Is the Market Saturated?

[Wellydeckhand]

Over the past 6 month in the forum, I see wannabie like me asking on school and institution of boat design and engineering............ and I see all these designer diploma guys and N.A. fellows strolling in the employment sub forum looking for jobs and contract.

This made me think, is there an over supply of designer and N.A.? I mean the market might not expand proportional to the rise of world population...... so the growth of designer and builder some what outgrow the market. Are we heading into saturation of the boat market?

Of course, there is always the typoon, rough wave, fire accident and other stuff that make people change boat in a hurry...................... I wish you luck

WDH

[Redsky]

actually is the market saturated with Exellent designers, or is it mediocre designers that dont pay attiention to deatils and accept proposals for things that are really marginal or unworkable on the water is a better question in my opinion. misquoted costs cut corners design and other reasons for a lot of designers not keeping work. oh and probably the biggest reason Contract Deadlines.

[Eric Sponberg]

I suggest you read my article on my website, "So you want to be a boat designer...?"

http://www.sponbergyachtdesign.com/ArticlesDesigner.htm

This gives you my perspective on the question.

Eric

[Sean Herron]

Hello...

Well according to this article it is time for all those who like to have a go and have some fun and throw the papers to the wind to fold up shop and feel inadequate against same who have same...

I appreciate the distinction of 'a boat designer' against a Naval Architect - but I do not believe that the tone of the article is not biased...

Thing is - the 'microscopic' bit may only exist in this particular world - in my world there are men dragging their wives and mistresses through the shop - women telling men what they want or do not want - all looking for something different - cost plus - up to 120 feet in length...

I do not like defeatism or nihilism on any level that is veiled in ivory tower professionalism - I respect the work and time put into building that tower but I think it has its place and inherent peer structure - a life of a lot of 'isms...

I also respect professional opinion - I have to daily - but I do not like it when professionals pit themselves - text book blinders on - against amateurs and their peers - and for that matter - the child in us all...

There is nothing wrong with stupid people going out and killing themselves in the makings of their own - it is all a part of natural selection and provides more air for those people who don't do same...

Cheers...

SH.


SH.

[Eric Sponberg]

Sean,

The point I try to make in my article is that being a professional boat designer--that is, getting paid for producing boat designs--is not an easy or assured way to make a living. If you want to design boats and build boats, that's is perfectly all right. If you can get paid for doing so, then congratulations! And if you can support yourself and a family, then you have made it! The purpose of the article is to show the factors involved in trying to become a designer--it is a very small market, you have to admit, and it succeeds only when the economy is good. When the economy turns sour, boat designers and builders go out of business. There goes the income and it's back to the cubicle working for a regular paycheck. It is a long way between the dream of designing boats for a living and the reality of actually getting there. It takes a lot of years--success is not instantaneous--and you have to be able to stick it out. As you saw, if you have not given up hope after the first half of the article, the second half gives some very practical and worthwhile advice on how to fulfill that dream so that your chances of a livelihood as a boat designer are ever so much greater.

Eric

[Sean Herron]

Hello...

I remember when Bush Sr. slapped that luxury tax on every 100,000 dollars - that did wonders for the megayacht builds in Canada and I am sure every where else - needless to say it did not last his term - I imagine the seated Senate had a go at that piece of legislature...

I decided a long time ago to bug out of the design end of things because at the time I could not afford 5 to 6 years of university levels towards a N.Arch and I did not trust the numbers coming out of Westlawn...

I like building boats for a living - namely because the greater part of the decision making and desperation is up to the bosses - I contribute the persperation - what I do have to figure out on my own has usually gone through at least one or two prior mental strainers - if nothing comes out of that - then once and while I have to provide a bit of inpiration too...

Am I lazy - yes - and I like it - or I simply realized that without a silver spoon to fall back on - or a wife with same - trying to crack the design racket while paying a mortgage at the same time is very 'microscopic' - as you have said and indeed - besides I like watching the thing grow on the shop floor - rather than on paper - wondering whether we will have to cut out some ceiling beams...

I have chosen a world where design is a Sharpie marker and whatever there is to draw on to communicate why something will not work and to quickly come up with something what will and that can actually be built - there is no 'cosmic napkin' when you have to move a tank that is 20 feet wide after the structural guys have closed you in...

Designing boats is a great hobby and has been made better by sites like this and others - and for that matter the whole mess of fairly decent free software - where amatuers who do not benefit from a working peer group can get opinions and ideas - you should hear some of the more floral comments my 'working peer group' has made against some of my doodles...

You have to have a faily thick skin to show your stuff to the likes of them - and their collective shop floor experience...

Sales men and brokers are nothing but county fair 'fluff' as far as I am concerned and they can take their pink ties and commisions and just follow my piss into the bowl - pay a quarter to shoot their buttocks with some BB device - pay the man who supplies the ammo a fifty and have a real go at their symantic EGO and ******** volcabulary...

I respect sales people - ( no I don't) - for without them - there would be NO new builds - (********) - but I would love a paintball go at same...

For that matter - let us face the fact that the average sales person is someone who has been 'promoted' OFF the shop floor because they just Fck'ed everythng they touched - and they were put into sales - in an effort to stop them from breaking up and making a general mess of things on the floor where the real bits and money happen...

SH.

[sharpii2]

Couldn't help adding my own $0.02.

I stumbled upon the idea of boat design when I was in my early teens. During those days, I was an avid reader of "The Rudder" magazine and the design section was my favorite hangout. In my mid teens, I built my first boat. It was arguably the worst built boat that ever sailed successfully. When completed, it refused to sail up wind. Being that I did not know anybody with sailing experience let alone design experience, it was left up to me to solve the problems. On the second Summer I owned the boat, I successfully got it to sail for the first time.

My first successful sail was in the bolder choked Epoufett Bay on the Northern shore of Lake Michigan. It was with an on shore wind and four foot swells. The ten foot scow made its way up wind dispite the fact that I scarcely knew what I was doing. Sailing back in was a joy. The flat bottomed craft surfed readily and I was on the beach in no time.

When I was 17, I tried my hand at boat design for the first time. I needed a boat that could go on top of the family car without scratching the paint (it didn't have a roof rack). It also had to be much lighter than poor 185 lb+ DELIHLA. It also had to be buildable with simple tools and even simpler skills on my part. And it had to be cheap.

Having just read Thor Heyderdahls "RA ADVENTURES", I decided on a raft. I purchased a four man vinyl raft at the local K Mart and built a wooden frame work to sit on top of it. This frame work was held to the raft by lounge chair webbing that passed beneath the raft. The two by two mast was held up with three clothes line stays. Two 1 ft x 2 ft pieces of plywood extended down from wooden structure into the water to act as 'leeboards'. The rudder was a large canoe paddle (which also served as a stern thruster, when comming about, and auxiliary power if the wind quit). The whole thing cost $40 US (circa 1973) and, believe it or not, actually worked. I may well have designed the first successful sailing rig for an inflatable raft. One by one, people came out of thier cottages to see it work. With each change in tacks there were more people watching. Within an hour, there was quite a crowd.

But this vessel, probably the worst designed one that ever worked, had a short life. It was dismasted that very Summer and came close to being swept accross Lake Huron. It was later found to be un workable without two people on board and the raft was sold and the wooden structure dismantled for use on other projects.

I later got interested in designing more sophisticated boats. The dream of one day crossing the ocean in a sailboat of my own design haunts me to this very day. But after going to THE LANDING SCHOOL, I realized that boat design was nowhere near as creative a process as I had once thought (there is a reason sail boats look so much the same). Once the requirements are spelled out, the boats tend to pretty much design themselves. It's mostly a long math problem. Once I graduated, I returned to my old stamping press job. I have since designed only two boats. None of them have been built.

If I made 1 to 3 thousand dollars a year in boat design, I would now consider myself successful. I now call myself a "hobby designer" for this reason. I do agree with Eric on the need for the proverbial "piece of paper" (degree), but only to a point. Sooner or later 'results on the ground' (or in the water) are going to have to trump paper credentials. Eric, luckily, has both. I, myself, will never be able to afford an engineering degree. But that can not stop me from engineering. What I know, I can use. What I don't know, I can learn.

But the reality is that there is clearly little or no room at the inn. So now I'm on a new carreer path. It's called fiction writer. Or maybe even screen writer.
Curriously, the same mindset that makes a halfway decent engineer also, luckily, makes a good story teller. It's not so much the answers you come up with as it is the questions you ask in the first place.

This is why I'm skeptical about the wisdom of relying on paper credentials. (probably the best grade getters of thier generation are now running the war in Iraq. And I don't mean the president) During my long half century of existence, I have noticed that those who get the best grades often aren't nearly the best thinkers. They tend to learn things quickly, usually by rote, and have good medium to long term memories. They can regurgitate what they have learned quite successfully come exam time, but often seem to have trouble applying it in new, unforseen, and unusual circumstances.

It is sad to let the dream of being a successful boat designer drift away. It is the love of my youth. The most intense love of my life. But I am now damn near the end of the Summer of my life and, if I wish to escape an especially nasty Autumn, I had better get on with it. The novel I am now rewriting is not perfect, but it does have real characters, it does have an atmosphere, and it does have a plot. Though it will never carry me across the ocean, it may well give me the means to design and build something that will.

Bob

[Redsky]

i guess after this thought there are a couple of types of boat designer: there are are a lot of people that are for lack of a better term "concept designers" and mutch like unknown writers the majority are doing i out of fun or a idea or trying to get "known" and going to school for it and exsist at the same time...
then we have the boat engineering design people who are usually "known" designers and engineering archatects the " reality" people who'v been there and done that
however there being a lot! of people that means the pool of "averages" is larger...industry wants Exceptional!!!!!!! the internet has this way of showing just how big the talent pool is, its staggering really.
but at the end of it all after many years running my own chatroom's its like day/nite, order/chaos one cannot exsist without the other.
and maby both side of the issue need to think about the spread of information and how to manage the interface in better ways,,maby someone here can come up with something that works....i also dont consider the aircraft industry nessairly the best industry to build deep space ships.

[yipster]

there always have been more designers -of all sorts- than marked, its pasion that drive's designers, a few get famous, some find work in design but most give up. i studied commercial art and became advertising designer, soon requeting not to have studie'd enginering, industrial design etc couse my mind often wondered those way's also. worked with pencils than the pc came, big switch, good and bad. meanwhile had to design and build a polyester boat, sportscar and still have swath legs standing here to finish waiting for $1000 alu piping. allways thought design is a broader field. had an argument with a girlfrend musician once over music, another art form right? she saying a hitparade doenst mean a thing. went as far she stuck her tongue out! i painted it on the back of my coat, year later it was the stones label! so whats art? its not my site i got to work on but in the end its what the public wants and with or without papers making a little cash in very compative fields with something you really love to do is what its about

now is the marked saturated? boats you mean? dont think so!

[CDBarry]

Eric makes a very good point about where to get an education in boat design, and how hard it is to survive. He mentions the Coast Guard Academy as an option, and this is correct (and it is sort of free as well), and it also sets you up perfectly for a career as a yacht designer. Go to the CGA, retire as a Captain or Rear Admiral, then you will be able to survive as an independent yacht designer.

That said, there actually is a severe shortage right now of degreed NAs in most areas of the commercial business, especially offshore, (they are paying over $100K/yr with $90K signing bonuses in Houston) but in most other areas as well.

There are also some open positions in small vessel (including yachts) engineering with shipyards or boatbuilders, but again most of them are degreed, and the levels of pay, though better than in the past, are about 75% of what a commercial or military position would be. Most of the positions are with the headhunters, though.

Note also that the SNAME job board is now open to the public for jobseekers.

[gonzo]

It seems to me that most people look at megayacht and other grandiose vessels when they dream of boat design. There is a market in dinghies, skiffs, canoes, kayaks and other small craft. Also the clients are more numerous.

[westlawn5554X]

Well , I cant for the love of my life force myself to but a ferrari because it is my fuel economic and a spacious dream that would be a family thing, and trying to explain that to Mr. Brown next door.

It would depend on the client taste and whim to choose from. Global Trend is the term we use to remind us the extinction of oneself ,if we stay too long in a stagnant state of Dejevu.

Student