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Under the leadership of its visionary founder Tom Steentjes, Vanquish Yachts has rocketed to the top of the dayboat market.
Vanquish founder Tom Steentjes is riding high these days, as news recently broke that legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady has purchased a Vanquish VQ55. Having one of the world’s most high-profile athletes—a man synonymous with winning—choose his brand is a feather in the cap for Steentjes. But it’s just one milestone along the way in what has been a rocketship ride of success since he founded Vanquish back in 2014.
How It Started
Steentjes’ background is in welding, and he says he got the idea for building his own boat while sitting on the banks of a small river by his home in Holland, watching the small aluminum party boats—known colloquially as sloops—slide by. “I could do better,” he thought. And he set about doing so, using the machinery he already had at his welding business to construct an all-aluminum craft that soon gained many admirers as he zipped around his home waters.
I’d take the boat to different waterside restaurants and people would come up and run their hands over it, and they couldn’t believe it was aluminum. The faring was so smooth they thought it must be composite.
Tom Steentjes
Vanquish Yachts, Founder
In the ensuing decade since Steentjes hammered out his first boat using machinery he says was used to make chicken nuggets, a lot has changed. Vanquish Yachts has solidified itself as an 800-pound gorilla in the dayboat market, with a lineup of nine boats ranging from the VQ40 up to the hard-to-believe-it’s-real Veloce 115. Steentjes’ company has become known for a variety of things, perhaps most notably its creativity in design, ability to customize, and fast, smooth rides.
Why Vanquish?
The inspiration for Steentjes’ products comes from his clients. “I am always trying to listen to the end-users and clients to see how they use their boat. Then I apply what I hear,” he says. “I don’t design a boat and then push a client into it, it works in reverse of that. Listening closely to clients’ needs has resulted in things like big fridges, icemakers, and boarding doors to port and starboard. We make boats that are user friendly, and easy to explain to prospective clients when they step aboard at a boat show.”
Steentjes points to the VQ70 as a prime example of what makes his boats special. “People see a 70-foot boat, and they wonder about the staterooms. But we don’t need staterooms, no one sleeps on our boats—not on the 70, not even on the 115. People use the 70 for lounging. We have excellent refrigeration; a great sound system. You can put a Williams RIB in the aft garage and a mini-Vanquish PWC in the side garage. No one else does anything like that, and it really pops to people who might be looking at the brand for the first time. They’re thinking, ‘Hey these guys are really doing something different.’”
Though Steentjes proudly admits that the real selling point for his boats is the ride. “I like to take my clients over to Haulover Cut,” he says. “If they’ve never been on an aluminum boat they are in for a really nice surprise. In rough water, composite boats flex—there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s how they are designed, but they feel like they are falling apart. Aluminum doesn’t flex. We hit a wave and everything is just so, so solid. People fall in love with that. You can really hammer our boats in tough conditions and the ride will be super smooth.”
The IYG Touch
Another highly beneficial selling point for Vanquish is its relationship with Boomer Jousma. Steentjes met Boomer when he first moved to America in 2018 and the two formed a fast connection. “Our offices were close to each other on 17th street,” he says.
Boomer is younger than me, but we are close enough in age that we just kind of clicked.
Tom Steentjes
Vanquish Yachts, Founder
A fast friendship soon turned into a fruitful business relationship as the two men saw something beneficial in each other. Jousma was impressed with Steentjes’ boats, and Steentjes saw in Jousma a “pit bull” who could sell his products better than anyone else. “When Boomer decides he is going to do something he does it,” says Steentjes.
“He is relentless. We WhatsApp each other 24/7. A lot of brokers are afraid to bring a client to the builder because they are afraid the builder will steal the client. But we always form a group chat with the client, myself, and Boomer, and work through the sale together. If the founder of the shipyard is on the chat, things can happen a lot more efficiently.”
The Future
When it comes to what’s next, Steentjes has a lot of enthusiasm—for good reason. “We see a soft spot in between the 70 and the 115,” he says. “So we are thinking about doing a 90 soon. We also want to do a 75-foot version of the 55 and put eight 600-horsepower Mercurys on it.”
Yes you read that correctly.
It’s that kind of fearlessness in design and construction that has helped Vanquish separate itself from the pack so quickly and so definitively. For this builder it’s clear that the future is bright, and the possibilities are endless.
