First industrialization in Europe
Carlo Riva’s gamble
In Italy in the 1950s, the dreams of the younger generations are all focused on the United States. Carlo Riva reads and rereads the American yachting magazines: “I believed that there would soon be a market, in our country as well, for boats that were high-quality and very safe, but with a series production model”. After thinking about taking over the small family yard that had been established in the center of Sarnico for a long time (Lake Iseo – Lombardy), Riva, who has high aspirations, starts off by borrowing funds to return to the United States to meet the Chris-Craft management team in Michigan. This is back in 1952, and a journey like this, by plane, is a luxury reserved for well-established businessmen. Once on site, Carlo, who is just 30 years old at the time, manages to convince his American contacts to grant him an exclusive license for importing their engines in Italy.
Creation of a visionary modern yard
This first successful step forward encourages him to move on to the second phase of his plan, creating from scratch an ultramodern yard located just a few kilometers from his father’s boatyard: “I was in complete opposition to him, who I saw working tirelessly to produce boats on a unit basis. This work was hard, dirty and poorly paid”. He still remembers what he was told one day by Giuseppe Beretta, from the great arms manufacturing dynasty founded in 1526: “There are no results without organization, but no organization without space”.
Another leading businessman agrees at the time to lend him funds to build an exemplary facility. In 1954, Riva inaugurates the first section of the yard which remains, still to this day, an example of successful industrial architecture, illustrative of its time and now listed as a historic monument. The positioning of the successive construction areas on the ground is rationalized wherever possible, a groundbreaking step for recreational boat production on the Old Continent. Everything is thought out to ensure productivity and ergonomics for its work, from fitting the keels to carrying out tests on the lake next to the wharfs at this vast site, which will eventually reach 36,000 sq.m, including 17,000 sq.m of covered areas. Even the color of the overalls worn by staff is designed to better reveal whether everyone is in the right position.
Riva, an engineer with a very keen eye, takes every new opportunity to develop his industrial business, from technical to scientific or psychological aspects, as well as advertising and marketing.
Series and innovations
To move from classic building – boards on rib frames – and embark on series production from the mid-1950s, he links up with a firm specialized in high-performance plywoods and founds Marine Plywood. Then, in the early 1960s, Carlo Riva develops a pneumatic press system with Pirelli for “molding” in one piece the mahogany sides of his flagship Aquarama, which is over 8m long, moving closer to composite technology. His yard also embarks on a pioneering approach to its clientele, with the creation of a specialist division for training the network of dealers and respecting the standards set for effectively maintaining its luxury runabouts, another groundbreaking initiative in this area.
Pioneering and successful advertising
All of these innovative initiatives are supported by adverts that are ahead of their time and barely feature the product itself, focusing more on the lifestyle that it inspires.
In 1961, the yard passes the milestone of 200 units per year, going on to produce an average of more than 250 high-end boats over the next decade. When he sells his business to the American Whittaker group in 1969, Carlo has seen his model plant produce over 4,000 wooden Rivas.