BLOG: Is a financially stable boatbuilder an endangered species?

MUCH has been written in the past few months – ad nauseam, in fact, and probably virtually to the point of complete reader disinterest – about the failure of this or that boatbuilder, followed by a supposedly heroic, innovative, emergency restructuring or “get out of jail free card” and a revitalised resurgence under some other framework or flag of convenience. And you know what? For the most part, such tales are cringe-making, risible and disgustingly sickening. Reading between the lines, it always amounts to more or less the same thing: suppliers have been bilked (whether knowingly or otherwise); customers have lost deposits; people have lost their jobs and dealers have lost a source of revenue.

There are, I grant you, certain cases where the collapse of an erstwhile reputable, honourable and established company will send shockwaves through an industry long inured to the regular failure of its less well-disciplined or financially sound protagonists, but what about the depressingly regular financial shockwaves caused by those for whom monetary travails are as regular an occurrence as, say, running out of acetone or cable ties? What is it about certain boatbuilders? How are they programmed or hard-wired to constantly, contemptuously flout all basic etiquette or fiduciary rules and leave a trail of broken wreckage (both fiscal and physical) in their wakes?

As long as there are banks, people will go bankrupt; as long as there are recessions, the viability of some businesses will recede; as long as there are downturns, overdraft extensions will be turned down, and of course it is always jarringly tragic when a long-standing institution bites the dust through no fault of a conscientious, principled and scrupulous proprietor. But what about the boat company that asks a dealer to remit in advance for boats still to be completed and then goes into liquidation or administration two days later? And what about the guy who has gone under so many times that, in desperation, he has not only moved interstate but futilely taken to rearranging the spelling or word-breaks of previous company names? And what about the guy who pads out his superannuation account and transfers all personal assets before prostrating himself at the mercy of his adoring public and duped trading partners?

The hubris-filled, self-serving, self-centred insensitivity of some of these failed boatbuilders is breathtaking in its unbridled, shameless arrogance. What bumptious, misplaced beliefs drive them? Is what they do akin to finding a cure for cancer? Are they contributing to the reduction of global warming or campaigning vigorously against the practice of female circumcision in less moderate societies? They need a short, sharp, severe reality check - they manufacture nautical items, for Christ’s sake! The self-righteous, irrational, twisted belief that the public just cannot survive without their product in an already saturated, over-subscribed market defies logic. These people are like alkies, junkies or chronic gamblers – it is a sickness that they just cannot shake. It’s all they know; it is their milieu and their whole sense of being and they cannot help themselves.

If this writer were a dealer or supplier for any of these companies that escaped by a hair’s breadth by lunging for a half-filled lifeboat whilst everybody else was left to perish on “A” deck, he would never, ever give any of them the time of day again. How a dealer could be so dependent on a source of income that he would invite a maladroit, fiscally incompetent or serial failure to be a key part of his business is something that is way beyond comprehension for a mere mortal like me. GFC or not, this industry needs a seismic shake-up of parameter-changing proportions – it’s long overdue. With dealers’ livelihoods in peril more and more each day, they need to know that the people with whom they do business actually know how to conduct business. Only the strong, the ethical, the organised and the professional deserve to survive, and anybody who thinks that dealers and the public are gormless, forgiving dupes needs a crash course in humility and ethics.