Courtesy DiMillo’s Yacht Sales
Chris DiMillo used to cruise around in a 25 Hunt Harrier that he bought used. He liked it so much that he commissioned a 26 Hunt Harrier in 2020. Nowadays, something magical happens every winter with that 26-footer, when this owner of DiMillo’s Yacht Sales leaves his Northeast business locations to hit the waters around Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“I get more compliments than anybody in these bigger and more expensive boats,” DiMillo says, adding that he sees many reasons to love Hunt designs. “They’re beautiful. They’re timeless. They’re high quality. They stand up to the test of weather. I just think that people see them and want to know what they are, and they interpret immediately that the boats have a pedigree and a history.”
DiMillo enjoys those moments, and he’s had a successful career in the boating business. For some people, that would be enough, but he wanted something more to do. He’s 55 and coming off two years of stepping back a bit in the everyday operations of DiMillo’s Yacht Sales. “I had built a small boutique hotel in Portland, Maine,” he says. “I was doing some other projects outside the day-to-day work of boat sales.”
Then, this past December, his phone rang. It was the team at Hinckley Yachts, offering him the opportunity to bid on key strategic assets of Hunt Yachts—an opportunity that would allow him not only to oversee sales of new Hunt boats, but also to have more involvement in the design of new models.
He jumped at the offer. DiMillo says he’s always been able to give input to brands that DiMillo’s Yacht Sales offers—including Sabre, Back Cove, Tiara and MJM—but the Hunt Yachts opportunity, he says, paired with his well-oiled team of nearly 80 employees from Maine to Maryland, was too good to pass up.
“They looked at me as somebody whose product line was similar, but stopped at a certain length, and their product line started where mine left off,” DiMillo says. “They have also, through the years at boat shows, had constant streams of my clientele going through their display. They always bought a boat through DiMillo’s and knew we provided a good service.”
DiMillo did his due diligence, including flying to Taiwan, where Global Yacht Builders has long produced boats under the Hunt Yachts brand. He didn’t know what to expect, and he had no interest in running a shipyard.
“When I met the owner of Global Yacht Builders, I told him I have zero experience with Taiwanese boats,” DiMillo says. “I’ve done very little international commerce. Really, everything I’ve done has been domestic.”
And yet, he says, he felt not only welcome, but also immediately comfortable. Hinckley had always contracted with the shipyard to build the Hunt models, and there is no reason for that business structure to change.
“They’re used to someone who’s used to doing that,” he says, “and that’s what I do now.”
Ray Hunt is staying on as project manager with the Hunt Yachts brand, while managing director Peter Truslow will remain with Hinckley and shift his role to service for existing Hunt owners, DiMillo says.
And while new Hunt models will likely be coming in the future, DiMillo says, the initial plan for new-boat sales is to focus on Hunt’s 56 and 63. “They are the two most recent designs, and we think they are more representative of what people are looking for right now,” DiMillo says. “The profile is a little bit updated from the past. The accommodations, the way people live, have been modified to fit what people are asking for. And they just have a more contemporary feel. Not modern, but contemporary.”
He also plans to increase the production-line output from three to six boats per year, in part by offering more standard features. “The willingness to do anything that anybody wants is at the expense of production,” DiMillo says. “They were getting hung up on boats being delayed six months and nine months or a year because of all the customization. That’s not a way to run a business.”
His team is studying previous commissions to find commonalities that would make sense as standard features. In addition, two 56s are under construction now, and one of them is likely to appear at this fall’s boat shows for potential customers to give feedback.
After that, DiMillo says, he’ll take a look at what the marketplace has taught him, and he’ll make plans. But for sure, he’s applying what his team calls the “DiMillo’s Experience” to the sale process. It’s different from the way Hinckley handled sales of Hunt models.
“When a prospective buyer wanted to buy a Hunt, he worked with a Hinckley salesperson until he signed a contract, and then it got handed over to project management. That’s not what we’ll do,” DiMillo says. “The salespeople are there from beginning to end. I think a more personal, focused experience is good because it’s not a side business. This is moving it into the rest of my operations, which is how we developed a client base for Sabre and Back Cove that nobody else enjoys.”
Those DiMillo’s operations include a new 26,000-square-foot facility that opened this past December in Maine, he says, in addition to the company’s service technicians, storage options and Travelifts. “We can pick up and store anything that Hunt’s ever built,” he says.
He adds that he’s excited to have more involvement in new-model design than has been possible with other brands his team sells, because at the end of the day, he’s a fan of the Hunt brand.
“I have a passion for what Hunt stands for and what it is,” he says. “In a sea of boats that look the same, they just stand out.”
