Exporting yachts is easier than furniture

This story is about special furniture makers. Yacht dreamers-furniture makers. Let’s explain. For Kherson LLC Marina Group, the main activity is the construction and refurbishment of sailing and motor yachts. The yachts are delivered to the customer completely ready, which is called “turnkey”. Like any serious watercraft, they need furniture. Moreover, yachts, which in most cases are luxury goods, also require appropriate equipment, in particular furniture. So, the furniture for the Marina Group custom-built yachts is produced by itself. Moreover, from the director of the company, Marina Nikolaeva, we learned that furnishing for the company is not an additional, related business, but the second self-sufficient activity. The company produces furniture not only as a yacht equipment, but also “land” by order, for the furnishing of stationary objects.
Marina Group is an exporting company. Almost all of its “floating products” are made to order of foreign customers, therefore, of course, for export. Furniture also has export potential. Yachts are exported as part of yachts, “land” separately, under traditional furniture codes.
“We built only one yacht, the very first, presentation one, at our own expense, to demonstrate at a specialized exhibition in the German Dusseldorf,” said Marina Nikolaevna. “There, a customer from Monaco bought it from us.” That “first-born” fully fulfilled its advertising and presentation mission. There was a sale and our first export contract. New orders began to arrive – and so on to this day. We practically do not resort to any advertising campaigns or special marketing promotions of our yacht-awakening opportunities, making sure of the effectiveness of word of mouth, which has brought us customers from the Netherlands, Russia, the Philippines, Latvia, Romania, Singapore, and European islands that are popular with vacationers.
As for export deliveries of furniture, there are much more of them, because furniture projects are not so large-scale, not so long in the time of manufacture and not as expensive as shipbuilding. One order – from Hungary – is especially memorable. And not only that which was the first foreign. The client, being not indifferent to the marine theme, to the elegance and grace inherent in yachts in particular, especially for us, at a shipbuilding company, ordered kitchen furniture for his home, because he wanted yacht-like designs, shapes and colors. There were orders – already for traditional furniture for residential premises – from Greece, Italy, Russia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, the UAE.
Significantly less, but there are still cases when other manufacturers order us to manufacture yacht furniture, shipbuilding is not so comprehensive and comprehensive as Marina Group. I remember that we carried out such an order for the Crimean shipbuilders – the yacht went to Germany, two other similar orders were fulfilled for the Baltic colleagues. And this happens: they took advantage of a certain time of a purchased (not with us, of course) yacht and feel that not everything suits them, I want to change a little, change it, to make it more convenient and comfortable in the yacht rooms. Also contact us. We either understaff yacht furniture, or replace it partially or completely.
– If we compare the export of, say, furniture with the export of yachts, are there big differences? Are there any customs features, difficulties?
– You know, it is much easier to export yachts than furniture sets. The yacht, although very dimensional, structurally complex and bag-complete, but according to the customs documentation passes as a commodity unit. Regardless, this is a nine-meter vessel, or fifty-meter. And the customs escort of furniture requires the execution of several declarations.
– Probably, the Düsseldorf exhibition, at which you sold your first yacht and which showed that another serious player appeared on the market, was not the only one that is interesting and useful to you?
– Indeed, this was not the only exhibition in which Marina-Group took part as a producer who demonstrated its product. But since the first yacht was sold, we regularly visit foreign specialized exhibitions to keep abreast of new trends in yacht building, fashion trends, so as not to miss the appearance of new materials, technologies.
– Your fellow furniture makers traditionally see exhibitions, especially foreign ones, as a rather effective tool for export promotion of their products.

– Why are we no longer demonstrating at the exhibitions what we are capable of in yachting? Firstly, apart from that of our first yacht, we no longer produce yachts without a specific “addressee”. Secondly, yachts – the entire product is unique, and their customers are against (even if the owner’s name is being kept secret) that the manufacturer exhibits their yacht (with certain attributes of a private character — a family coat of arms, name, etc.) for advertising purposes at which exhibitions . So that it is temporarily available for visitors to the exhibition, so that hundreds of other people’s feet trampled down the deck of his yacht. Some yacht manufacturers give customers huge discounts if they give their consent to the demonstration of the yacht at some exhibition. As I said, we have enough orders without an exhibition director. The same applies to the purely furniture direction. While there is no such need, and then it will be seen. There are some ideas for furniture and furniture, the implementation of which, perhaps, will make our company a participant in furniture exhibitions in the future.

The section “Success Stories” was founded as part of a grant project with the support of the Swiss Cooperation Bureau in Ukraine, the name of the project: “Improving the level of cooperation and trust with joint participation in international and national public procurement” – TENDER TOGETHER.