SMI Group - Grant Willis

Watching tradespeople scrambling over each other to complete the interior of a luxury yacht, Grant Willis thought: “There has to be a better way of doing this.”

His idea was the basis for Specialist Marine Interiors (SMI), a business which doubled in size every year for its first five years and achieved 250% growth in the sixth. By 2006, SMI had 110 employees, an annual turnover of $12 million and customers in the United States, Taiwan, South America and Europe.

SMI designs, manufactures and installs interiors for superyachts, assembling them in its Whangarei workshop while construction of the vessel’s hull and superstructure takes place elsewhere in the world. SMI then disassembles the interiors, packs them in containers and airfreights them to be fitted to the vessel.

This “remote build” process saves time and cost, allows a myriad of systems such as acoustic insulation and airconditioning ducts to be integrated within the furniture, and results in a higher-quality finish.

“We have created a niche for ourselves in what is an incredibly fast-growing industry,” Grant says.

“There is an undersupply of what we do. High-quality, large-capacity interior vendors are very much in demand.”

In 2005, global orders for superyachts outstripped supply by about 30%. Superyachts are also getting bigger and taking longer to build.

“For any major yard, the interior is the area that’s the hardest to control, keep within deadlines and budget. To manage that risk, a lot of yards are turning to companies like ours for a fixed-price solution. We can offer a total solution, including design and integrating systems up-front, and that takes away a huge headache for the yards.”

While other companies also offer remote-build solutions, Grant says SMI is taking the process further than anyone else.

“Our competitors are typically high-end furniture makers who began in the hotel industry. Because I had built boats completely from the keel up, I understood how the interior needed to fit in with the rest of the vessel. It became apparent to me that we could build the complete interior, finish it to a much greater degree than anybody else was doing, and incorporate other features that traditionally weren’t being included by other vendors around the world.”

Among the other benefits are the ability for the client to physically walk through the interior as it is being built by SMI, or view it via the internet, allowing design changes to be made along the way.

After it is installed, the interior remains removable, with a simple snap fitting allowing routine servicing or future modifications to take place.

Grant says SMI’s rapid growth was a necessity. “Our biggest customer, Trinity Yachts on the Gulf Coast of the United States, would previously use multiple vendors to create the interior of the same vessel. However, you get better continuity and quality of finish by going to one supplier. We had to show them that we had the capacity to deliver.”

The company’s Northland location has been no obstacle to its international competitiveness, and Grant sees it as an advantage for its staff. “I think it’s very important that you are happy where you live. I simply couldn’t live and function in a big city and have to battle the traffic every day.

“Lifestyle’s very important to me. Northland does offer a much more laid-back type of lifestyle, yet from an industrial perspective, it has everything we need – so much capacity, engineers and other key suppliers – right here on our doorstep.

“We are not far from Auckland and if we ring our suppliers by 9am, we can have an item here by 3pm from Auckland. Sometimes that’s quicker than people in Auckland can get it.” Grant says production surges, requiring overtime, can be hard on all of SMI’s staff and he plans to grow capacity of the business “to the point where we are able to retain reasonable margins but not push the business past a five-day week.

“It’s important to us that our staff are able to enjoy what they’re in Northland for, which is not just work but also their family and lifestyle.”