The air of Fort Lauderdale, on Florida’s southeastern coast, is filled with the sound of Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce engines. Along a stretch of the waterfront known as “Millionaire’s Row”, mansions are being knocked down and redeveloped into more palatial properties, while Aston Martin has strategically parked a Vanquish sports car within plain sight of the passing yachts.
European luxury brands descended on the city last week as tens of thousands of yacht enthusiasts surveyed about 1,000 vessels at the annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, which claims to be the world’s largest event of its kind and is seen as a barometer for the global luxury sector.
Massimo Perotti, 65, chairman and chief executive of Sanlorenzo, the luxury Italian yachtmaker, opened a new American headquarters at Pier Sixty-Six, a marina in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, as the company positions itself to cater to America’s growing class of billionaire entrepreneurs.
Massimo Perotti
JOSH RITCHIE FOR THE TIMES
“Our customers are mainly entrepreneurs,” Perotti said in an interview at the new headquarters. “More and more are younger and coming from high tech, which is producing a lot of wealth.”
America’s ultra-wealthy have benefited from surging stock markets and the generative artificial intelligence boom. Last year about a third, or 1,135, of the world’s billionaires were in the US and their combined wealth was $5.7 trillion, or 43 per cent of global billionaire wealth, according to Altrata, a wealth-intelligence firm.
Luxury brands are seeing an opportunity. In the first half of 2025, the Americas accounted for €95.3 million in new yacht revenues at Sanlorenzo, up 38.6 per cent year-on-year and representing over 20 per cent of Sanlorenzo’s global total. A fifth of their American customers are newcomers to yachting.
Sanlorenzo yachts, which sell for an average price of €12 million, have been custom built in Liguria, northwest Italy, since 1958. Last week the yachtmaker unveiled SHE, or Sanlorenzo Heritage, which is responding to a retro trend in luxury with a 1960s-inspired design.
Sanlorenzo’s SHE yacht has a retro design
The 84ft yacht features a long forefoot and open foredeck, with an expansive sundeck, an indoor area that has been compared to a “Milanese lounge”, and accommodation for eight guests and four crew members. It can cruise in hybrid-diesel mode at 20 knots, or silently in full electric mode at 9 knots.
Perotti said the company is not seeking to attract flashy Wall Street traders or Silicon Valley show-offs. “I would say our customer target is not the Wolf of New York,” he said. “Our customers are real connoisseurs. When we talk about luxury, because yachting is luxury, we talk about quiet luxury.”
Other yachting professionals have witnessed a growing demand in the US for highly visible, grandiose boats, however.
Kent Harrington, 36, a San Diego-based sales broker at Edmiston, the superyacht brokerage, said: “The boats are getting bigger. The clients are getting younger.”
He added: “I started working on boats in Cabo [Mexico] when I was 19. Back then the coolest boat in the parking lot was a 50ft Viking, now you have 100-metre yachts up front.”
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While retired people tend to value the privacy of yachts, younger clients are the “farthest thing” from seeking privacy, Harrington said. They have “eight different channels of social media”, helicopters and and “20 friends on their boat”.
Perotti is seeking a different kind of customer. “We like to sell and to have our customer base for people that are close to arts, culture, understatement,” he said. Sanlorenzo customers are “not buying the boat to show off because, ‘I’m rich and powerful, so I buy the yacht’. This is a kind of world that is not part of our strategy as a brand.”
Italian yachtmakers typically appoint American designers to adapt their models to the needs of US customers. Sanlorenzo works with Marty Lowe, a Fort Lauderdale-based yacht interior designer, to advise on US customer preferences, which include more open social spaces, generous bars, ice buckets and air-conditioning.
The company is planning to start manufacturing yachts in America as soon as the end of next year and will send over some of its Italian craftsmen to train US workers. “We think that it is perfectly in line with the growth of the company”, Perotti said. “The US is the largest market in the world.”
Sailing yachts by Nautor Swan, the Finnish yachtbuilder acquired by Sanlorenzo last year, and some of Sanlorenzo’s Bluegame range of yachts will be manufactured in Pensacola, Florida, in partnership with American Magic, the US challenger for the 36th and 37th America’s Cup.
American Magic has competed in the America’s Cup
GILLES MARTIN-RAGET/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Perotti said the decision to launch a manufacturing base in Florida was motivated by the decline in yachtmaking in the US over the past 15 years, which has seen brands such as Christensen Shipyards closed down. He said the decision was made before President Trump’s tariffs, but added that the president’s trade strategy had increased the argument for shifting some manufacturing to the US.
Perotti said: “We had that idea well before the new president in America. But then, of course, the tariff strategy from America is helping the transferring of production in the US, so we will be pushed also from the decision of the government.”
Europe remains Sanlorenzo’s biggest market, thanks to a loyal and resilient client base. Sales in the first half of the year grew 15.4 per cent to €267.1 million in the region.
Perotti said that as well as Italian, French and Greek owners, German purchasers have been returning this year since the European Union agreed to invest around €800 billion in defence spending, while the German government has signed off on a €500 billion infrastructure fund.
“These two huge amounts of money are coming, mainly to Germany, to the entrepreneurs of Germany,” Perotti said. “So I think that there are two big pushes from the inside of Germany and from Europe in favour of German industry. So that is the reason why the German customers are coming back.”
Tom Cruise is said to have commissioned a Nautor Swan yacht
DANIEL CARDENAS/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
In March, Sanlorenzo plans to open a new customer lounge and showroom in Mayfair, London. Perotti said: “The British are a very good customer, because there is a long tradition in yachting.” He added: “The first important big yacht user used to be the British before the Second World War — 1920, 1930 mainly was British. So we think that the investment in Mayfair is a good one.”
He also acknowledged that Mayfair would offer access to customers from the Middle East, Far East and potentially Russia in the future if sanctions are lifted.
Sanlorenzo only builds about 70 custom boats a year in Italy.
Perotti also sees an opportunity to revive sailing in America and has opened a new office for Nautor Swan in Newport, Rhode Island, near the Hamptons. Tom Cruise has reportedly commissioned a new Nautor Swan 108ft sailing yacht.
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Perotti said: “Sailing is in decline because to learn to go sailing, you have to make an effort.” Clutching his smartphone, he added: “The young generation are not keen to do that kind of effort, because they enjoy life through this [smartphone], which is not really a good human way of living life. But it is what it is and we have to fight against it.”
He said: “In life, especially when you get to 65 like myself, is not only a matter of money, it’s also a matter of dreams. It’s a matter of patience. It’s a matter of enjoying to do something good. And we think that if the young people will go back to sailing, that is another proof, a sign of care for the future of the world.”