Ed Arnold sells yachts.
He doesn’t sell many,one or two a year will do. The commission on a typical sale: $100,000.
Arnold, a salesman for Golden West Yachts International Inc. in Newport Beach, is one of many in Orange County who make a living selling or catering to the super rich.
Some of his counterparts sell rare cars that go for $350,000 apiece.
Arnold’s yachts go for $600,000 to $9 million.
He knows a lot about boats. He’s been selling them since 1967, when he had his own Newport Beach boat dealership, Eddy Arnold Sailboats. He sold his company in 1992.
These days, Arnold is focusing on the big boats, he said.
Selling yachts isn’t a hard sell, he said.
When Arnold’s at a boat show, he said he doesn’t talk about the yacht’s amenities or practicalities. By the time someone is buying a yacht, they’ve already owned smaller boats and have traded up, he said.
“You can be a soft sell with big boats,” he said. “I try to make contact with the customer,get to know him.” And it usually is a him, or maybe a couple.
These days, people are buying bigger boats, said Dave Geoffroy, executive director of the Southern California Marine Association in Orange. The average size used to be 14 feet to 15 feet. Now it’s 18 feet to 23 feet.
In 2004, Milan Panic, founder of what’s now Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, turned heads with his buy of the 125-foot “Bellisima.”
Former homebuilder Jim Baldwin sports a 163-foot yacht named “Triton.” It includes its own helicopter and pad.
Actor Nicholas Cage keeps his yacht in Harbor Island, Geoffroy said.
Most yacht buyers tend to be older, 45 years and up, said Duncan McIntosh, publisher of Sea Magazine, the Log newspapers and producer of the Newport Boat Show in April and the Lido Yacht Expo in September.
“It takes a while to get all that money,” McIntosh said.
Many are retired or own businesses where they don’t oversee day-to-day operations anymore. Many hire staff for the yachts.
Most of the yacht buyers aren’t celebrities and prefer to be anonymous, he said.
“Most are average people who work hard and have a lot of money for whatever reason,” he said. “They’re smart, rich or work their tail off and just enjoy getting away from the craziness on shore.”
Back on land, the folks who own yachts don’t just drive a Mercedes-Benz or BMW. Some go straight for the Maybach (pronounced mybock) made by Daimler-Chrysler AG, or BMW AG’s Rolls-Royce.
The cars go for about $350,000. Sometimes, for prestige alone, Bentley is thrown into the class of cars for the super rich. But it costs about $100,000 less.
Fletcher Jones Motorcars in Newport Beach sells about two Maybachs a month. In June, it sold five.
So far this year, Fletcher Jones has sold about 18, said Garth Blumenthal, general manager.
Sometimes buyers will come in and look at the top of the line,the Mercedes S-Class. Then they’ll see the Maybach, he said.
“They’ll go: what’s that?” Blumenthal said.
The Maybach, which relaunched in 2004, is more familiar in Europe.
Rolls-Royce grabs the older buyers. Maybachs tend to appeal to a younger driver, Blumenthal said.
The Phantom,Rolls-Royce’s one and only model,was relaunched a year ahead of Maybach in 2003.
The car was designed from scratch and doesn’t have a single component of the prior Rolls-Royce models, said Bob Austin, general manager of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars NA LLC.
The 13-employee company is headquartered in Woodcliff, N.J. President Peter Miles lives in OC.
Newport European on Pacific Coast Highway is the only Rolls-Royce dealer in OC. General manager Roger Fletcher worked at the most successful Rolls-Royce dealership in Britain, Austin said.
“Roger does well down there,” he said.
