[OSL]

I've been talking to a lot of different guys about the burgeoning luxury goods industry in Asia, and China specifically.

I thought some of you might find this interesting:

http://www.jingdaily.com/en/luxury/made-...dium=email

Yacht are sick, I wonder if it would be lucrative to carve out a role as a broker. I'm not even sure if that's possible.

[hydrogonian]

haha...there's a lot of things that I don't mind buying Chinese but a yacht wouldn't be one of them.

Id sooner trust a budget Southeast Asian yacht yard (Indonesia, Thailand, maybe the Philippines) to build one than the Chinese. Building a yacht is a painstaking process that requires a dedication to getting it right. I just simply wouldn't trust such notoriously profit-above-all-else motivated people to do that. Your trusting them with a huge investment of money as well as your life.

Also, yacht building profits are generally tight. There is very little room to build a standard to above standard quality yacht below market cost without cutting serious corners. The southeast Asians already build them at about the lowest labor rates possible (and people are very leery of SE Asian built yachts). The only thing left to cut is materials and build quality.

However, perhaps the Chinese people trust their own builders. Your idea of becoming a yacht broker might be something to consider, but only if there are enough millionaires in the country to make the venture worthwhile. Also, interest would probably be limited to the wealthy in South China, as that would be the only attractive place to go yachting.

[OSL]

Oh, true, I guess I should have elaborated that a Euro/Western guy who speaks fluent Viet/Bahasa/Thai/Chinese would benefit as a broker between luxury Italian/German/UK yacht makers and high profile Asian clients.

I can picture someone who is multilingual and well set up in the region creating a company out of HK or Singapore and possibly acting as a broker on high profile, extremely expensive toys such as yachts or similar things.

[hydrogonian]

Oh, that would be something to consider. But he'd also be competing with SE Asian brokers. But if he cold really set up and penetrate into the Chinese market, then perhaps.

But I'd be more a fan of becoming something like a high volume luxury liquor broker than a low volume high ticket yacht broker.