From buying a superyacht to accidentally managing a charter fleet

Welcome to Yacht Charter Market, the weekly newsletter dedicated to the world of yacht charter.

In today’s newsletter:

• Top story: An Impulsive decision: How buying a superyacht led to managing a charter fleet

• Charter Updates: New charter CA for 60m Alfa G | New CA for Premura | New CA for 33m Irvette | Radiance for charter in New Zealand

• Superyacht Spotlight: Exploring Alaska

TOP STORY

An Impulsive decision: How buying a superyacht led to managing a charter fleet

Owner of the 40-metre motor yacht Impulsive and founder of the brokerage CharterYacht, is Jordan Grives. The Australian entrepreneur sits down with Leona Caanen to chat business, databases and charter.

The entrepreneurial spirit comes naturally to 37-year-old Jordan Grives, having founded and invested in several businesses in the telecommunications sector for the last two decades. “I sold my first business in 2016 to a NASDAQ-listed company, made a little money, and then started the process over again.” The next time, however, Jordan sold his business for 100 percent shares into a publicly listed company in Australia, “which grew from a AUD 50 million market cap to a AUD 3.8 billion acquisition three years later.”

With the proceeds of that business endeavour, Jordan set up his own investment office. “I’ve invested loads, but I wouldn’t say there was any method to my madness; it was often based on a gut feeling,” he shares. “The yacht was my first investment, and the rest is history.”

When it came to purchasing Impulsive, “there was no formal sort of ‘thesis’,” Jordan shares, “simply, my wife, Amelia, and I wanted to buy a boat.” Having a place in Noosa, located on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Jordan and Amelia first owned a smaller day boat before looking at buying a 60-70-footer. “When friends invited us onto the 40-metre Mondomarine, Infinity Pacific, in Sydney, we did some simple numbers on what a yacht of this calibre would cost.” Soon after, Infinity Pacific was renamed Impulsive, with Jordan and Amelia as happy owners.

After completing the survey, the couple undertook a refit that overhauled the original redwood and mahogany interior in favour of a more monochrome look. “We made her look very much like our home, with an incredible lounge room: I want people to curl up on the couch with a blanket, watch a movie and feel at home.”

Yachting as a business

“Buying the yacht was the easy part,” notes Jordan, “I did little due diligence before buying her, but she definitely cost us more than we expected and we would need to run her like a  business.” Already having the necessary paperwork to charter, “she was ready to go.”

Charter would ensure she wasn’t gathering dust in the marina, “you can’t have the boat sitting there with eight crew and using it only once per year.” Yet Jordan didn’t want to have an established agency manage the yacht. “The charter industry has quite a standard operating procedure: you give the yacht to a central agent or brokerage, a marketing manager joins and it’s just a bit half-assed,” shares Jordan.

Jordan set out to market on his own terms. “We spent a fair bit of money on the branding, working hard to turn the yacht into its own brand.” To offer something different, Jordan took the yacht from the oversaturated Sydney market and sailed her up north to Queensland. “There aren’t a lot of boats domiciled up here: they visit, or head to the Whitsundays, but they don’t ‘live’ here.”

Turning the yacht into a charter business, “it doesn’t become profitable overnight. But in three years she has reached a point where she washes face, so I’m pretty happy.” 

Built on data and personal connections

One of the biggest factors in filling Impulsive’s charter agenda has been data: “my personal network has been helpful, I’ll happily email people about chartering her myself, but that only goes so far, so we’ve built our own global database of prospects.” Jordan has built an in-house team whose job is to find the right people, scouring the corners of the internet for big businesses and wealthy individuals. “You’re playing in that one percent space - you’ve got to come up with different ways to reach people.”

“We are directly reaching out to people we know are wealthy. There are plenty of no replies or people telling us where to shove it, but we also get people who are interested and who may have never thought about yachting before.” Social media has done a lot of the heavy lifting. Impulsive’s own Instagram account has grown to more than 21,000 followers, making her the most followed charter superyacht in Australia, and that audience has become a genuine source of business: enquiries now come in directly from people who first discovered the yacht online, with a growing share of charters traced back to social media. “There’s no reason we can’t reach out.”

A large success factor lies in persistence, a trait that has run through all of Jordan’s ventures, and it shows in the team’s follow-up strategy. “You need to follow up with clients, and not just the ones that are already thinking about booking the same charter for Christmas next year. We’ve just finished chartering in Fiji, so we send out a reminder that the destination is greenlit for next year.”

In the course of the last three years, Impulsive has more than washed her face, so much so that other owners have asked Jordan and his team to manage their superyachts too, forming a growing fleet that now includes Sea Raes, Sunset, Lumir and Belle. “While I definitely can’t see us owning an entire fleet, we have set up a global brokerage, CharterYacht.com, so that whether a client wants the Whitsundays, Fiji, the Med or the Caribbean, we can put them on the right yacht anywhere in the world.”

“At the end of the day, you can make really good business out of the brokerage side of yachting - especially because we are not precious with regard to clients. If a guest loves our yacht and her crew, but wants to go to Sydney or somewhere Impulsive doesn’t charter, we’ll happily point them towards another yacht.” With the Mondomarine’s success, business is no longer about filling Impulsive’s agenda, but about sharing the business and “helping our owners,” notes Jordan, “when the client is looked after, everyone comes out ahead.”

Responsible for success

At the core of Impulsive’s success sits the yacht’s crew. “I know it’s a cliché, but genuinely, the crew and the service they provide are what people remember.” Having kissed a lot of frogs before landing on his current crew, Jordan is delighted with the team - both on the water and ashore: “the head office team and the onboard crew, I’m positive that we have the best in the country.”

“We’re a high-end hospitality business on the water and we put a lot of time and effort into every detail of the service,” Jordan notes. “It’s not uncommon for us to get hilarious videos of the crew dressed up as pirates or driving a jet ski dressed up as Santa.” A crew dedicated to their craft is crucial in a business where you can’t always be on the vessel managing the day-to-day operations. 

“You can replicate the entire vessel, but you can’t replace the feeling of being onboard with our crew,” Jordan smiles. The care goes both ways: Jordan looks after his team as closely as the crew look after guests. “We vet anyone and everyone staying onboard. It’s usually a light check, and if there’s something suspicious we take a deeper dive. The well-being and safety of our crew is the most important.” 

With a 75 percent return rate and having owned Impulsive for four years, Jordan has been able to enjoy cruising the 40-metre Mondomarine along Australia’s east coast, and the waters of Fiji. Not only that, but this investment has turned into a passion project that brings both joy to Everyone who steps onboard and a healthy return to its owners.

This article was first published in Issue 59 of the SuperYacht Times Newspaper

CHARTER UPDATES

SUPERYACHT SPOTLIGHT