They say that before you can market to your target customers, you first need to ask them what they want. This is what Devoti Boats have done in an extensive survey of Musto Skiff owners. The idea was the brainchild of Rick Perkins, himself a keen Musto Skiff sailor and a top marketer who has abandoned the security and comfortable salary of his job at 3Com to set up his own consultancy.
One of the advantages of working for himself is that Rick can turn his marketing expertise towards topics that are dear to his heart. And so he constructed a customer survey for Devoti to email out to Musto Skiff owners throughout Europe. The response has been enlightening for Devoti, and holds some useful pointers for many dinghy classes. Rick says that not only does it provide useful data for the builders, but it also makes the sailors feel much more involved in running their own class. For example, the survey gave respondents a choice of possible venues for the World Championship next year, and also asked them what time of year they would prefer. After an overwhelming vote in favour of Lake Garda, the class will be holding its Championships there next September, voted the most popular month in the survey.
Rick says that the great thing about a progressive class like the Musto Skiff is that virtually every sailor is online and is computer-savvy, so the web is the perfect medium to poll people for their views and to disseminate information back to them. "It's much better than holding a show of hands at an AGM at the Nationals," he says. "Firstly, if you can't make it to the Nationals you don't have a say, and secondly, you may not want to go to a boring meeting in the middle of your holiday." Rick believes the web is the perfect democratic tool and should be used as such.
I think there is still no substitute for having a face-to-face meeting once a year for a class, as you can have discussions in ways that aren't really possible on the web. But the Musto Skiff survey does deal with a lot of the nitty-gritty of AGMs, such as rule changes. The survey concludes with a few questions to owners on various dull but important issues about control-line layouts and whether or not they are allowed to drill additional holes in the deck. All this stuff is essential, but might as well be dealt with by online polling as having an interminable discussion at an AGM.
A real eye-opener for me was to see the most important reasons for people wanting to go to competitions. When asked "What factors affected your decision to attend events in 2003?", the biggest attraction was the opportunity to learn from other sailors, along with the quality of racing. The least important factors were the quality of the prizes, the weather forecast and the distance to travel. I was surprised by the last two, as my experience is that attendances generally seem to be down whenever the forecast is bad, or when the venue is particularly remote. But perhaps people were thinking more of national championships and longer events, when these are not such high considerations.
Far more revealing, however, was the desire to learn from other sailors. Training showed itself to be a huge factor in people's thinking, so much so that the class has now decided to precede the four-day Worlds with a two-day training camp. Rick says the class is particularly fortunate to have such a generous and open National and World Champion in Richard Stenhouse. "I was going slowly at this year's Nationals," says Rick, "so I asked Sten about it between races. He could see my battens were too loose, so he got out his key and tightened them for me, and I was fifth in the next race." In fact, training has been a key part of the Fireball and Lark's success too. I suspect this is an area that most classes would do well to make a higher priority for next year's calendar.
The high quality of the fleet showed up in the survey, with three out of the 40 having won a World Championship in different classes, and 15 of the 40 having won a National Championships. Rick Perkins won the Fireball Nationals in the mid-90s but he has not found it easy breaking into the top few of the class. The enthusiasm for the boat shone through in the survey, although perhaps any class survey would reveal that. After all, you'd hardly sail a boat you didn't like, would you? But what was more surprising was just how many owners - 29 out of 35 - would be prepared to lend out their boats for other people to have a go. Musto and Harken must be chuffed with the survey too, with over 90 per cent of respondents happy to recommend these companies' products to others.
If you want to see the results for yourself, go to www.mustoskiff.com, and if you want to speak to Rick Perkins about some of his marketing ideas, he can be contacted via his website www.marketingonashoestring.com.
Higher and Faster
Staying in the world of skiffs, an excellent new instructional DVD called ‘Higher and Faster' has just been launched in time for Christmas. Cameraman Iain May and top skiff coach Harvey Hillary have put together a programme focusing on high-performance skiff sailing. They employed the Red Bull 49er boys, Alister Richardson and Pete Greenhalgh, to do the sailing, while Iain did the filming and editing, and Harvey covered production and commentary.
The team stopped off in Spain on the way back from the Cadiz Worlds in September, to get three days of filming in the can. They had a tall order to get the shoot completed, with Alister and Pete splitting their time between the 49er, RS800 and 29er to demonstrate a variety of skiff skills. But Harvey says the wind was incredibly kind to them, giving them the full range of conditions from 5 to 30 knots in beautiful, sunny surroundings.
If you saw Iain May's previous DVD production about the 18-foot Skiff Worlds in Sydney, Smack Downunder, you will know that he is a quality cameraman. In fact he is in heavy demand throughout the TV world and I believe he recently shot Changing Rooms' Linda Barker's new fitness DVD. Anyone who has seen the pre-Xmas run of appalling DFS and Comet ads on TV might be forgiven for asking why Iain didn't take the opportunity to shoot Linda Barker with an Uzi 9mm instead of a Sony BetaCam.
Anyway, when he's not being a luvvy with the stars, Iain's passion is for sailing and this is a very authoritative piece of work. I went down to see Iain and Harvey putting the show together at the editing suite, and I found myself learning a few new tricks. This is seriously high-level stuff and it is not a beginner's programme. It is loaded with ideas that represent the very latest thinking in skiff sailing. Higher and Faster is the natural successor to the Merricks/Walker video, High Performance Sailing, which is now seven years old. The 49er was only just being born and the 29er and RS800 had not even been dreamt of in the mid-90s, so it seems about time to give the topic a revisit.
Alister and Pete have finished seventh in the last two 49er World Championships, and whilst that wasn't good enough to qualify them for the Games, they have always been recognised as being among the very best boathandlers in the business. In this DVD, you can see why. The footage is a pleasure to watch, and the running through of each major lesson twice, firstly described by the sailor and then backed up Harvey's clarification afterwards, is a great way of allowing the information to sink in. There is the added bonus of being able to enjoy the ridiculous Mohican haircuts that Alister and Pete had specially coiffed for their trip to Spain.
For Iain and Harvey, this could be just the start of a beautiful relationship. They are already considering a follow-up for more traditional boats, with the working title...yes, you guessed it, Lower and Slower. More work required there, methinks.
The added benefit of this new venture for Harvey is that he appears to have carved himself a real niche that could turn into a pretty decent living. He has actually been doing well on the coaching circuit this year, getting excellent results our of the British 29er fleet as well as some American and Swiss 49er teams, but he has been wondering what the next big step would be. Perhaps the world of TV and DVD production is it.
Harvey lives in a house in Southampton where most of the inhabitants have so far managed to avoid the ‘real world' of 9-to-5 jobs, morning traffic jams and ‘leaves-on-the-line' railway station announcements. Ali Hall is the only one at Mayfield Road with a ‘proper job', working for Raymarine, which still means he gets to do some pretty glitzy travelling to provide technical support for Emma Richards and other stars of the offshore racing firmament. He also finds time to do a bit of winning, crewing Chips Haworth to victory in the RS800 Nationals this summer.
Martin Sellars has spent the last three years crewing Tornados for Steve Lovegrove and more recently Rob Wilson, but a ‘real job' beckons in the new year at management consultancy firm Accenture. Harvey, as we have established, is in the process of turning into TV luvvy. Which just leaves Pete Greenhalgh.
Pete says he has reached a crossroads in his life. "I'm currently taking a year out from 49er sailing to go yacht sailing." He has spent the last six years campaigning 49ers and has missed out on Olympic selection twice. He has by no means ruled out another go for Beijing in 2008, but feels it is time to broaden his horizons beyond the Olympic skiff for the time being. "I don't want to end up in another five years' time wondering what I'm going to do with my life." He is even considering joining the Fire Brigade, although he will doubtless explore a number of sailing options such as America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race.
This signifies a parting of the ways of Pete and Alister Richardson, who have been sailing together for over five years. Giving up the 49er was not a decision taken lightly, not least from the financial point of view. There was the RYA funding and the Red Bull sponsorship, but Pete remains determined to discover life after 49er.
Meanwhile, Alister is continuing on his quest for Olympic glory, with Weymouth 18-foot skiff sailor Alex Tobutt becoming his new front man. With Draper and Hiscocks selected for Athens, Alister must bide his time for another five years, and with a recent influx of highly talented 29er crews, there is every sign that qualification for Beijing in the 49er will be as tough, if not tougher than this time around. This is the harsh side of Olympic campaigning that we never get to see when the Games are on TV. The advantage at least for sailors, by comparison with many other Olympic sports, is that there is life beyond the Games. That's the beauty of being involved in a sport with so many diverse strands and opportunities.
