The New Old School

Entering its eleventh year, the brokerage is turning its attention to how technology can make yacht ownership work better—while keeping the business itself decidedly personal.

ELEVEN YEARS IS ENOUGH TIME in yachting to see a charter client become an owner, an owner become a builder and a yacht change hands more than once. It is also enough time to learn which parts of the business could work better.

Nick Gelevert has had longer than most to consider it. The founder and CEO of Boatsters Black is a third generation broker who grew up in the business. The company he founded is now entering its eleventh year, spanning sales, purchase, charter and new build, with an increasingly interesting sideline: building technology to solve some of the problems it encounters along the way.

"I grew up with old school brokerage and there is a lot about it I wouldn't change," says Gelevert. "Knowing boats, knowing people, discretion, picking up the phone and getting something done. But that doesn't mean every process surrounding it needs to stay the same."

It is a fair point. The technology aboard a modern superyacht would have been almost unimaginable a generation ago. The administration surrounding one can occasionally feel rather more familiar.

Boatsters Black's response has been to build some of its own tools.

Yacht Album uses AI to aggregate market data and find yachts for sale, both on and off market, in seconds. It turns what could be a lengthy trawl through databases, contacts and disparate information into an immediate view of the market.

"If the technology can do the searching faster and better, let it," says Gelevert. "Finding the yacht is one thing. Knowing whether somebody should buy it is another."

The company has taken the same approach to ownership. Its digital platform gives owners direct dashboard access to their yacht's financials and charter performance, while captains have their own interface to streamline operations and logistics.

For an owner accustomed to seeing the performance of a company or investment at the touch of a screen, the premise is hardly radical. In yachting, however, simple can be surprisingly innovative.

Partner and Director David Ramljak has been with Boatsters Black almost from the beginning. For him, the systems are useful precisely because the company has little interest in turning the rest of the business into a volume exercise.

"We don't need to show a client ten yachts when two are right," he says. "The longer you work with somebody, the more you understand what actually matters to them. That knowledge is part of the service."

A relationship might begin with a summer charter and, several years later, arrive at a purchase or new build. By then, the useful information goes well beyond preferred shipyards and cabin numbers. How does the family actually use a yacht? Who travels together? What did they love last summer? Which must-have feature was barely visited?

There is a difference between having the data and knowing the client.

It is also why Gelevert is relatively unmoved by size as a measure of Boatsters Black's progress.

"We want to grow, but I have no ambition to be the biggest brokerage in the world," he says. "I would much rather if somebody calls us for the next yacht, and the one after that, we've done something right."

That can mean saying no. A yacht may look compelling on paper and still be wrong for the person considering it. A new-build opportunity may be excellent and badly timed. Another year of chartering may occasionally be better advice than buying anything at all.

It is not necessarily the shortest route to a commission.

Neither is treating a new-build negotiation as a contest to be won at all costs. Contracts for large yachts begin relationships that can last four years or more. Boatsters Black's approach is to negotiate firmly while remembering that owner, shipyard and project team need to be capable of sitting around the same table the following morning.

Much of this is simply good brokerage. Perhaps that is the point.

Eleven years in, Boatsters Black is becoming more technologically ambitious without feeling the need to reinvent what already works. Yacht Album can find an opportunity in moments. An owner can open a dashboard and understand how the yacht is performing. A captain can run the operational side with less friction.

The quiet call, the judgement, the introduction, the advice—those remain personal.

"That balance matters to us," says Ramljak. "Use technology where it makes the experience better. Keep the relationship where it belongs."

After eleven years, it has become something of a Boatsters Black signature.