new-boat line: the well-known Post Marine sportfisherman series. “The Post dealer in Fort Lauderdale was retiring, and it was good quality, high-pedigreed product,” he says.
By that time, Moynihan had a new partner, Doc Austin – a partnership that lasted until Austin’s untimely death, two years ago. Together, the pair added more product lines and built HMY Yacht Sales to the point where – at least until the recent recession – the company literally was able to say it “sold a boat a day” – one for every day of the year. Today, despite the business climate, HMY is working hard to return to that high-water mark. – L.B.
Louisa Beckett has been involved with boating ever since her father, Kenneth Rudeen, sailing editor for Sports Illustrated, took her to her first America’s Cup at age eleven. As former editor of Motor Boating and ShowBoats International magazines, she has covered the marine industry from PWCs to superyachts.
