The 6,000-Kilometre Shortcut: How a European Yacht Brand Moved Its Production from China to Antalya
A Northern European sailing yacht manufacturer with an established brand in the 35 to 55-foot performance cruiser segment — a category where buyers are sophisticated, specifications exacting, and the brand's word-of-mouth reputation in the European sailing community is the primary commercial asset. The company designed its boats in-house and sold through marinas and dealerships across Northern and Western Europe, but manufactured hulls and completed final assembly at a subcontractor facility in southern China. The arrangement, made a decade earlier for its margin advantage, was by 2023 failing on four dimensions simultaneously: Chinese labour-cost inflation had eroded the cost gap to the point where it no longer justified the operational complexity; finish quality had drifted across three production cycles, generating warranty claims and unflattering comments in the sailing press; a six-week ocean transit pushed the order-to-delivery cycle to eight to ten months against competitors delivering in four to six; and the production director was losing some forty days a year to supervision flights across nine time zones. Management concluded the China arrangement had to end — but had no clear answer to where a Europe-adjacent alternative might exist.
Lead time cut from 9 to 5 months
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