What Italian boat brands understand that Nordic brands still miss

The Düsseldorf Boat Show revealed why Italian and Dutch boat brands are growing, and what Nordic manufacturers could learn, if they dared.

I launched my boat last weekend. My seventh boating season began with an overnight stay on an island, a sauna, and, the next morning, a refreshing dip in the +4°C sea. I started boating during the COVID spring of 2020, when everything else was closed and the harbor was close by. It opened up a world I’ve sunk deeper into year after year, from archipelago and coastal skipper courses to charter boat and international pleasure craft licenses.

Along the way, two things have become clear:
1. Finnish boatbuilding is genuinely at the very top globally. From icebreakers to superyachts, from cruisers to day boats, the level of expertise is exceptional.
2. The world doesn’t really know it—and neither do most Finns.

I’ve visited boat shows in Finland and Sweden for years, but earlier this year I attended the Düsseldorf show, the world’s largest boating event, for the first time. Three days, over a dozen massive halls, and brands you simply don’t see in the Nordics.
What stood out most wasn’t the boats themselves, but how the brands were built.

Italian and Dutch manufacturers such as Riva, Pardo, Wajer, Itama, Wally, De Antonio, don’t sell boats. They sell a world. A story. An aesthetic. A community. Their stands were brand experiences in themselves, the content cinematic, and every touchpoint carried the same curated signature.

Community, in particular, stood out. For many brands, connecting owners is at the core of marketing. You don’t buy a boat, you join a club. This mindset is still foreign to Finns. Targa has done something in this space, and Grandezza perhaps at times, but systematic owner community-building as a core brand axis is still far off.

Sanlorenzo Group delivered the most impressive overall experience, and they now also own Finland’s great gift to sailing, Nautor Swan. Swan has long been among the world’s top sailing yachts, but even based on the exhibition stand alone, Italian brand expertise has clearly elevated a brand now led from Milan.

The same insight I saw at the show is visible in the data. The Haaga-Helia Boating Finland project conducted research at BOOT Düsseldorf 2026 on international boaters’ perceptions (n=140, plus 24 in-depth interviews). When shown Finnish boat brands, 26% did not recognize them at all, and only 29% knew them well or very well.

So, in the mecca of premium boating—where purchase-ready customers arrive from across Europe—less than a third can place top Finnish brands on the map.

One Dutch interviewee put it bluntly:

“You should be more proud of being Finnish. Finland has a good reputation, and Finnishness is a strong brand. Finnish expertise stands for quality, engineering skill, and character. The Dutch are proud of being Dutch, they put orange everywhere! Don’t be ashamed of being Finnish. Be proud of it.”

That quote captures the whole problem. A Dutch boater, from a country where orange is practically a national landscape, wonders why Finns don’t do the same. Here, there’s still hesitation to go big and take pride. The thinking is that the product will speak for itself.

But it’s crucial to recognize that a boat is a long-considered purchase. Customers visit multiple shows, and once they engage with a brand and its ideology, the real process begins. They want to see the boat, but just as much they want to consume everything about it online: YouTube, Instagram, owner stories, driving videos, interior details, everyday harbor life.

Finnish manufacturers are present at shows, though with noticeably more modest stands. But online, the gap compared to Italian brands is dramatic. When you explore a top-tier Nordic boat brand on Instagram, YouTube, or its own website, the content is thin and uninspiring.

When a customer is trying to sell the boat to themselves (often to their family, often to a spouse) they need content. Without inspiration, the process rarely extends beyond one annual show visit.

This isn’t just a boating industry issue. The same pattern repeats across Finnish industries: a deeply rooted engineering culture that leans on quality, not brand. The belief is that a product will sell itself if it’s good enough.

But iconic, growing brands are not built on quality alone. They are built on the combination of quality and storytelling. Riva has been building boats for over a century, but its iconic status wasn’t created by craftsmanship alone—it comes from how that craftsmanship and the lifestyle around it have been communicated.

One Finnish exception is Saxdor. They chose to invest in brand and marketing from the beginning and became Europe’s fastest-growing boat brand. (The brand was later sold to the United States, which also indicates how valuable that brand became.)

But what does this mean for Nordic boat brands?

The question isn’t whether marketing should improve. The question is how long Finnish manufacturers will let Italians sell their story for them to global premium customers.

In practical terms, it comes down to three things:

1. The product is not enough—you need a world. A brand is not a logo or a brochure. It’s a consistent aesthetic, voice, and set of values carried through every touchpoint, from exhibition stands to Instagram feeds to owner communications.
2. Online content is the new exhibition stand. Buyers spend weeks, sometimes months, researching a brand online before ever touching a boat. If there’s nothing there, the brand effectively doesn’t exist.
3. Community is a core part of the brand. Owners are the most powerful marketing channel—but only if they are given a place to belong. This requires systematic effort, not chance.

Finland produces world-class products across many sectors. It’s time to stop being modest. Finnish engineering expertise would have enormous global demand—if only we knew how to tell the story in a way that resonates internationally.

Research source: Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Boating Finland project, Boater Study at BOOT Düsseldorf 2026, Düsseldorf, January 17–25, 2026.