Arksen founder: building the ‘Red Bull brand of the marine industry’
Arksen founder Jasper Smith discusses building brand equity through sustainability, documentaries, product outreach and philanthropy.
Dubbed the ‘Land Rover of the seas’ by the industry, UK-based adventure yacht specialist Arksen aims to be a luxury lifestyle brand for explorers. Its Explorer, Adventure and Discovery yacht series now sit alongside the brand’s expansion into automotive and apparel segments, with founder and entrepreneur Jasper Smith noting North Face, Apple and Red Bull as inspiring business models.
Launched at boot Düsseldorf in 2019, the company now offers the Arksen 65, the Arksen 75 and the 27.3-metre Arksen 85 in the Explorer series, with hull three of the 85 in build shortly. The company has also diversified into the premium open RIB (rigid inflatable boat) market with its recent Discovery Series of five open adventure RIBs ranging from 6m-12m. They join the Arksen Adventure Series, with the Arksen 8 – an eight-metre-long RIB designed for adventure-seeking families and accommodating up to 12 passengers – making its debut in 2024.
Scaling and leverage
Smith says he has taken a different approach to traditional yards when building the brand. “I think the starting point for Arksen is that we don’t see ourselves as just a boatbuilder. Traditionally, the marine industry is so constrained because there’s so little capital in it. It’s not a VC investable model, because the margins are so tight, and it’s so hard to create scale. But if you look at what Harley Davidson or North Face has done, for example, they’ve been able to create almost cult like followings around them by having a halo brand with a whole raft of experiences bolted in, plus events, and apparel that speaks to its community and consumers.”
Smith continues: “The adventure landscape is a completely open space. Nobody’s really conceived of a brand that’s like Hermes for adventure or Chanel for the seas.”
Smith is utilising acquisitions and partnerships to scale the business quickly and “get the brand humming.” He explains: “You can use OEM partnerships to bring products to market very quickly. You can get OEM partners to help take balance sheet risk and you don’t need huge amounts of capital at the top end to drive these things. As long as you’ve got a clear vision of what you’re trying to do, you can grow in a way that you’ve never been able to before. And that just feels really enticing and exciting to me.”
Arksen has used collaboration to expand faster than it could have organically, namely with its Adventure Series where it has partnered with XO Boats to bring the fleet to market more quickly.
“We manufacture the Discovery Series in house at our own shipyard but with the Adventure Series, we wanted to be able to have a product that could sit alongside the Explorer Series as quickly as possible. XO offered a great platform with a good market entry strategy. They knew aluminium really well, had some presence in the market and we felt like we could do a better job marketing that chassis.
“So it was slightly opportunistic from our side, but it was also a good way of testing the waters in this mid-boat market space. We wanted product that we could sell to dealers immediately, so that we could build a dealer network, and then, over time, we want to be able to feed that dealer network with more and more of our own products.”
While the Adventure Series is outsourced currently, the team expects the it will also be brought in house soon.
Lifecycle and recyclable boats
Building the community is vital to Arksen’s brand strategy, with sustainability a key pillar of the larger fleet. Smith’s vision is that Arksen craft remain within a circular economy and be as sustainable as possible.
“Like all industries, it’s really easy to greenwash. And the reality is, anyone who builds a boat of any description is effectively operating in an industry that’s ultimately unsustainable in its current guise. But what we can do is look at the business and say, ‘how much of this product can we design within a circular economy?’. And how can we produce our yachts while not depleting resources that we might need tomorrow.
“We can’t look at the provenance of everything in our yachts because of how many components there are, but we are stringent about the provenance of all the core components. We also assess the energy required for production. We work with partners to check metrics and audit the supply chain, from hulls to propellers, rudders and beyond. We also check if materials are being mixed as that could diminish the ability to recycle those parts at end of life.
“From an aluminium perspective, our boats are about 92 per cent recycled content on day one, and it’s infinitely recyclable at the end of life. And I believe 70 per cent of all the aluminium we’ve ever made is still in circulation one way or another. If you look at the entire Arksen 85, for example, we are 60 to 65 per cent recycled on launch and pretty much everything is recyclable at the end of life. There are some components such as solar panels that are quite difficult to recycle at the moment, but one would hope to get there in years to come.”
The smaller end of the range provides more challenges in terms of the sustainability targets.
“We make our RIBs from GRP, and use the most sustainable versions of resins, matting and fibre that we can find. There’s no perfect system in that segment of the industry yet and recycling at the end of life is still pretty difficult. But I think that sector is on a journey towards bio resins and other innovations but we haven’t yet got really good sustainable options.”
Smith is realistic – building smaller boats facilitates vital scale for the company that enables the brand’s larger dreams to be realised.
Eco boatbuilder
Philanthropy and conservation are tied into the brand – with all Arksen owners encouraged to pledge a portion of their vessels’ annual sea time to scientific or educational projects. The company is a founding partner of 10% For The Ocean (10FTO) – a philanthropic organisation established to increase global ocean conservation funding from 1 per cent to 10 per cent.
While Smith appreciates that clients may not start with philanthropy as a core purchase motivator, he notes that every customer that the company has sold an Explorer yacht to has participated in one of its ocean research and conservation programmes.
“I also think the use case of the product has become increasingly important. So if someone’s going to spend all this money – either buying a large vessel for their own use or co-owning it with others [Arksen has a co-ownership programme] – it really needs to be used. And I think that’s a big change in the industry and in the psyche. And while I don’t think people buy the boat because of it [philanthropic causes], I think it’s another reason to choose Arksen.”
Films, travel and David Attenborough
As Smith endeavours to build brand recognition, Arksen has had a multi-prong strategy. In September 2024, Arksen announced its acquisition of Kraken Travel, a marine adventure company that underpins the launch of Arksen Adventures, an initiative that will offer various expeditions across land and sea. Additionally, Arksen has also been working on an upcoming ocean documentary series.
“The vision with Arksen Adventures was to create ‘money can’t buy experiences’ across mountains, deserts and oceans. Kraken is a really good starting point because they’ve got great relationships with the Vendee teams and Volvo Ocean Race teams plus all the back office administration set up so we can, again, scale quickly.”
During the last year, Arksen has been working on a documentary narrated by David Attenborough with the company behind Walking with Dinosaurs, Blue Planet and Frozen Planet. Due for release on World Ocean Day in June 2025, the brand’s involvement is a dynamic positioning strategy that could open more doors and serves to elevate recognition.
“We aren’t the only participants in the project, there’s a raft of other groups that are involved as well but it’s just really interesting to me that if we use the Arksen brand well, and we use the assets that we’ve built, we can bring these extraordinary projects to life.
Smith hopes the involvement with the project can be used as a springboard for more adventure films. “Patagonia and other adventure brands have done that really well and essentially have now created a film fund, and gradually brought it in house. I’d love it if in the future, explorers knew that if you’ve got a really great idea, Arksen could help you make it.”
He also realises that diversification across multiple platforms and products helps to amplify the company and provide more on-ramps to the brand. “You might meet an 18-year-old that buys a jacket because he thinks it’s a cool garment. And in five years, they might want to take a trip with us, or buy a car, and in ten years maybe they buy a boat,” Smith says.
While marine industries have been very much hand to mouth for some time, Smith says Arksen has had the advantage of starting from scratch and can rewrite the rule book, cross-pollinating between segments and industries to build its wider brand arc.
“Investors like this too – they like the idea of growth, a big industry, and an open space where you can build a brand and hopefully create traction. It’s a very different model than saying, ‘I’m a boatbuilder in the UK, I’ve got a factory with 50 staff, and if I sell more than ten boats, I need another factory and another 50 staff’. I hope we can use our model and stimulate how the industry works. Our first love is absolutely the marine sector and making boats. That’s the thing we live for – but the industry needs a new economic model.”
Traversing soft markets
In April 2024, Arksen raised £6 million Series A capital in its first public investment round, which Smith says will be split with around 30 per cent in accelerated marketing, 30 per cent in products and development, and 40 per cent in territory expansion and dealer acquisition.
“Because the market has been so flat, dealers are generally quite reticent to take on new brands so we really need to be very clever there about how we help them finance stock and along with clothing and overland products, giving dealers a broader spectrum of items to be able to sell. Our aim is to keep investing in more product, more distribution, but not a massively wider portfolio.”
Smith says revenues this year will be shy of £10 million and hopes to be “at least doubling that, if not better, based on the pipeline we’ve got in 2025.”
Reflecting on 2023 and 2024, Smith says 2024 was very challenging. “It’s been tough because finance costs went up from out of nowhere. For anyone that was looking for a boat post covid and beyond, suddenly interest rates flew through the roof, which really killed a lot of the market. The markets have been so difficult, in fact, that many cash clients have returned to work, meaning their ability to set off on these amazing expeditions is curtailed. I think that will improve, and it’s coming back reasonably quickly now. Stability in the US will help and I think Europe will follow around six months behind. But 2025 will be a reasonably good year for UK stocks and markets and European stocks.”
Time will tell if Arksen can consolidate its market presence, but with so many irons in the fire it’s certainly a brand intent on doing things differently.
