From Navy career to Lagoon dealer king

Sometimes it really is true that life can bring great surprises. What happens, for example, is that your future seems dedicated to a career in the Navy, but then everything changes and after a few years, and a lot of sacrifice, you find yourself as the best European dealer of the Lagoon brand, and more. You end up running your own marina and having a charter company with locations in Italy, Spain, the Caribbean and Thailand. Of course, nothing happens by accident. Method, dedication and achievable goals are needed. What we are telling you is the story of Simone Morelli, founder of the company North Sardinia Sail Charter and the NSS Yachting for the sale of the new one. Simone, 50, from Pontedera, with a brilliant career as a naval officer already underway, one evening by chance learns of the existence in Sardinia, his wife’s homeland, of subsidized financing for entrepreneurship related to nautical tourism. “They’re going to be things only for recommended people told me, yet it was the very desire to prove that it wasn’t so and that it could be done that sparked me and I set out to study the feasibility of a project” he tells us.

Today Simone Morelli was named Europe’s best Lagoon dealer with 26 units sold in the past year, just shy of the world record. “Of course these are results that are achieved gradually. The charter company was established in 1998, we started and sold the new in 2012, and in the first year we sold only one boat. Two the following year, then four, five, always increasing, up to 26 in 2018/2019.” In more than 20 years of operation, however, a lot has happened in North Sardinia Sail.

“The real turning point was in 2009, when we felt the need to take the plunge, to have our own charter company port. In 2012, Cala dei Sardi was born, a landing with 600 square meters of lawn in the heart of Sardinia. Nothing existed here before. We obtained the concession, bought the land and made everything from scratch. The efforts of the past 10 years have all been concentrated here. Today we have a fleet of 102 charter boats, divided between Cala dei Sardi, Cala de Medici in Tuscany, Majorca in the Balearic Islands, Grenada in the Caribbean, and now a location in Thailand as well.”

And then of course there is the sale of new boats, catamarans in particular.

“Definitely the catamaran business is our business, but in the last year we also sold 11 Oceanis for Beneteau, we are on both fronts. The catamaran market is a growing market but one that is also evolving from a shipyard perspective. The boats are much better maintained, more aesthetically pleasing, and sail better than in the past. With Lagoon and Beneteau we are able to intercept two different audiences“. A privileged observatory then on what are the market trends. “Yes, and we note two things well: today the classic audience of boaters/sailors has been joined by real tourists. An audience that wants to experience the sea, but wants to do so with hotel-like convenience. They are the audience for catamarans, of course there is also an ongoing migration to this sector from classic sailors who decide to seek more comfort, but tourists are the main audience for catamarans. While the sailor asks us for the new Oceanis, which are boats that are also evolved in sailing performance and not just comfortable, complete boats.”

The future for North Sardinia Sail can only be ambitious, with new goals to be achieved. “The goal in the next few years is to double the fleet; today we have few boats under management because it has not been our policy, but we plan gradually to increase this front as well. Today NSS has 45 employees, who are the soul of our group, plus about 50 people who work with us seasonally. It is also thanks to them that we have achieved certain results and aim to grow further.”