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BASS RIVER — The factory floor at Viking Yachts is humming –
not the trumpet blast of full-throttle production, but the exuberant tempo of an upswing.
Since October, the boat builder here has brought back nearly 300 of the 1,000-plus workers it laid off when an economic tsunami scuttled demand for luxury vessels.
“We are selling boats again,” said Peter Frederiksen, communications director. “We aren’t back to where we were, but things are certainly improving.”
Viking didn’t take for granted its force of highly skilled workers would still be available when the call to return came. During the down time, the company tried to make laidoff employees feel as if they were a part of the fold, with such benefits as
free health care for displaced workers and their families at the boat builder’s in-house medical clinic.
“Everyone who has ever worked here is part of a larger family,” Frederiksen said. “The company cares about them and wants to treat them right, in good times and
bad.”
In the United States and Europe, yacht sales have sunk 70 percent since 2008,
according to a Forbes market analysis. The only place where sales are improving significantly is Brazil, where yacht purchases have risen 30 percent and the number of millionaires is expected to triple by 2020.
In 2010, buyers sank $183 million into
new powerboats, motors, trailers and accessories in the Garden State, down from $414.7 million in 2006, according to the National Marine Manufacturers Association.
But losses have been slowing in recent years, NMMA notes. In 2010, state sales were down 19 percent compared with 2009 figures, which were 24 percent lower than 2008. At the peak of the yacht boom, in fiscal 2004-05, Viking launched 108 yachts. In fiscal 2009-10, only 29 boats sold.
During the same period, the boat builder’s work force shrank from 1,400 to about 400. The administrative ranks also were thinned through layoffs and reduced hours. Frederiksen and a number of others went
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For fiscal 2010-11, Viking ticked up, filling orders for 51 yachts. International sales helped to buoy business, with yachts motoring off to Dubai, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Sales totaled $88.2 million, according to the Hoover’s business registry.
In the past month, orders for 18 more vessels have come in. Frederiksen attributes the increase to Viking’s strategy of introducing a new model every year to generate excitement among prospective buyers.
“The people who buy yachts are very competitive,” he said. “If there’s a boat that is faster, they have to buy it.”
Still, even wealthy people voice concerns about the volatile stock market, unrest in the Middle East and the high cost of the fuel it takes to fill a yacht’s 3,000-gallon tank. “When there was the revolution in Egypt, you could feel the market hit a bump,” he said.
In 1964, when brothers Bob and Bill Healey took over the foundering company then known as Peterson-Viking, they didn’t know much about yachts. But they had good business sense and built Viking into
prescriptions for medications to help workers who want to quit smoking. On a recent afternoon, he examines the sprained shoulder of a worker who has just come in from the factory floor. Bridgette, the shepherd who is Viking’s unofficial therapy dog, wags her tail.
“We can look at people immediately, so there is no reason to put off care,” Marks explained. “We can take care of a child’s ear infection before it becomes something more serious.”
Viking’s sprawling 810,000-square-foot plant is located on 52 acres on the Bass River in the outermost reaches of Burlington County, just over the boundary from Little Egg Harbor in Ocean County.
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About 90 percent of each yacht is made in-house, with such niceties as surround sound, pop-up, flat-screen TVs and air- conditioned decks. In 2009, Viking introduced a tri-level yacht, the 82m model, its largest offering to date.
On the factory floor, there is a computerized, $1 million saw that will carve the molds for fiberglass hulls. Stacks of teak will be crafted into gleaming, streamlined compartments. In one section, the ceilings are 60 feet high, in order to accommodate sky bridges atop the tallest yachts.
“I call this Disneyland for grownups,” Frederiksen joked.
Jimmy Perkins, a machinist from Pemberton Township, came to Viking 11 years ago
after he was laid off from a pharmaceutical company. He is making aluminum parts for dashboard components.
“I love my work here,” he says. “There is nothing like working with great people.”
Viking continues to bring back workers in small groups, 15 one month, perhaps 30 the next. Ultimately, the market will dictate how many employees will return to the fold.