OCEAN 41 PUBLISHED JANUARY 2012
New Horizon
When his business partner died suddenly in December 2010, Russell Wright of Horizon Motor Yachts Australia stepped into the breach to keep the flag flying for his clients and the Horizon brand. A year on, he tells Sam Tinson about how his passion for the product and love of boating has helped drive him on.
Images Sam Tinson, HMYA
Horizon Motor Yachts Australia occupies a smart office space in Sanctuary Cove, Queensland, smack dab in the middle of the annual Sanctuary Cove International Boat Show site. It’s a great spot for a boat dealership, with easy access from Brisbane, Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast and a permanent on-water display just metres from the door. The front windows are plastered with boat listing notices, and inside, three or four staff are working the phones, hoping that the next call just might be the one that leads to a sale.
Out back, director Russell Wright sits at a desk piled with paperwork and boating magazines. With a mug of coffee in one hand and a mobile phone that periodically chirps with a racing car ring tone in the other, he looks in pretty good shape for a bloke who spends his life yo-yo-ing back and forth between the Gold Coast and Taiwan, where Horizon has its factory. At the age of 58, and with 30 years of successful work in the marine industry behind him, Wright could be expected to have by now put his feet up, and be spending more time with his wife Denise aboard their 72-foot Horizon, or in his workshop tinkering with his beloved racing cars. Instead he has just finalised a deal on a Horizon Bandido 66 trawler yacht, and is in talks with several clients about the Horizon E54 Aero cruiser, due to arrive in Australia in March.
The fact that Wright is still ‘on deck’ when plenty of others in his position would have retired to the captain’s lounge by now is largely due to the sudden and sad passing of his business partner, John Rapmund. As the director of Horizon Boats International, Rapmund had been selling Horizon yachts imported through Wright’s company Sundown Marine (which Wright set up back in 1977). With Rapmund handling front-of-house sales and Wright liaising with the factory and managing customer orders, the business became the vanguard of Horizon Yachts’ push to secure a bigger toehold in the Australian market.
When Rapmund passed away in December 2010 aged 59, Wright was left with a difficult choice to make: dissolve the operation, or step up to a front of house position and continue where John left off. He chose the latter, and Horizon Motor Yachts Australia (HMYA) was born.
Russell Wright with wife Denise and the rest of the HMYA team.
HMYA was founded in sad and difficult circumstances. Was it a hard decision to ‘take over the helm’ after John died?
The truth is I’d wanted to remain semi-retired at that stage, as I’d had such a long run in the marine game, working long hours. I was working from home, getting involved with the odd sale, and I had a bit of time to enjoy my boating and my car racing. But I’m very passionate about what I do, and when John died the business had a lot of stock, so it made sense for me to keep going. Also I get on very well with the Horizon team over in Taiwan, and I felt a certain obligation to continue with them because they had been so supportive.
How did you handle the transition, particularly on the client side?
I’d had a lot of face time with the clients anyway, so they all knew me. John would call me in at the close of a deal, and Denise and I would have a lot of involvement with the ordering of the boats. Most of the communications were through me once the deal got going, as the client decided what options they wanted with the boat etc. I like to think that on the whole there was a smooth transition, and we worked hard to reduce the impact on clients.
How integral is the Australian market to the Horizon brand as a whole?
We are very important to them now. The market in Europe and America is pretty well stuffed, so like a lot of brands Horizon is focusing very much on the Asia-Pacific region and looking at Australia to be a stronger part of their sales. They are really pushing that, and so it’s good to have that total support. I go out to the factory in Taiwan on a regular basis, around every two months, and that gets me fired up because you see what’s in the pipeline, what new models are coming out, and it’s exciting to be able to talk about that with clients.
You mentioned your passion for boating. Do you still get a chance to enjoy the boating life yourself?
Denise and I own a few boats including a 72-foot Horizon, and we get a lot of use out of them. I love being on and working on boats, and nothing pleases me more than being out on a boat at the weekend, even if it’s just to polish it. And I love talking about boats too, so I enjoy conversations with customers about optioning up their new boat. I try to imagine how they’ll use it compared to how we use ours, as I think Denise and I are a fairly normal husband and wife team in the way we use our boats. We try to set each one up so it’s appealing to a broad customer base and to suit the Australian market. We have a lot of boating friends and we’re actively boating all the time, so we’re in the ideal position to do that.
Different boats attract different buyers. What sort of owner is attracted to the Horizon brand?
Most are serious yachties who have had boats before and come up through the ranks of 40 and 50-footers, and now want something better and more comfortable, that they know is going to last. This will sound like sales talk, but to me, as a boat owner, the Horizons are actually a bit over-built. They are very heavy, solid, honest boats. The machinery onboard – Onan generators, Caterpillar engines, American bow thrusters – plus all the electronics and gear is all the best models from the best brands. These boats are designed to go to sea; they are not necessarily high performance, but something that when you’re out at sea you can be confident it’s not going to be bounce around like a cork.
We also get people who like their boats individualised, because with Horizon you can get what really amounts to a custom built boat, without paying custom build prices. You can change the cupboards, put a spa bath in, design your own layout; whatever you want, they’ll accommodate it. So no two Horizons are the same, unless someone’s seen a stock boat and wants the same thing. Otherwise, outside of the hull mould it’s a blank canvas, and very much a reflection of the owner’s personal taste.
Horizon Group’s main factory premises in Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Horizon is one of the most prolific yacht brands out there when it comes to releasing new product. Anything new in the pipeline?
We’re very excited about the new E54 Aero cruiser, the first of which is due to arrive in Australia in March. Up until now the lowest price point of our boats has been around $2.5 million, but priced under the $1.5 million mark the E54 will allow us to get into the entry level market. It’s a bit more performance oriented too, being specifically built for the latest IPS 900 pod drives. It will give us a model that we can use to hit out at Riviera and Maritimo, but has a lot of European style too in the manner of a Princess or Sunseeker.
We also have a couple of new cats coming out, including the new PC58, which is basically a 60-footer with a big beam and lots of volume. Catamarans are good market for us because people are looking for long range, fuel efficient boats that are cheap to run. The PC58 is a very pretty looking boat, with a swept back superstructure and more of the Horizon family resemblence than, say, the Horizon AC80, which had a more upright look. And of course it’s fitted out to top Horizon standard, whereas a lot of the power cats out there tend to have a semi commercial fit out.
The uncertainly about the global economy has hit a lot of yacht dealers hard. How has business been in general for HMYA over the last year?
Right now, this is not a business you’d necessarily be in purely in order to make money. You have got to be passionate. I can think of a lot of other businesses now that might be more profitable, but I don’t know that I’d want to do them. And generally, we’ve not been doing badly in the circumstances. The boats we sell are big ticket boats, so high volume turnover isn’t what it’s about. We’ve just closed a deal on a Horizon Bandido 66 trawler yacht and we’ve got five new boats being built to order, including two 97-footers, a 74 and a 54. And the good news is that we are already getting repeat clients, which is great as we have been in business for a relatively short time. So it’s tough times but we’re getting through it, and in the meantime it’s head down, bum up and on with the show.
