2001. Carlo Cerri and the desire for beauty

Welcome to the special section “BAM 35 Years.” We are presenting “cult” articles from the Motor Boats archive, starting in 1990. A journey through time among stories unobtainable today, even in the great sea of the internet! A dive into the world of epic moments in motor boating. Here is one of the stories we were most passionate about.

Carlo Cerri. The desire for beauty

From Motor Boats 2001, no. 10, November, pp. 60-63.

A few high-quality boats for very exclusive clients. This is the winning philosophy of Carlo Cerri.

Milanese, 44, born under the zodiac sign of Aries, playboy physical appearance, Carlo Cerri is a new name in the nautical entrepreneurial world. The shipyard he founded, Cerrimarine, in fact began operations only in 1997. But Carlo Cerri ‘s name is not new to the Italian entrepreneurial scene. At the age of 25, he brought one of the very first city fast delivery services to Italy, the Mototaxi, the equivalent of the Pony Express. He had met it in England, where he stayed for study and immediately believed in the possibility of launching it in Italy as well. It was a dazzling entrepreneurial idea that would prove highly successful. After coming to open thirty locations in as many Italian cities, he sold the established and well-established facility to the Italian Post Office in 1999. His business is now devoted exclusively to building luxury boats. An old passion.

Carlo Cerri, friendly, ironic face, a la Steve McQueen for short, is a man of good looks and great ideas. A lucky entrepreneur-but luck in these cases comes from good ideas-he was among the first in Italy to sense the business of fast delivery and create a motorcycle cab service company. In 17 years he built a company of national importance with offices in thirty cities until, in 1999, he sold everything to the Italian Postal Service and devoted himself to what-he tells us-is his oldest passion, boats. He tells us about it in his highly original studio on Viale Bianca Maria at
Milan, carved out of a basement furnished like the interior of a luxury motoryacht.

Carlo Cerri: “I have always been fond of boats, especially motor boats. I used to go when I was little with my father, when I was young with friends, now with family. And every time I got on a boat, I always found something I didn’t like. So, four years ago I said to myself, ‘To find a boat the way I want it, I have to build it.’ Said and done. I threw myself with great passion into the design and construction of a 28′ that was supposed to be my ideal boat. Paradoxically, if such a boat ‘had been found on the market, I would have bought it. And I would not have become a nautical entrepreneur!”

We have some doubts about that, but we are keeping it. However, we have another curiosity and we want to get it off our chest: Why wasn’t the market producing a boat like yours?
Carlo Cerri: “Because it is a contradictory, out-of-market boat. The 8-meter boats occupy a very specific market sector, where the buyer looks mainly at price. So they are boats with quality and materials consonant with their market level, medium-low. I, on the other hand, wanted an 8-meter powerboat with materials and quality from a 20-meter motoryacht. Obviously in this case the production costs rise and the prices go out of the normal market range. But I wanted to make a very exclusive, very sophisticated, very special product. Then it happened that my friends, seeing this boat being born, said to me, ‘You know it’s a great idea? You have to put it on the market.’ So much they insisted, they convinced me. Of course, the market I was entering was just as particular, a so-called niche (ed: exclusive) market, or rather I would say stranicchia (ed: arciesclusivo) market. My clients were-and are-mature and refined people who own 20-30 meter yachts and use the 28′ as a tender, as a second boat. Why have as a support boat a trivial object, lacking in quality, discordant with the tastes and economic possibilities of the owners?”

Yeah, why? And even obvious. What role did you play in the design and production?
Carlo Cerri: “I conceived, organized and coordinated everything: the engineering, the design, the branding, the marketing. I found a construction site near me, in Massa Carrara, and ordered the molds….”

Close to you in what sense?
Carlo Cerri: “In the sense that it is a boatyard that used to do the storage of my boats and those of my friends; the same ones that later became my clients.”

How did the adventure continue?
Carlo Cerri: “The first boats, as I said, I sold to my friends, then a nice increase came from the Riva family-I’m talking about Carlo’s daughters and sons-in-law-who put the 28′ in their sales network in Rapallo, Monte Carlo, Sarnico and Porto Cervo. In four years I sold about 30 of them. In the meantime, that is in 1999, I decided to build a larger boat, the 52′, again made with very particular criteria, an extreme luxury cut, intended for a high-end clientele. I have built 6 examples so far and have a continuously increasing demand. The topicality is the project of a 38′, which I think is necessary to give completeness to the Cerrimarine range, because the jump from 28 to 52 feet is enormous. I am presenting it these days at the Genoa Boat Show. It is a boat made with the same philosophy, the same rigor, the same lines and the same logic of construction and layout that characterized the previous boats.”

This extreme sophistication with which you wanted to characterize your production, what is the origin of it?
Carlo Cerri: “From the desire for beauty. Whoever buys my boats must have the same passion as me: to have fun, to love a comfortable life and never look at the price. In return he will get a very personalized, special object, all designed by hand, one off, as they say. I like to make things for the few. Keep in mind that I do this business, as the slogan of the shipyard says (ed: “Builders by passion”), out of passion. Oh God, for passion you do very little in the business world, however, I can say that I do my work with great love and without much attention to the profit and loss statement. What I care most about is positioning the brand in a very specific market segment: super-luxury. That’s why I take care of all the details. A steel hinge, for example, from a functional point of view is the same for everyone. I, however, have it custom-made for my customer. I personalize it for him and provide him with an object that is unique, that he can say he has only. And that goes for everything, for a bollard, a windshield, a rudder.”

Is there anything you feel particularly proud of?
Carlo Cerri: “When I have to outfit a boat, I like to think I go shopping for the most beautiful and highest quality items. So I get the portholes from one company, the windshields from another, and I’m careful that everything harmonizes with a taste that I think a certain category of people will like, my customers I mean.”

For the fairings, who did you turn to?
Carlo Cerri: “To engineer De Casa, who is a very qualified ship designer from a hydrodynamic point of view. He worked for 25 years at Intermarine also designing military boats such as mine destroyers. His deep-V hulls are very high performance. Maybe they neglect the speed aspect, however, in favor of smoothness on the wave. It all depends on the V angle and the materials used. My boats are not super fast, but they are very strong, they hold the sea definitely well, and they are extremely comfortable. All the refinement mentioned earlier basically translates into the choice of materials that have weight: speed does not interest me and even less so does my clients.”

Given your love of luxury and sophistication, have you ever thought of building wooden boats? Like Camuffo, for example.
Carlo Cerri: “Camuffo loves the culture of wood. I don’t have that passion. I am not a shipwright and no one has ever been in my family. I cannot have this culture. I also think it is outdated. In the nautical market, however, there is room for everyone, you can do everything and sell everything. I’m just saying that I don’t like old fashion boats. I like to make luxury boats, but modern ones.”

Let’s come to current events. After the tragic attack in the US, do you think the boating market will be affected?
Carlo Cerri: “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think so at all. After all, my production numbers are so low that I even struggle to talk about the market. My sales are aimed at a clientele that is not affected by market fluctuations. Unless World War III breaks out, I should not suffer any backlash from this horrible situation of uncertainty we are in. But I also think that in the immediate term there will be no backlash for the entire boating industry. Or at least, there won’t be for those shipyards that are already working on 2002 sales. And there are many of them. There are also those whose order books are full until 2004. So I am not pessimistic about our future.”

You have proven to be a trailblazer, how do you think the boating market will develop in terms of taste?
Carlo Cerri: “Hard to say. But I don’t think there will be big changes. In the sea, there is not so much to invent. The hulls will remain what they are….”

Don’t you think that the development of technology can influence the development of boating?
Carlo Cerri: “If we are talking about speed, almost certainly yes. Weights decrease and speeds increase. That’s what new materials like carbon, Kevlar, light alloys are for. But my customers are not geeks; they like comfort, safety and beauty: steels, tempered glass, marbles, all things that have little to do with super-tech materials. From this point of view-I’m talking about comfort and safety-I don’t think we can do much more than what is already being done now.”

Your future as an entrepreneur? Carlo Cerri remains a bit puzzled, as if he hasn’t thought about it yet. So we provoke him, “Are you going to go on as long as you have fun?” The impression that he works just for fun has actually never left us. But he is quick to contradict us.
Carlo Cerri: “I can’t afford to play anymore. I have a loyal clientele and I don’t want to betray them. I have created my own small and very particular niche and I am doing well here and I intend to continue. I don’t see any alternative otherwise. Am I going to compete with the big shipyards? No! I prefer to stick to my niche, my clientele and work for it. Also because it amuses me. What’s wrong with that?”

We meant well!

By Riccardo Magrini

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