Interview: "Young Professionals in Yachting" board member on early management responsibility
Your father runs a large design office in Bremen. Have you been on boats since you were a child?
Yes, pretty much. We've always had a boat on the Lesum. It used to be a Soling and now it's a daysailer. I've been sailing up and down the Weser since I could walk and have always sailed past shipyards and large yachts.
Did you also sail regattas?
In the beginning, it was more after-work regattas and occasionally with my father on the Baltic Sea. When I turned 18, I travelled to Kiel by car and sailed for four years on the "Immac One4All". That was pure regatta sailing, with no toilet on board and 14 men on the edge. We gutted and rebuilt the 52-foot ex-Admirals Cupper ourselves.
Despite your boatbuilding skills and proximity to yachts, your career has taken you in a different direction. Why?
To be honest, my parents never pushed me in any direction. My brother is an industrial engineer and I was already studying economics at school, so I ended up in business studies relatively quickly. I'm quite good at talking and I'm an open-minded person who draws his energy from people. During my studies at the Cologne Business School, it wasn't about working in a specific company or industry, but about the Bachelor's degree. This was then called General Management with a specialisation in personnel management, corporate management and marketing. I found the prospect of entrepreneurship exciting.
What was the focus of your Master's programme?
I wanted to do my Master's in Sales because I wasn't interested in marketing. And I wanted to stay in Cologne, where there was a dual degree programme in Luxury Fashion and Sales Management. So it was very specialised. But one thing led to another: Business aviation went well with luxury and we had a provider in Bremen, Atlas Air Service, which was selling Embraer executive jets and offering charter flights at the time. I wrote my master's thesis there on customer loyalty and customer acquisition for HNWIs and UHNWIs.
Since we were talking about ultra high net worth individuals, did you also research yachts in your master's thesis?
Yes, because it also included the sociology of the customer group and I conducted an interview with a billionaire from Germany. It was about envy society, a big issue in business aviation. In Germany, unlike in America, this is used more along the lines of: I can work off three customers in Europe, while having conversations that I can't have on a normal plane, and be back home in the evening. I knew from the billionaire that he was also a yachting customer and naturally drew parallels to an industry that I knew well through my father and whose customer base is similarly small. You are a UHNWI if you have investable assets of 30 million euros or more. You are actually a customer for private business aviation if you have 100 million euros in liquid assets to buy a jet. A six-person jet cost 1.5 million euros at the time, but was almost as expensive to maintain annually. That quickly brings us down to around 1000 potential customers in Germany.
What happened after your studies?
During my studies, I became more and more interested in watches. My master's thesis also dealt with how you can recognise your clientele. Even if high-net-worth individuals dress casually with an Aldi bag and possibly still have Sikaflex hanging on their sleeves, the hundred-thousand-euro watch usually provides a decisive clue. In the end, I started at the Karlsruhe-based online retailer Chrono24, for which I also sold watches myself and built up the B2C sales team.
Building trust when buying a luxury watch online is no easy task.
I was helped by training as a watch consultant, where I learnt a lot about materials and manufacturing methods. I set up a telephone advisory service for customers who were looking at watches costing 10,000 euros or more. The most expensive wristwatch I brokered cost 350,000 euros. The actual sale is handled by a trustee service. If a customer from Bavaria likes a watch in England, he transfers the amount to the escrow account, but the money only goes to the seller when he receives the watch. Chrono24 is now the largest online watch marketplace in the world.
Which watch is your dream model?
My Grail Watch is a Patek Philippe 5170p 001, which is around 120,000 euros (laughs).
How did the move to the design office happen?
To be honest, it turned out that way. It was good to initially do what I wanted to do professionally and to have the opportunity to take on management responsibility very early on. As my father was approaching retirement age, the question of where to start came up. I started as a sales and HR manager, became an authorised signatory and am now COO. Initially, I pushed ahead with digitalisation, for example in accounting, and modernised the work processes.
How is the KBN Group organised in terms of personnel and in which sectors is it active?
We currently have just under 50 employees, half of whom work in temporary employment and have a desk at the hirer's company or do construction supervision there. Since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, companies have been outsourcing more construction services again. 90 per cent of our orders come from shipyards and suppliers from northern Germany, which build equal numbers of yachts and naval vessels. This involves launching devices or external staircases. In some cases, we optimise production processes, carry out feasibility studies or design for suppliers, such as fin stabilisers. For the past three years, we have been trying to diversify more and are active in railway, offshore and bridge construction, for example.
Your website lists 15 vacancies and everyone is talking about the shortage of skilled labour. How do you look for colleagues?
We use fairly traditional channels, our website, which then links to the usual portals via multipostings. It works less well via social media; four out of five of the last hires were made via industry contacts or employees recruiting employees. We are particularly pleased because it shows that we are doing something right. For an engineering firm, we have an extremely young team; the average age in in-house engineering is in the early 30s.
How did Young Professionals in Yachting make it easier for you to enter the industry?
YPY helped me incredibly to get into the industry. Within a year, I was part of the network and therefore part of the industry. In some cases, friendships have developed and every now and then an order comes in.
You are responsible for sponsorship on the YPY board. How is the fundraising going at the moment?
We have 19 sponsors for the YPY Superyacht Summit. We also have four sponsors who support us throughout the year. This helps us cover the costs of regulars' tables and the annual general meeting, for example. We are also planning another event that will focus on shipbuilding and is intended to appeal to technical staff and engineers, among others. With the Townhall Meetings, we want to address those people from the yachting industry who are under 40 years old and our Young Professionals in Yachting association has not yet really picked up on.
About "Young Professionals in Yachting Germany"
Founded in 2017, the "Young Professionals in Yachting Germany" networking platform supports its members in making contacts within the industry, including at events and get-togethers. Anyone who already works in the yachting industry and is between 20 and 40 years old can join. The association currently has over 100 members from different areas of the large yacht world.
- Further information: ypyinternational.org
