The man who turned JD.com into the Amazon’s biggest Chinese rivalhas just announced his next project. This time it’s not about packages or deliveries in 24 hours: this time it’s about yachts. Yes, those luxury boats that until now only the richest could afford among the rich.
However, his plan is not make yachts for millionaires. That can do any. The challenge is to manufacture yachts that any minimally wealthy family can afford. Their goal is to manufacture yachts at the same price as a car.
The “Chinese Jeff Bezos.” Richard Liu is popularly known as the “Chinese Jeff Bezos” for having converted your company JD.com into an online commerce giant with its own logistics capable of overshadowing the almighty Amazon. According to ForbesLiu has an estimated net worth of around $5.5 billion, placing her as one of the China’s biggest fortunes.
Liu wants to replicate that philosophy of scale and efficiency that he has honed at JD.com in a completely different sector: boat manufacturing. For this purpose, Sea Expandary has been created. a new company which will not be managed directly by him since he will have his own independent CEO. The planned initial investment is around 5 billion yuan (about $723 million), and the goal is so ambitious that it is hard to believe: that any salaried worker can have his own yacht, just as happened with the car decades ago.
Price is what changes the rules of the game. The most striking fact of the proposal is the target price for the boats they manufacture. As I collected Asian outlet SCMP, Liu has stated that: “I hope that one day we can build yachts priced at 100,000 yuan (US$14,502), so that they can enter homes like cars do. Yachts must be difficult for ordinary wage workers and ordinary consumers.”
To put that figure in context, according to boat insurance portal Admiral Marine, a small entry-level yacht can easily cost between $50,000 and $200,000. The ambition is that this boat will have enough space on board for a family and that its price will not be an obstacle for Chinese households to buy one.
Making boats is complex. Building ships is not an easy task. The nautical sector continues to be one of the most artisanal and labor-intensive, with long production cycles and greater flexibility must be applied in the customization of finishes and uses. To reach that price, Sea Expandary would have to radically industrialize the process, limit the variants it offers to its customers and optimize the supply chain.
Furthermore, the new company not only aims to be cheap, but also sustainable. Liu has announced that all Sea Expandary yachts will operate with what he has called new energy technologies that focus on the electrification of engines and renewable energy generation systems. This is a positioning that fits well with the industrial policies that China has been promoting in the renewable energy sector that is already is applying in cars.
It’s a good business. The yacht market in China is in full boiling. According to the market outlook By the end of 2025 there were 9,850 vessels registered in the country, and more than half of the total fleet had been registered in the last three years. The Chinese Ministry of Transport said that growth is expected to continue over the next five years.
The global yacht market, for its part, exceeded $9.83 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $14.98 billion in 2035, with compound annual growth of more than 4.3%. China is late to this sector compared to Europe or the US. However, China arrives with a more than proven competitive advantage: its industrial-scale production capacity, lower manufacturing costs and the support of public policies. Liu knows this, and he said it bluntly: “Only by doing this can we truly compete with the world’s leading yacht manufacturers in Europe and the United States.”
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Image | Flickr (Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2018), Pershing
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