Just because you own the company doesn’t mean you always get your way. When Paolo Vitelli, founder and CEO of the Azimut-Benetti Group, first pitched the idea for a four-deck, steel-hulled, 37-metre, semi-custom yacht to his board of directors, it wasn’t met with wild enthusiasm. The sales team, meanwhile, asked the quite reasonable question: “Are you crazy?” Smaller, steel-hulled boats were not their market.
No one who makes their living from semi-custom superyacht production can afford a dud. The upfront investment is considerable, so if only a few hulls from the series sell, costs aren’t recouped and the recriminations begin. In short, it takes guts. But Vitelli was convinced he was on to something, leaning hard on his vast experience, from founding Azimut as a twenty-something in 1969 to buying Benetti in 1985 and building a business that tops our Global Order Book of superyacht producers.
“Everyone was building bigger boats in fibreglass, so the idea to build a smaller boat in steel was not easy to accept,” says Vitelli from an office overlooking his expansive Livorno shipyard. The concept led to some “internal discussions”, he adds suggestively. To swing everyone around to his way of thinking took some time – and personal investment: Vitelli would build the first
