As the CEO of Saxdor Yachts Erna Rusi is propelling the company to the new hights, powered by record order book, Finnish innovation, smart organization of production site and excellent sales network in which Croatia and Nautika Centar Nava have important part
Women in nautical business are gaining more and more significance, but women as CEO of yachting company is not the most common thing. Acting as the CEO of Saxdor Yachts, for little more than two years Erna Rusi has managed to steer the company into the record sales numbers, growing the model family and organizing the production to the smallest detail. She works together with Saxdor founder Sakari Mattila whose creativity she successfully transforms in boats and profit, that is also not always the case in our industry.
ONCE YOU BUILT PRODUCTION FACILITIES, THINGS STARTED MOVING FOR SAXDOR?
When we first started, we always had our own production, we never used sub-contractors and we always had our own team. But we had very small, rented facility in Poland so we had a limited space, not made for boat building and we couldn’t streamline our processes and our production line. Then we realized that we need to invest if we want to grow and we invested in a new facility in 2022, it is 10.000 meters of our own production space, fully built for us. It has taken into consideration all the needs that we have identified, now we are in a good place, where we can run efficient production.
YOU ANNOUNCED SALES OVER 70 MILION WORTH OF BOATS?
We sold 73 million euro of boats last year, and Saxdor 320 has been our volume model, but so far we have built about 2000 boats of all models.
SAXDOR 400 IS THE NEW STAR?
It is an amazing boat for its size, showing how much boat you can really get with just 40 feet. It feels spacious, it is open when you open with terraces, and when you sit inside you are in open space and we like to call it a private island because it feels like you are in your own privacy in the outdoors. At the same time Saxdor 400 goes 50 knots, it is a driver’s boat and it strives. If you like the sporty feeling, if you like to go fast and drive the boat you will get a kick from our boats no matter what size.
YOUR PRICING POLICY REMAINS VERY INTERESTING FOR THE CUSTOMERS?
We have always had a strategy of aggressive pricing. We don’t always necessarily need to be the cheapest, but we always are aggressive in each category. And we believe that we can offer a lot of boat for your money, so you get your money’s worth. Also our global policy is no discount so you don’t have to worry that one company sells for better price than another. We feel that customer can also trust that second hand value is more reliable when you know that everybody is getting the same price globally.
YOU ARE STILL BUILDING THE GLOBAL SALES NETWORK?
We have a good sales dealer network at the moment, but we are still need some ‘bits and pieces’, and there are some areas which we haven’t even touched, like South America and Africa, though we get inquiries from Mozambique and Zanzibar and we explore ways to cater people in various places.
HOW ABOUT CROATIA?
It is one of our strong markets and historically one of the first markets for our brand. We have a great relationship with Nava boats and you have this incredible archipelago, and we think that our boats are match made in heaven for that setup. Croatia has always been one of our best European markets, and we have a great partnership.
WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND?
I have no background from boating and was not entitled to bring the expertise from this area. I was recruited to take the start-up and build it in strong mid-sized and large company. Create the structure and the processes and start running it like a company, it was a start-up without structure and functionalities. My background is from telecom business, heavy corporate sides. I’m pretty flexible as I worked with technology, sales, marketing and running business but never in production.
SO, WHAT IS YOUR TARGET WITH SAXDOR?
I think that we will take over the world, as we have fantastic products and the way we are building our fleet and moving into the bigger size boats, I think that we are hot and trendy brand, doing something new, and why I have the audacity to say this is because I truly believe that we have Sakari Mattila ability for innovation: He is surprising us again and again and he is always bringing something new. He is feeling the market and always bringing the solution that the market wants. I believe is that this is our strong path forward. We are now quality wise where we should be, and we can see only growth from here and expect to take some market share in times to come.
LIKE WITH NEW SAXDOR 460?
Exactly, maybe something bigger is also possible in the future, with Sakari it is always possible (laugh).
Photos Saxdor
