Leading Stories

RULE THE WAVES

Sailing is a great way to build team spirit. It’s also terrific fun. Meet the man who helps put sailing on the corporate events map.

Eight years ago, Simon Boulding traded a job he loved and the glare of big city life for the chance to grow a business that has since become his passion. Port Hamble Marina on the south coast of England may lack the crackle and fizz of London, but the clear blue waters of the Solent and a proprietary hand on the rudder of Britannia Corporate Events more than make up for it.

Besides, it was his successful career in professional marketing services, principally for law firms, that led him to Britannia in the first place.  Setting up and running the marketing department of Manches LLP – one of the top 100 UK-based law firms -- meant finding out more about the Manches Cup, which was and still is the leading event for the legal community.

‘Manches have sponsored the race for 22 years now, but at the time, they weren’t heavily involved in it so one of the things they said to me when I joined the firm was to find out more about it. So I went down and got to know Andy Byham, who is the MD of Britannia who were running it. I just started offering him, in my spare time, some advice on developing new revenue streams, getting additional sponsors for their events and helping them launch one or two new ones,’ Boulding recalls.

Building Britannia

Never one to shirk a fresh challenge, Boulding had already left Manches and was comfortably settled in another City law firm, helping them to set up their international networks (‘We would fly out to Minneapolis on the Friday, have business meetings Friday night and all of Saturday, then run the Twin Cities marathon on Sunday’), when Byham lured him permanently to Britannia.

Since then, Boulding,  Byham and their team of event experts, managers and trusted suppliers, have succeeded in taking what many would consider the leading regatta and charter company for the corporate sector to an entirely different level.  ‘In the first instance, to me, it was very, very clear how to grow the business. Britannia already had a fantastic, industry leading event in the Manches Cup. You could take that model and apply it to any other business sector you wanted,’ he says.
But first there was some hard graft to be done, and Boulding drew on his early years’ training selling advertising for trade magazines – at the height of the 1990s recession – in his attempts to amass new markets for Britannia’s offering.

‘When I was selling advertising in my twenties, armed with a geography degree from Reading, I could make 80 calls a day and 79 would end in a ‘no.’ In a more favourable market, some people don’t learn to take no for answer but that level of rejection actually stands you in good stead. And I was trained well, taught negotiation and sales techniques which are always very useful whether you stay in a sales environment or not,’ Boulding says.

Power of persuasion

Boulding went out and identified core markets for which Britannia could establish regattas.  Sometimes they ended up launching events for a particular sector, such as the Energy Regatta for gas and oil; other times they would be asked to work with other organisations to launch events on their behalf. One such organisation is the Lloyds Yacht Club event known as the Lutine Lineslip Regatta for the insurance sector, an alliance that Britannia has enjoyed for the past eight years.

‘I just approached them, contacting the yacht club and speaking to the Commodore about helping them with their regatta. We’ve been working with them ever since,’ he says. The company is now in talks to launch an event for the mobile telecoms sector.

‘This is what is different about Britannia,’ Boulding explains. ‘There are a lot of sailing companies out there, but our niche and USP is corporate sailing, business to business. We’ve developed a portfolio of events aimed at different market sectors.’ 
This is not to say that the events all emerge from a single palette. ‘Each one is completely unique and has its own personality,’ he says.

And they have been busy, as they can afford to be with the largest fleet of Beneteau 40.7’s in all of Europe. A glance at Britannia’s calendar of sailing and marine events for the 2011/2012 season lists no less than 36 races and sailing events which the company either owns or is involved in.

Profile Sailing Cup

One of these events is the Profile Sailing Cup for the hospitality and travel industry, now in its sixth year where, Boulding points out, ‘everybody knows everybody’. Boulding concedes that Profile, specifically Mark Norris, is a crucial stakeholder, acting as the driving force behind an annual race which so far has managed to entice the likes of Small Luxury Hotels of the World (the Cup’s key sponsor), Hilton, Casna Group, Jumeirah and The Dorchester Collection to field their managers and staff for two days’ racing in the Solent. In 2012, the Profile Sailing Cup goes international, with a race planned in Hong Kong Harbour in November. The UK-based race will take place in the Solent in September.

Both Boulding and Norris look forward to expanding the race to include more hotel and travel companies that might also enjoy the rare opportunity to have drinks and dinner at the prestigious Royal Yacht Squadron, located in Cowes Castle. The yacht club’s history dates back to 1815; the Prince Regent, later King George IV, became a member two years later. That the Profile Sailing Cup Dinner can be held there is the gift of RYS member Robin Aisher OBE, the celebrated British Olympian sailor, himself Admiral of the nearby Island Sailing Club.

When asked why he still chooses to get involved in the Profile Sailing Cup and other races,  Aisher says ‘I see so many people from different parts of the world coming into racing, sometimes for the first time, and the pleasure it gives them. It is a truly enjoyable activity.’

Team building and sponsorship

‘As a channel for corporate hospitality and networking, sailing is hard to beat,’ says Boulding, ‘and it always occurred to us that it is great for team-building.’

Two years ago, Britannia teamed up with people development consultancy MaxVMG to provide sailing-based team building and development programmes. Plans are also underway to launch Britannia’s own yacht-centred team building offering, called Team Britannia, focussing purely on sailing as a means of building team camaraderie and strength. People may also find that sailing a yacht is a great leveller. ‘And you find that in a race, the team that loses is actually the happiest. It’s all about pulling together and working together well.’

 ‘And you sometimes find that the runners up can be just as happy as the wining team. It’s all about pulling together and working well together and setting and achieving goals – and that is often as much about beating your own goals and expectations as it is about beating the opposition.’ smiles Boulding, who goes on to describe Britannia’s other plans, such as launching its own sailing club targeted at high-net worth individuals.

Being the high-profile activity that it is, sailing is bound to attract sponsorship, and one of Boulding and Britannia’s key achievements is their success in attracting funding for races from major sponsors. In December 2011, Mount Gay Rum -- the ‘finest, oldest rum in existence’, produced in Barbados since 1703 -- climbed aboard as Britannia’s Official Drinks Sponsor for the 2012 season. It joins other corporate sponsors in Britannia’s impressive and growing roster such as Gill, the famous supplier of sailing clothing.

When tomorrow comes

As to his own future, the indefatigable, hard-working Boulding -- who is married with two young children and who once thought he might grow up to become a criminal pathologist --  prefers to keep, as he has always done, an open mind. But he admits to being attracted to the hotel and tourism sector. ‘I think what’s involved is very similar to running corporate sailing events. It’s all about keeping clients and people happy, giving them what they want.’ He may not be solving crimes, but in many ways, he’s providing a solution.

To find out more about Britannia Corporate Events, visit their website on www.britanniaevents.co.uk. You can contact Simon Boulding at simon@britanniaevents.co.uk.