The game
During a regatta together onboard the WallyCento Magic Carpet3
Blue
Robinson spoke to Tom Whidden about three decades with North Sails, getting the right people and winning and losing the America’s Cup
Seahorse Magazine: In 2017 you celebrated 30 years with North Sails [Whidden is CEO of the North Technology Group] – 30 years in which you’ve seen some changes… Tom Whidden: Well, North has always been privately owned, and we now have our third owner, which is pretty extraordinary for a 60-year-old company. I’d say the big change from Terry Kohler to the existing Oakley Capital management is that through the structures Oakley put in place we found a way to buy out most of our international licencees. We also bought back the apparel company and our intention is to bring back the windsurfing and kite businesses as well. Terry was a fantastic owner and helped
us at a key moment in the business. When I arrived at North from Sobstad I had a lot of ideas on how sailmaking should change, including finding manufacturing processes to make sails more consistently and to a higher quality. Terry was fantastic in that period as he loved the technology, always pushing hard, even harder than I would have… and I really wanted to push hard. So he was fantastic then and I think Oakley Capital is going to turn out to have been a fantastic owner in this period, allowing us to do those things that we probably wouldn’t have had money for otherwise. SH:Your key contribution over 30 years… TW: For me it’s been about technology and people – to improve those two things. We looked to technology to give us the edge on our competition plus we did absolutely everything we could to get the best people. And I spent all the money I had on that! SH: I think it would be interesting to know how your own position in the company has evolved during this time. TW: I am still Group CEO. I signed a three
52 SEAHORSE
of life
‘Change the rules and I’ll change the way I go racing’ – Niki Lauda. Conner, Whidden and Stars&Stripes certainly did just that for the 1988 Cup when Michael Fay’s New Zealanders came at them with a giant monohull. If you can take a gun to a knife fight only a fool says no; Conner assembled a terrifying group of aerospace experts to create the largest wing sail ever seen at that time and a sailing team that brought in multihull experts like Cam Lewis and Randy Smyth to fill in the knowledge gaps. As Conner was famous for saying, when it counts ‘you leave no stone unturned…’
year contract when Oakley Capital bought us… and we are three and a half years into that! After three years Peter Dubens [Oakley CEO] and I had a quick chat, and I said, ‘What do you think, I’m happy to retire if you want me to but I still love what I do.’ And Peter said, ‘So let’s keep going!’ Having said that, what I’ve worked hard
on is really strengthening the management in each of the divisions. So North has a strong leader, Dan Neri, as CEO concentrating on the operational side, Ken Read as president, who is a fantastic sales guy out in the field and a fantastic sailor. We have Paul West- lake [Flipper] doing the sales plus John Welch and Jens Christensen so it is a good period in the company now. As well as Southern Spars, as you know
we now own Hall Spars. We are trying to make some synergistic sense between the two companies but we are keeping their distinct technologies – Southern Spars being female tooling, Hall Spars using male tool- ing. Hall Spars have an edge in manufactur- ing speed, Southern probably do it a little in the old-fashioned way, but both are pretty hard to beat. We have great people there like my old America’s Cup crewmate Scott Vogel in charge of the rigging. Then of course there’s Thin Ply Technology (TPT), which is a really exciting company, super- high-tech working with extreme tolerances.
So the divisions are strong and it is my job
to ensure they are all heading in the same direction. I’m sailing more than ever, look- ing to making acquisitions that make sense and build the company… That’s plenty! SH:We are racing a WallyCento with very high expectations… which means a lot of older sails cooking away in the container. TW: Firstly, if you want my position on sail replacement, I wouldn’t mind seeing a sail limitation throughout every fleet there is; the fewer sails people have to buy, or can buy, that helps technology by focusing us all on durability as well as performance. SH: The VO65 wardrobe is a good advert. TW: Absolutely. In previous Volvos teams used a minimum of two mains around the world. In the last race the VO65 teams used a single 3Di mainsail; sometimes we bemoan the fact it lasts so well! We are on our second season here with Magic Carpet’s mainsails and other sails and they look great. SH: But there’s a lot of containers full of old sails when you look around… TW: That’s a good point but very rarely do we ever put a sail in the dumpster. We try to find ways to recycle it. We have a used sail list, we go to the sellers of used sails, we try to convince them to sell the sails we have, we do a Trade in-Trade up programme where an owner trades the sail in. We cut it into bits for bags and wallets, doing everything we can
GILLES MARTIN-RAGET
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