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THE PORTRAIT by✦YACHTLLYWOOD
BUILDING THE ADRIATIC
Matjaž Murko built a market before it existed. He arrived before the infrastructure, before the clients, before the culture.
Thirty years later, the Adriatic looks exactly as he believed it would.
It was Croatia, late 1990s, somewhere along the coast, on a Pershing 60. The generator impeller burned out.
No electricity. No coffee. No hot water. Not even the means to boil water for spaghetti. The nearest spare part was in Italy.
It took seven days to arrive.
Matjaž Murko tells this story not with frustration but with something closer to having a vision. It was the reality of what he had chosen.
A market that did not yet exist. Beautiful coastline, willing clients, and almost nothing in place to support them.
He stayed anyway.
A Boy on the Water
His connection with the sea started before MennYacht, before Pershing, before any business logic entered the conversation. Murko grew up sailing in the Optimist class,
competing in regattas, reading the water as a discipline and a language. The sea was not a backdrop. It was the structure around which everything else was built.
The formal journey toward yachting came not through industry contacts or market analysis, but through a single moment at the Genoa Boat Show. Murko and his wife encountered
Pershing Yachts for the first time. Performance-driven, emotionally charged, built around a philosophy of speed and precision unlike anything present in the Adriatic at the time.
They decided, without hesitation, to build something around it.
Building Before the Market Existed
MennYacht was founded in 1994. There were very few marinas. Almost no service infrastructure. Clients who needed to be introduced not just to a brand
but to an entire way of thinking about the sea.
“In the early days, the biggest challenge was that the market simply didn’t exist yet,” Murko says.
“Building trust and reliable after-sales support was essential long before there was a real ecosystem in place.”
The seven-day spare part story is not a complaint. It is a portrait of an era. Passion was present. Everything else had to be constructed.
Murko constructed it. Over 30 years, MennYacht became the official dealer for the Ferretti Group across the region, representing Ferretti Yachts, Riva, Pershing,
Itama, Custom Line, Wally, and CRN. Offices and service points now extend across Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro. The company is a founding member of the Adriatic Yachting Association. The market Murko helped build looks nothing like the one he entered.
MennYacht’s thirty years
Trust Is Built Beyond the Yacht
What stayed constant across all of it was a philosophy built on presence rather than performance.
“We stay close to our clients long after the sale,” Murko explains. “We communicate honestly without exaggeration. Trust is not built when a yacht is new,
but when something needs to be fixed.”
“Trust is not built when a yacht is new, but when something needs to be fixed.”
In practice, this has meant chartering private planes to deliver spare parts so that a yacht could continue her cruise. It has meant showing up
when the business logic of doing so was not obvious.
“Clients remember those situations,” he says. “Trust is earned through details, reliability, and showing up when things are difficult,
not just when everything works perfectly.”
The results are visible in the company’s own structure. Many of MennYacht’s agents and service professionals have been with the company for fifteen, even twenty years.
In an industry driven by transactions, that kind of continuity tells its own story.
A Sea That Changed Its Mind
Murko has watched the Adriatic change in ways that go well beyond infrastructure.
“At first it was beautiful but not organised for yachting,” he says. “Today we have better marinas, service, hospitality, and lifestyle. The biggest change is in mentality.”
Where once there was indifference, there is now understanding. The Adriatic has become a destination in its own right, where clients arrive expecting the standards
of Monaco or Mallorca, and increasingly find them.
The evolution is not without tension. The charter segment in Croatia has grown at pace, and Murko is direct about the risks. Rising costs, price pressure, uneven quality.
The character of the Adriatic, in his view, is its greatest asset and its most fragile one.
“I hope the Adriatic always keeps its authenticity,” he says.
“The small, secure bays, the family-run restaurants, that sense of unspoiled beauty. That is its true charm.”
Growth must be earned. Not simply accumulated.
Building Before the Market Existed
There comes a point in every long-built company when the founder must learn a different kind of leadership.
“When you build a company from zero, you naturally hold on to everything very tightly,” Murko reflects. “Over time, I realised that MennYacht
could only grow if it was built around a strong and dedicated team.”
A new generation is entering the company now. New tools, new channels, a stronger focus on storytelling and cultural positioning. Murko acknowledges he would have invested
earlier in branding and partnerships. But on the fundamentals, he does not move.
“Clients still want someone they can trust, someone who tells them the truth, and someone who will be present when support is needed,” he says.
“Yachting may look more global, but at its core it remains a relationship business.”
When family remains involved, he adds, it carries a specific kind of signal. “It signals that the business is not a project,
but a long-term commitment that intends to outlive the people who started it.”
The First Thirty Years Were Only the Beginning
Murko does not speak about legacy with sentiment. He speaks about it with precision.
“If we managed to build the first thirty years in a market that did not yet exist,” he says, “then with today’s knowledge, a stronger team, and better tools,
we are even better positioned for what comes next.”
“The first thirty years were only the beginning. Not the peak.”
Some companies are built on timing. On finding a market at the right moment and moving fast.
MennYacht was built differently. Before the moment existed, in a region that had not yet decided what it wanted to be, by a man who had been shaped
by the sea since childhood and trusted what he felt when he first saw a Pershing in Genoa.
Thirty years later, the spare parts arrive faster. The marinas are better. The clients are more informed. And the company Matjaž Murko built in the years
when none of that was true is still the one they call.
Discover the world of MennYacht at mennyacht.com