This year, Tiara Yachts has many reasons for celebration. The family owned and run company is marking the 50th anniversary of the Tiara brand and the new Tiara 54 EX, introduced at the 2024 Miami show, was named a Top Product by Boating Industry magazine.
Tiara, based in Holland, Michigan, was launched by Leon Slikkers in 1974 as a premium powerboat brand. It soon became one of America’s leading lines of center consoles and weekenders.
Tiara was not the first brand introduced by Leon Slikkers. He learned the boat building trade while working at Chris Craft in the early 1950s and then went out on his own to start building wooden outboard boats in 1955 under the banner Slick Craft.
By 1960, Slick Craft had stopped building boats out of wood and had adopted the relatively new fiberglass lamination method of building hulls. It was the beginning of a boating boom in America and Slick Craft grew with it. In 1969, Leon and Delores Slikkers sold the company they had built to AMC.
But that was not the end of their boat building careers. In 1974, at the start of the sailing and cruising boom, Slikkers and his two sons, David and Robert, started the sailboat company S2. It was the founding of S2 that marks this 50th anniversary.
In 1976, S2 launched the Tiara brand and the rest is an admirable history of a family and their co-workers creating American-made boats that stand proudly with the best-built boats in the world.
In 2022, Tiara came out with the EX 60, the largest and most innovative product yet, and this was followed last January by the award winning EX 54.
The Top Product Awards judges from Boating Industry select 50 winners from the thousands of new products introduced in a given year. Winning an award for the EX 54 reflects just how respected Tiara Yachts is in the marine industry. And, this is the third such award the company has earned, with awards in 2013 for the 38LS and in 2018 for the 48LS.
Yes, the Slikkers family and the whole S2 Yachts universe has a lot to celebrate this year.
