“The senior staff at Fairlie, with their large yacht sailing experience together with a wealth of classic yacht building experience are uniquely qualified to advise clients considering projects with new yachts in the classic style, restorations and replica’s from the Fife archive. Fairlie attention to detail and quality of finish has gained no considerable respect over the few years.”
Duncan Walker adds:
“I am perhaps the most fortunate of men, I spend my life organising the restoration of classic yachts and building new vessels. I get to sail on virtually any classic yacht I want at any of the world’s celebrated regattas!
Our clients are typically high net worth Europeans who already ‘do’ projects whether be it cars or houses, aircraft etc. The more likely clients always love touching and feeling the woodwork
Fairlie is I suppose a personal service company, clients come to us we develop ideas with them, if their and our philosophies mesh then we go ahead and plan, design, cost, build and trial the object of their dreams. We try and advise them in light of our knowledge and experience. We have to gently guide them to build a project which is fit for purpose; there is no future in working with a client who wants to buy the equivalent of a Formula 1 car to cruise around the world!
The challenge is of course running a business, that unique experience of guiding employees, paying them and landlord, sourcing the finest materials and making sufficient profit to carry on investing in the Company. The biggest marketing challenge at the moment, is developing the market for the new builds, built to traditional lines.
One of the biggest challenges for us is finding and developing the key tradesmen who are enthused to work in our unique sector – and get paid as well!!
The future is undoubtedly in new vessels whether replicas or designed in-house we are running short of restoration projects.