For seven years, Emery Wallerich lived the fast-paced, high-pressure world of yachting as a deck/stew. Today, she’s steering something of her own. As founder of MOOR Crew, a global hiring platform for yacht crew, Wallerich is blending firsthand industry insight with a powerful digital presence to challenge the traditional placement model. Triton spoke with Wallerich to learn more about how she started MOOR Crew, what crewmembers can expect, and how she hopes to reshape the future of crew hiring.
What made you join the yachting industry?
What first drew me in was the travel. I had a family friend telling me about all the places she’s been and the type of work they do, and I just found it to be really unique and [a good] fit for my personality. The first boat I worked on, I was a sole deck stew, so it was a lot of work, but I had a captain who was there to teach me. On that first trip we took, I saw a pod of orcas breaching over in Canada, and that hooked me into the rest of my career, into the next seven years.
What is MOOR Crew?
It’s a smart matching job board. How that makes us different from other job boards out there is that we’ve integrated personality and lifestyle into our questions. In turn, our algorithm helps match positions and certifications with lifestyle. It’ll figure out if you’re going to be a good fit outside of your position, because everyone knows you’re living on board with complete strangers.
It kind of sucks when you want to go surf with a crew that wants to just go out, or you want to stay in, but you don’t have anyone to hang out with. We wanted to integrate more personality and lifestyle into a smart matching system.
How does it work for crew?
It’s free for crew, but there are a couple of different packages you can get. There’s a spotlight package, which [costs] a little bit more money, but that is going to put you in front of employers. For the free, just getting started package, you start filling out your position, certifications, and CV. Then it starts diving into questions like, what do you like to do after work, what type of program are you looking for, do you want a social atmosphere on board, and what kind of itinerary are you looking for.
We’ve made it into an Airbnb-like user interface. It’s easy, quick, and the questions just dive a little deeper into who you are as a crewmember — and that is going to help you find the right boat.
Was there a hole in the industry that made you want to create MOOR Crew?
Yeah, all of the job boards — especially when I first started yachting — were so surface level. When I got hired from these job boards, it was just never a place that I could see myself sustain. The industry loves longevity, and it should, but we need to fuel an environment that [makes] people want to stay. Putting more of a lifestyle and personal touch into hiring crewmembers or looking for jobs is definitely going to help with longevity.
Lots of crewmembers deal with fake job postings when looking for work. How does MOOR Crew vet job opportunities?
Verification is one of the biggest conversations happening right now in yachting and it definitely should be. Our onboarding process is very detailed in what you need to say about the yacht and what you need to say as a crewmember. We also partnered with a company called Crewdentials, which verifies documentation, passports for crew, and on the yacht side.
We don’t want to create a false sense of security with a badge saying this yacht is, in our eyes, good, because that’s pretty subjective. So, we have a detailed [process] for yachts to fill out what their program is like. Yachting isn’t just about paperwork and putting a badge on; it’s about accountability, history, professionalism — crew need to do their due diligence and see that maybe [a yacht] isn’t a good fit for them.
Were there any defining moments or lessons in your crew career that pushed you towards entrepreneurship?
The connections and friends that I’ve made through this industry, and then hearing the pain points of crew, recruiters, and captains trying to hire. I’m still in my 20s, and I just felt this burning desire to create something that could help my friends and the industry. I can’t really explain it, but I just had a burning feeling in my stomach that this is what I was supposed to transition into.
What was the most difficult part of launching your company?
When you launch anything or open up something that you’ve just created to the world, you’re going to get feedback and hit some snags. There was a small period after our launch that we were fixing bugs. It was the first time that we were getting hundreds of people signing up to the website, which was great, but it definitely was showing some of the bugs we had. That was super stressful, but it was helpful.
What have been some of your biggest success stories so far?
We placed a gal onto a yacht that I had previously met at the Newport Charter Show. I remember seeing them on there looking for a chief stew position and I was just so over the moon when the mate came back and told us that they had hired a chief stew from [MOOR Crew]. Then I got to go and visit her in Antigua and hear about her experience and how much fun she had with MOOR Crew and how it placed her so well with the boat. She’s still on there today, having a ball, so seeing the system do what it’s meant to do and more is so great.
What’s your advice to crewmembers looking to build a business?
I don’t want to be this simple, but go for it. Honestly, do it. You might have an idea that no one else has thought of, and even if you did and it flops, that’s what life is about. Trial and error. You’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to learn, and that’s ok. You know you can always do another charter or go and freelance if you need some money, but I think putting your ideas and yourself out [there]; it’ll be very beneficial.
What does success and the future look like for you and MOOR Crew?
Success would look like crewmembers and employers utilizing MOOR Crew as their sole way of placing crew and jobs. We just want to continue to grow and integrate different platforms into MOOR to make this a tool for crewmembers, captains, heads of department, and brokers.
We want to be that space for people to be able to hire or find different shipyards or go find cool places to go and surf. We want to integrate a lot more lifestyle into MOOR down the road, so it could just be a tool for the yachting industry to use.
