Luxury yachts building Icon Yachts Harlingen
The ICON Way - We've done it!
Over the past couple of years we have all seen the emergence of a new brand and new yard and a new way of thinking.
It has risen to the surface and is now a floating asset that will shout loudly throughout the world, "I am an Icon",
and there are very few products that can bear the name as well as become the same.
The waether-beaten town of Harlingen, one of the most northern harbours of Holland, houses the vast sheds and infrastructure
of the Icon yacht building facility, a part commercial ship-building area and fishing port, and now the home
to a yacht-building plant that manufactures with efficiency rather yhan creates with excess. The emphasis is on the the words
manufacture and efficiency, as these are two of the key foci that have driven the Icon Yachts business forward.
But in addition to the processes, there have been the people and while attending the recent launch ceremony and the obligatory
smashing of French fizz on the anchor pocket, it was clear that there was enough passion and belief to fuel a “fundamentalists’
religious orgy”. At the ceremonial launching “pulpit” there was the religious leader, Mr Wim Koersvelt, a form of preacher of
all things technical, engineering and manufacturing efficiency, a pure yacht builder who a few years ago brought together a team
of similar believers to adopt “Wim’s Way”.
That is not to say that the methodology employed within the Icon business is all brand new, but it is the sensible and intelligent
application that we have seen over the past 20 months that has indoctrinated the workforce and build partners in order to create
the Icon number One. In addition, Koersvelt was fortunate enough to find two financial partners who also believed in his methodology
and focus; they too allowed him to live his dream and build a business based on logic and process control. He was also even more
fortunate to have a life partner, through his wife Karin, and his new business partner, Jan Wartena, who also understood what the
dream was and how to turn it into a reality. Call it fate or just good judgement, here was an alignment of circumstance that
allowed the team that is now driving the Icon build programme to face the same way and build upon the platform that should one day
allow an owner to call the yard, order a yacht and see it float away to the Mediterranean less than two years later.
The result is the ICON 62-meter hull in and on which each client can realise his own unique yacht, while benefiting from a certain
repeat effect through using a standard hull, standardised technical systems and spaces, standard crew- and service areas.
The benefits translate in cost- and time savings.
From the special issue The Yachts Report - Monaco Boatshow 2009 - The Icon Report.
All photography The Yacht Report © Dick Manshande
Cover Boat International © Dick Manshande
Other photo's Boat International © Bugsy Gedlek
