How much are the designer's fees?

Now, I understand. Thank you for giving the designer's perspective. Generally, I think that if I paid for something entirely, it should be mine, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it. But, I guess buying a design is not like buying a hammer, with which one can hammer as many nails as he wants. It appears that the designer I have wants about 12% of the build cost for all the design work. What do you think would be the fairest arrangement for additional boats that might be built? I would want the designer to be adequately compensated, while at the same time, protect my interests, where a potential customer would have to come to me to build another similar boat. Or, is it not even possible like this?

 

I am defiantly not saying this is the case here, so don't anyone take this the wrong way.

In my opinion, it is a hard job for a designer to distinguish the customers who are going to feed them, and the ones who are gong to shaft them. If you shoot straight from the start, you may find the designer more accommodating to your situation.

If you try and haggle for price, play them off against other designers, moan about price in public forums......trust that the designer will be taking this into his pricing considerations. He may intentionally offer you a price outside of your budget, as a polite way of saying "No thank you."
So find a designer you can relate too, and he you. Build some trust and go from there.

 

Some of the one design classes seem to get this right. For example if you went to Reichel Pugh and asked to buy plans for a Melges 24, they would not sell them to you. Either Melges owns the design, or there is a contract between Melges and Reichel Pugh that they will not sell the design to anyone else.

This is all theoretically speaking, I dont know about the relationship between melges and Reichel Pugh.

Im sure you could become the exclusive builder, of a design, but it will cost you big bucks.

 

Sam,

First of all I think anyone pricing a design based on the building cost isn’t making much sense. You (the builder) or the owner decides to install gold facets and thus the design fee goes up? Foolishness. Besides the problem of establishing what the actual cost of the boat is, what's included....what isn’t?

Today most yacht designers, as all business’s, establish their pricing based on the cost to them, plus a profit. In my opinion the designer should know how many hours he or she will spend on your project, based on the information you require (which is different for every builder) to do an adequate construction job. To this is added the cost of future support and responsibility, plus the profit. Profit can be a large number if you are going to a "Famous" name design house.

While it's rare for an independent design house to sell design rights outright, it is not unknown. The hard part is to guess the future value of the work. More common is a standard production design contract in which the designer retains ownership of the design, (including right of approval of changes affecting safety or performance) but licenses the design for exclusive use (for a limited time) by the builder. This contract usually involves a discounted fee up front (less than a custom one-off fee) plus a royalty on each hull built from the design. The royalty is often a flat fee or may be based on sales price of the boat, (again an iffy question). Thus with this standard form of contract, the designer is investing in your project and may or may not make some money at some point in the future.

Some designers continue to support their designs long after the builder has closed shop and disappeared. Others, such as Bob Perry, don't answer questions unless you send money first.

Tad