Formerly Head of UK Sales at Aston Martin, Will Green joined Princess in January 2003 as Assistant Sales Director and later became Sales Director. A member of the company’s Board of Directors since September 2004, Green was promoted to Chief Commercial Officer in December 2021 then succeeded Antony Sheriff as CEO in August 2023, five months after KPS Capital Partners completed its acquisition of the Plymouth-based shipyard.
Can you talk about the role that David King, who founded Princess in 1965, has played in your career?
David King is still my mentor and is still Princess’s longest-serving employee, although it feels strange to call him an employee. He’s in his early 80s, but he’s super sharp and still heliskiing! He’s an amazing guy.
When I first joined Princess and got involved in product development, David gave me some advice. He told me to go on your competitors’ products and look for the things you think they do well, then go on your own product and look for the things you’re not quite happy with.
If you can learn from those two lessons, then every time you develop a new boat, it’ll be a better boat. It’s a very simple, logical thing to do. He’s a thoughtful man.
What were other lessons from him you took onboard in your career, especially as you were promoted to CCO then CEO in recent years?
He’s a very good businessman. There are a lot of brands in the business, but I think he’s one of the best in the industry at the art of making sustainable profits by making boats.
If you reflect on the ‘founding fathers’ of the five core brands [founded in the 1960s] — Paolo Vitelli (Azimut), Robert Braithwaite (Sunseeker), Norberto Ferretti (Ferretti Yachts), David King (Princess) and Sam Newington (Fairline) — Dave is the only one still working for his original brand.
When I joined Princess in 2003, the company had never lost money, and it had been through plenty of cycles. He’s very shrewd, so I’d be glad if I could learn half of the lessons he learned over those years.
Among the reasons he’s still involved at Princess is to help the new team in charge. He also helps from a design perspective, as he often challenges people with his experience of what has worked or not worked before and why, as well as other things to consider. He gives himself no credit for the company he’s developed and the lessons he’s learned, but he’s an inspiration.
Do you still lean on him for advice?
Yes, absolutely, every week. He still comes in one day a week. However, although our Board of Directors is a relatively new line-up, there’s well over a century of Princess experience between the seven of us.
James Smale (COO) has been with Princess since starting as an apprentice in 1997. Annie Reed (CCO) has been here since 2001. Andy Lawrence (Executive Director Design & Development) joined Princess just before me, so we’ve both done 23 years or so.
Adrian Bratt (Chief People Officer & General Counsel) has done nine years, and Simon Clare (Executive Director Marketing & Brand) is now at Princess for a second time, totalling almost eight years. We’ve all served so much time with the company that we truly understand what makes it special.
How have you handled being CEO?
I wasn’t looking to be CEO. I guess I thought maybe one day, but I’m not a person that likes to be the centre of attention. However, I care very much about the company, and I care about the people in the company.
When KPS decided they wanted to change things, I thought long and hard about it. I thought we really needed to get Princess back to its core and that we didn’t really want to take the risk of bringing someone in from the outside, so that sort of pushed me over the edge to accept the CEO role.
It was also a difficult time for the company when you were offered the position.
Having never been a CEO before and with a company in quite a difficult situation and a difficult market, I thought this was a great opportunity to fail in my first CEO job! So, yes, I really had to think about it.
KPS also helped me make the decision, as they were very supportive about me putting what I felt was the right team around me, which was fundamental to me taking the job. Also, since making the decision, I’ve never felt alone. KPS are very present, very supportive, although they’re tough, they have high expectations and they are challenging.
When you took over in August 2023, what was the situation at Princess and what were your priorities?
When KPS bought Princess in March 2023, they bought a company that was still suffering from the fallout of COVID. It affected different companies in different ways, but we’re a volume builder of high-value products, so I think it probably hit us as hard as anyone in the industry.
For example, a similar-revenue shipyard that annually builds 10 boats between 100 to 150 feet only needs 20 or so engines. To build the volume of boats we’re trying to build, we need 500 engines and 300 generators. And during COVID, getting hold of anything that had a chip in it was a disaster.
We were carrying an overhead equivalent to delivering a serious volume of boats and yet we couldn’t get the components to deliver the product. And it was really galling because we didn’t expect that demand would spike through COVID!
So, in early 2023, we were still dealing with the aftermath of all that and our financial situation was not pretty. I took over a few months after KPS bought the company and had firmed up their strategy.
We completely changed the Princess management team and essentially delayered. We had a reduction in salaried staff and hourly headcount because we had to rightsize the company to the number of boats that we were able to build and the components we could get our hands on.
It was a difficult time because we were trying to balance customer commitment on delivery dates with the rightsizing of the business. It was a challenging turnaround. Wind the clock forward to the end of 2024 and we were profitable again.
As well as becoming profitable again, Princess’s 2024 revenue was 378 million pounds, up 67.68 million pounds on 2023.
We were proud of our 2024 results given the headwinds in the commercial situation in the industry, which is reflective of the geopolitical and economic turmoil in the world.
It may not be the same for every boat builder, but in our world, pretty much every customer we talk to already has a boat. So, you’re trying to convince somebody in a difficult climate to stop using the boat that they own and love, and replace it with a more expensive one. When the world is in a difficult situation, the reasons not to do that are quite compelling.
Given that backdrop, we’re quite proud of the journey we’ve been on to get the company back in balance. And since the end of 2024, that trajectory of improvement has continued.
We’re not trying to break any records. Instead, the whole mantra is to get the company back into a solid position where we’re balancing demand and supply, and generating quality profits.
Ultimately, the aim is to cover all our development costs, generate a sensible return for shareholders and have happy customers, high levels of service and high-quality product, so we’re sustainable through future cycles.
Having specialised in sales for two decades, what have been your main challenges as CEO?
When I took the job, I told KPS there were two things I wanted help with. I hadn’t been a CEO before, so I wanted any structured support they could give me to ensure I understood what I didn’t yet know.
I also went to London Business School and did a finance course because I think understanding the numbers is key. I’ve been on the board at Princess for over 20 years, so I’ve looked at balance sheets and P&L statements for a long time. However, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’, so I was keen to fill in the gaps.
Which aspects of being CEO came more naturally to you?
I’m not an operational person, but I’ve always been in manufacturing, and I genuinely care about people, so for me that aspect was quite natural. I want to be on the shop floor anyway because I really care about the hearts and minds of people, and we have so many great people at Princess.
Many have been with us for their whole careers includ
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