Media veteran Ashley Highfield on turning around sleeping giant Oyster Yachts and charting a course for growth
The fast-paced media industry has a daily ebb and flow of stories which are then packaged into a printed product or curated online. It is a different world to the luxury yacht industry where a single boat can take more than a year of careful crafting before it glides onto the water.
Oyster Yachts CEO Ashley Highfield is a veteran of the online and print media world with a CV that includes roles as CEO of Johnston Press, Managing Director and Vice President Consumer and Online UK at Microsoft and Director of New Media & Technology at the BBC where he launched the iPlayer streaming service.
It was a desire for a change of pace and challenge that drew Ashley to Oyster Yachts where he has spent the past four years steadying the ship with owner Richard Hadida, co-founder of Evolution Gaming, who rescued the business from administration.
He said: "We work on very long cycles in this industry where we can take up to a year to build a yacht and sometimes longer for the biggest.
"I can't think of more of a contrast to producing a newspaper which has a daily cycle where you start with almost nothing the day before and the day afterwards there is a full newspaper on the newsstands.
"The digital industry is usually one of hundreds of thousands or millions of users and here you are dealing with a few hundred owners. Each one you get to know as they buy a yacht and go through the process. In digital and print, you rarely get to know your end users.”
The turnaround in Oyster Yachts’ fortunes over the past four years is commendable having been acquired with mothballed yards, a depleted workforce and an order book of customers still waiting for their boats.
Ashley and Richard's first priority on acquisition was to renegotiate with 20 customers who had outstanding orders, of which 19 were saved.
The company now has more than 500 staff across four main facilities including boatyards in Southampton, Hythe and Norfolk, a brokerage and commissioning base in Ipswich, a servicing centre in Palma and an office in the USA.
"I can't think of more of a contrast to producing a newspaper which has a daily cycle where you start with almost nothing the day before and the day afterwards there is a full newspaper on the newsstands."
Ashley said: "You have got to be committed to this and we are four years into a ten-year plan.
"We have launched three new models in the last four years, and turned the business around but there is so much more to do.
"You can't hurry a hand-built craft business and that has been the biggest lesson I have learned, as has Richard, with us both coming from tech backgrounds where you can do things so quickly.
"However, there is a halfway house where you can bring speed of decision-making, entrepreneurialism and the speed of innovation, found in the tech industry, together with craftsmanship and a focus on quality."
New boat range launched to target new markets
The Oyster team has invested heavily in product development and expanded the range to include a new entry-level 50 foot boat (Oyster 495) which is billed as the first step on the ladder to Oyster ownership, of which 20 have been sold in a year.
Ashley said: "We very much wanted to get the business into being cash positive while simultaneously investing in future production capacity.
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“We wanted to get the EBITDA into the right place but we have been less concerned about the overall bottom line because we have been investing in growing the business.
"That's Richard’s and my own dotcom backgrounds which is one of being able to run those two things in parallel by going for growth and getting the EBITDA in shape whilst also having enough cash flow as well.
"We are now cash flow positive and now have a healthy EBITDA going into next year."
Yacht market is shifting towards sail
Oyster Yachts are known as the 'Bentley of the Seas' in yachting circles and the company has built a reputation over 50 years for its highly bespoke sailing yachts capable of traversing the globe at speed.
Ashley said the company was uniquely placed to take advantage of the market shift away from power to sail boats.
"We are seeing a movement out of power boats and into sail boats with people becoming increasingly more environmentally aware.
"You also have children putting pressure on their parents, who are thinking of buying a boat, to buy one with a sail.
"Only five per cent of the global yacht market is sail, which means you only need a small shift out of power and into sail to create an enormous increase in the share that sail takes of the market and if Oyster rises with all boats on that tide, then we stand to do very well."
The market in which Oyster Yachts operates is undergoing a transformation as sailing loses its image as being a preserve of a wealthy elite with the profile of buyers dropping in age and becoming more international in make-up.
The Oyster team says they are positioning them for this change by providing a full service for people who want to get involved in yachting but are unsure of how to get started.
Ashley said: "The profile is changing from one which is of people in their mid 50s to 60s who have been brought up with sailing and buy a boat after a life event such as selling a business and tend to be mostly British and European.
"The age profile is coming down and we are now selling to those in their mid 40s and it is much more international. America is now our strongest growth market in absolute terms and is our second biggest market after the UK.
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"We are seeing a younger demographic and a wealth of tech entrepreneurs that want to buy a boat and perhaps don’t really know much about it. We can not only sell them a boat but help them charter it, help them to buy their next boat with finance, find a crew for it and help with the servicing."
The team has also invested heavily in marketing and following its takeover has thrown fresh impetus behind the Oyster World Rally which takes place every two years and sees up to 30 boats sail round the world from a starting point in Antigua.
The team expects 30 Oyster yachts to sign up for the 2026 rally with more than half of them bought by new owners specifically to undertake the circumnavigation.
Ashley said: "People are moving from buying assets to moving into experiences.
"We have established the Oyster World Rally as a biannual event and we now have a Spring Regatta in Antigua, an Autumn Regatta in Palma.
"We will look to expand this programme and create “money can't buy experiences” where your Oyster Yacht is your ticket to entry."
