Ferretti Group On Its Ten-Year Relationship With China

The 2005 sale of a Ferretti 460 to a buyer in Shanghai came just a year after the Italian shipyard had first entered China. Today the company lays claim to being the most famous superyacht brand in the country.

We caught up with Ferretti sales director Alessandro Tirelli at the recent China show to find out more about how it plans to build on a prosperous, decade-long relationship.

“To address in a very detailed way, a very specific way the needs of the Chinese client, we started three years ago to study the market in a very deep way the way our clients were using their boats,” he said. “To understand a little bit better which kind of features we could change eventually and enhance or, on the contrary, take out of the boat because the client would not use it.

“We made a lot of interviews with the clients and we made a lot of analysis of competitors, so in the end we came out with a new line of boats within the Ferretti Yachts range which we called the Tai He Ban, which is the biggest building in the Forbidden City in Beijing.

“What are the features of this line of product? There are many, many features which are different from the ones we sell in Europe and the US, because it’s not only a matter of fabric, it’s a matter of layout, technicalities – there are a lot of things that have been changed to address in a very specific way the needs of our clients.”

You can watch the full video interview with Alessandro Tirelli above this article.