The history shows that the yacht sailing starts from Ming Dynasty “Zheng He's Expedition”. The business Flow of yacht industry as below,Boat show→Contract/Spec. Negotiation→Simple Sketch drawing→Manufacturing→Shipping/delivering→After sale service.
At class, I was thinking the high price of buying a yacht so I raised a question “The yacht price is high, is the payment term important for your company? What is the payment term between you and your most customers? Also compare to your western customers, is there any difficulty to negotiate the payment term with Chinese as you now will be focusing your new market in China? ” James Fwu indicates that pay in advance is very important. Normally when signing the sales contract, 10% deposit is required. And each step of manufacturing the yacht will require 10% payment as well. Previously, most customers will agree on this payment, however, as globally bad economy which makes the negotiation becomes harder. Some customers decline to pay after they indeed see the finished product. Horizon will try to insist the 10% advanced payment because each yacht’s high cost relating to investors fund, not Horizon group only. We need to be responsible to our investors.
The 2nd question I raised “You mentioned the shipping/delivering yachts need to be very careful and it requires high insurance fee, how is the shipping term to ship your yachts? FOB/ IF/Others? Does this matter your business a lot? Also for the Super Yacht & Gigo Yacht, will you go by normal shipping? Or you will sail the yacht to your customers directly? I am wondering how you ship such a huge yacht overseas." James Fwu replied that Horizon set delivery term as FAS (free alone side) as standard, and stick to it as possible. It gives the least risk of transportation (damage by lashing, storm, air pollution, pirate…etc.) “Shipping plus Insurance (during transportation)”, sometime could cost