Marcello Veronesi: Charting a New Course for Cantiere Del Pardo

Speaking with leading figures of yacht builders is always interesting, but when a person comes from the family running a huge fashion company at the same time (Oniverse is governing brands like Calzedonia and Intimissimi), it becomes even more intriguing. This is exactly the case with Marcello Veronesi, the new CEO of Cantiere Del Pardo, the shipyard which capitalized the idea of building luxury day cruisers, while at the same time carrying the history of famous Grand Soleil division of performance cruiser sailboats. Today, their brand breaks the 20-meter length with a new Pardo GT75. Next year Grand Soleil will launch a Grand Soleil Plus 80. 

WHAT DID YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE BY BUYING THE SHIPYARD?
Let's start from the beginning to sum up how this adventure started. Everything in my life I decide partly by heart and partly by business reasons, and it was the combination of two here as well. We as a mother company are on the path of diversification of the business for many reasons, and I think that the boating industry is by far the most diversified investment which we control so far. There are many reasons why, but first of all we selected Cantiere Del Pardo at the beginning because it is one of the most innovative brands on the market. They were the first to come up with an idea of luxury central console walkaround positioned in the higher level of the market both from aesthetical and quality points. We chose them also because of the potential of the new projects which the shipyard had and still have in the portfolio. We are working hard to deploy older range, in the new products to arrive to market, in the coming years. So this was the main reason, as the potential for the growth of the company was still unleashed and let’s see what is coming in the next future.

DO YOU FIND THE OFFER OF THE SHIPYARD ALSO DIVERSIFIED?
In business we have many clients, some of them can be cross consumers, other have their own niche. We think that three brands which we operate at Cantiere Del Pardo which are Pardo Yachts, Grand Soleil and VanDutch are already super well positioned. We only want to increase much more quality and customer care, looking at customer experience in a 360 -approach. This is a critical topic to achieve which takes time, but we are pretty fast when we select a strategy. At the moment the shipyard already took a new very important portion of the market with the new Pardo GT65, the Pardo Endurance 72, the Grand Soleil 72, and we are building Grand Soleil 80 as well, to be finished spring next year. But we are still investing a lot in our core business from 40 feet onwards, both in sailing and motorboats, in Dusseldorf we even presented Grand Soleil Blue which is a 33-foot boat. 

HOW IS YOUR STRATEGY TOWARDS THE DEALERSHIPS?
We would like to work with the right people, this is a very brief answer. The idea behind is simple, we do not have any prejudgement, we don’t act by the book but we are flexible in the terms that thanks to the team in the shipyard, in the next future we already selected high-end professional partners. The truth is once the market boomed in the last years, everyone wanted to sell a boat. Now it is the time to select the partners with whom we want to play. Rather than changing a distribution formula, we are more working for a more selected partnership. We mainly prefer people who sell only our brands for many reasons, first of all because they are within the family and very focused in proposing our brands and supporting our projects. But it depends on the market, on the area, there are many scenarios… We are happy with the dealer network we are working right now, we are still looking for the new partners because the world is big and I think there a lot of opportunities still to be cought.

WHAT IS YOUR FIRST WISH FOR CANTIERE DEL PARDO?
I think the highest potential which we still need to unleash is the timing of the new projects on the market. Many shipyards first look for a customer and then propose the new projects. Instead, we want to propose the new project once we really trust in the potential of that project itself. Creation of the consumer community and bringing final customer closer to the shipyard is another goal. This doesn’t mean we don’t sell through partners, but being linked together more is something we want to achieve.