Five minutes with Michelle Greenwood

The co-owner of Tristar Boats talks boat-building trends and being female in a male-dominated industry

Tell us a bit about your background and how Tristar Boats came about

Tristar has been going for 13 years now. My husband Jeremy and I are co-owners but we didn’t have much of a boating background beforehand. I trained in fine art/sculpture, and he was scenery carpenter for theatre and film. We met in London while I was living on a friend’s narrowboat; Jeremy had just started building his first boat and he brought it to the marina where I was moored. After we got together, we lived afloat and talked about the fact that we’d got all these design and construction skills – and enthusiasm. He was fed up with building things that were temporary, and we both really liked living on the water. When we first had our children we moved to Sheffield to live in a house, but we missed the waterways so moved to the East Midlands to start a boat-building business – it seemed like the obvious thing to do in the 2008 recession.

What was the initial reception to Tristar?

We came to Redhill and built a boat speculatively. We created something that we thought people would like – a really contemporary interior with painted finishes and a duck-egg blue Formica work surface – and it was massively unpopular. We eventually sold it and then started to get some orders for more traditional-looking craft. Since then we’ve only built to order – they’re bespoke and each one has something unusual about it. As the business gradually grew, we moved into a workshop and then into bigger premises.

Do you have a typical customer?

We don’t have a typical customer but we tend to attract people with engineering or technical backgrounds, and I think that’s because we’ve built some hybrid and electric boats. We’re finding that younger people, maybe in their mid-20s, are getting in touch with us now, whereas previously it was mainly retired couples in their 60s. The younger customers have, we think, come about as a result of the housing crisis. They’re very tech-savvy – they want sound systems, aircon, underfloor heating etc, like they’d have in their homes so we’re trying to keep up with that.

Are there any other trends you’ve noticed recently?

We’re finding that people are more interested in sustainability. The Government’s Clean Maritime Plan says that by 2025 all new boats should be capable of zero emissions, which is going to be a challenge for builders. During lockdown people have had time to spend on the internet and they’re much more aware of what might be possible – hybrids, electric boats, lithium-ion batteries. Another big thing is composting toilets. When we fitted our own composting loo on our houseboat five years ago, customers weren’t really interested, but now it’s a bonus that we can say that we’ve got one for our family of four and it works fine.

What’s an average day for you?

At the moment I’m going backwards and forwards between home and the workshop. On a typical day I’d come in early and talk to the carpenters about what we’re focussing on. Once the subfloor of a new boat is laid, I’d mark out the room spaces on the floor with tape. Then I might be doing some 3D modelling for a new boat, or preparing a quote for a customer. Some days there’s work that needs doing where everyone gets involved – a wide-beam boat might need 2,000 to 3,000 concrete bricks lifting onto it for ballast, for example. There is a lot of admin too.

You’re a female boat-builder, which is fairly unusual as it’s a largely male-dominated industry still

I’ve always been very attracted to very practical work and I’m surprised there aren’t more women doing this sort of thing. I live aboard a boat, I’m a boat-builder and I’m also involved with British Marine on its Inland Boat-Building Committee. It was important for me to be part of the wider industry through British Marine because there are, typically, more men in this business.

Does being a female co-director change the dynamic of the company and your relationship with customers?

Yes, I think it does affect the dynamic of the company. I think there’s an element of us being approachable for customers too. One of our female customers, who was buying a boat on her own, said that she’d been to other companies and felt like she’d been brushed off or not taken seriously. That was a big deal for her, obviously, and meant that she didn’t want to buy a boat from them. So I think we have good rapport with customers as a result.

Jeremy and I both run the company, project manage complex builds and design complex boats. I would say that I manage more of the construction side of things, whereas Jeremy manages the technical side of it a bit more. But because it’s a small company, we are both involved in everything, including things like the publicity and finance. I do sometimes worry that our teenage children’s perception is that I’m sitting in an office typing and Jeremy is doing something that involves getting dirty, but it’s not like that.

What would you advise a female looking to get into the boat-building industry?

I’d like more young women to get involved in engineering, technology and construction because I think they can bring skills that are really valuable in this kind of business. There is a lot of work out there because it can be really difficult to find people with the right skills, whether that’s steelwork, construction or painting. There are apprenticeships, and British Marine is a good place to start for these. We’d certainly be interested if people want to approach us at Tristar too.

Tristar Boats

tristarboatslimited.weebly.com

07759 246551

Hear more from Michelle Greenwood on the Waterways World Podcast, available to listen to now on Waterways World website or via your usual podcast provider.