are not super high-tech, but they still need to be perfectly turned out.
Because things didn’t work out once or twice, it doesn’t mean we give in.
If they can build a smartphone, put rockets on the moon and build nice
cars, there’s no reason they can’t build these yachts.
Going further back, how did you come to be Sir Robin Knox-
Johnston’s business partner back in 1995. A round-the-world
race for amateur sailors could hardly have looked too appealing
as a business proposition or been easy to start up?
It was a bloody nightmare! I have to say that if I knew the grief it
was going to give me for the first eight years, I wouldn’t have done it.
I’m pleased I did it and it has been an incredible roller-coaster of a ride
and we’ve come out of it very well, but at the beginning it was the worst
decision I’ve made.
A friend called me up to ask me to put some money into a business,
told me it would need GBP200,000 and I told him I wasn’t interested
because it was sailing. Three months had passed, he was still interested,
I still wasn’t, but he asked if I would look at the business model with
him. The race had already been announced, applications were in, the
boats were in production, but the money had run out.
Robin had done a business model, so I looked at the figures and
thought it would need GBP2 million, not GBP200,000. However, I read
the application forms for the first race – from doctors, dentists, people
that I’d been brought up to show respect to – and I was amazed at the
passion.
I had been the biggest importer of cane furniture into the UK, sold
that company, then made a lot of money in property, but I was still
recovering from being completely wiped out in 1991, having lost many,
many millions of pounds.
It was now 1995 and I had built myself back up, but nothing like the
level I was at. Anyway, I said to my mate, ‘I think there is a business
here and I think it will take GBP2 million’. He said, ‘I think you’re right
and I’m not doing it’.
Anyway, I went in and GBP1.86 million got the first race underway.
I had to put more money in after that. Later, we floated the company,
but as soon as anything happened anywhere else, our share price went
down. All our boats were paid for, we were doing well and had a few
million pounds, but our company value was half what we had in our
account.
We were asking sponsors for big money and they’d do a search on
us and find that our company’s worth less than the sponsorship. That
got us very depressed, so we bought the company back and just carried
on doing what we were doing. We built ourselves up to where we’ve
got 70 or so employees, we’re very profitable, strong and giving huge
opportunities out there to people.You seem to have benefited from not being dependent on a title
sponsor.
Our model initially was that we wouldn’t have a title sponsor. We’ve
seen other races have a title sponsor – look at Volvo, BT – but when that
one big name pulls out, whether it’s in two, 10 or 20 years, that leaves
such a void. Our model is that all of our boats are sponsored and our
crew entry makes up a lot of our income.
So, we’ve got 700 or so crew sponsors and bigger sponsors like
cities and fleet sponsors such as insurance, watch companies. Any one
sponsor, even three, could leave without hurting our business.
Our media figures are great, but I don’t think that’s the primary
reason for most sponsorships. For cities, it’s an occasion that brings
everyone together or for organisations like GREAT Britain to do
overseas trade and lots of stuff in different ports.Which host ports have put on the most spectacular race stops?
The Chinese, for scale, certainly the first ones in Qingdao, because
we didn’t know what to expect. In the early days, Singapore put on a
reception that featured the Prime Minister and ASEAN ambassadors.
They’re all different, but Derry-Londonderry in Northern Ireland
was one of the biggest success stories. We went to Derry, which is war-
torn, really, still divided between Protestants and Catholics, and yet
when the race was on, Martin McGuinness pulled me to one side and
said, ‘Do you realise what you’ve done for this community? Never in my
life have I seen these two factions come together as one.’ And this was
a yacht race! We got voted best event in Ireland that year. Derry has a
population of 60,000 and about 200,000 people came to see Clipper.http://www.clipperroundtheworld.comThe 2019-20 skippers including, from third right, South African Nick Leggatt (Zhuhai), England’s Chris Brooks (Qingdao) and Scotland’s Seumas Kellock (Visit Sanya, China)“I started doing business
in China 40 years ago and
it has changed beyond all
recognition in that time”