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Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

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davesails7
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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby davesails7 » Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:38 pm

No more Park or Torch? Or are they just not in the midseason catalog?

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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby Rixter » Mon Mar 11, 2013 2:41 pm

I assume that this is mid season related, and there will be still a Park and Torch in the future.
Because there is also no wave board range in this catalog

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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby tautologies » Tue Mar 12, 2013 2:59 am

davesails7 wrote:No more Park or Torch? Or are they just not in the midseason catalog?
Yeah for sure. These are only the new products coming out now...directional boards, torch, park are the beginning of season stuff.

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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby zact » Tue Mar 12, 2013 4:30 am

So Naish is marketing their strutless kite as a travel kite? Are they implying that the performance suffers? The Cloud seems to have a few fans for its performance as much as its simplicity. The smaller pack down seems to be a secondary benefit, rather than the main objective. Whereas, reading the promo for the Trip, performance seems to be the secondary consideration.

Seems a little odd to me to focus on the transportability of a kite. Even the biggest seven strut monsters are a piece of piss to transport, compared to the board. And it certainly wouldn’t be a 30% saving compared to the Ride (which is marketed primarily for its performance, with a secondary mention of its packability.)

Without having flown one, I love the concept of a strutless kite, and am keen to fly one. But Naish’s marketing on this one leaves me a little bemused and second guessing. I presume they’re trying to differentiate it from the rest of their line-up. But I’m far more interested in how a kite flies than how easily it fits in the luggage. Am I the only one?

Of course, this is just a comment on the marketing approach. Based on what I’ve read about the Cloud, strutless has some performance benefits to be explored and I’m excited to see how that develops. I’m just surprised to see Naish not focusing how their kite actually performs.

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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby zob » Tue Mar 12, 2013 7:34 am

Without a mid-season catalog, Clouds would get all the sales.

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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby Blake » Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:27 pm

Bingo!

Zob and Zact both nailed it right on the head....Naish are trying to capitalize on the work of Board Riding Maui by rushing "their" strutless kite to market, hence the one size only. They are hedging their bet on the strutless concept(market) without spending a lot of their development funds on something they didn't really believe in....until Greg(BRM) established the strutless market!
The best thing about this entire strutless kite development time period, is the fact that Greg, his family and some close friends brought something entirely new to the kiting public on a shoestring budget, with pure kiting stoke and style ......and that my friends, is a class act!

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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby sharky79 » Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:40 pm

700$ kite ?
This means that the number of kitesurfers will double :o
It's going to get even worth... no room anymore.

BTW if Naish is still making money on a 700$ kite then why just now ? why not two years ago ? why not 5 years ago ? it's basically the same tech for 6-7 years now...

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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby Starsky » Tue Mar 12, 2013 1:12 pm

Wonder how far the strutless movement will go. My prediction: it will settle into a light to medium wind design.

Cant really go less strut, so this marks the apex of the pendulum swing. Will it settle at 2 or 3? I guess its already there (3) for most brands.

It will take a while to get a real objective look at it from an overall market point of view, but ease of use, and simplicity will play out against flight characteristics, sheeting range, wind range etc.

Obviously trailing edge flutter can be for the most part eliminated with planform alone, but it looks like the result leaves you with a kite that is sensitive to oversheeting. Why else would Naish market this specifically to intermediate/advanced riders? Not a big deal if you have the understanding to trim the kite accordingly, but as we know that does not apply to a market at large. You gotta make a kite almost dummy proof these days.

If the C kite design is still alive and well with its ongoing dominance of both freestyle and looping and recently big air comps then I cant really forsee this concept sweeping us all up over the comming seasons. I can however see it as the mainstay of the highly lucrative light wind performance market. Kiters are nuts once they get addicted and will shell out whatever if they think its going to have them ripping in next to no wind.

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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby marina » Tue Mar 12, 2013 2:24 pm

The Kiteboarder interviewed Greg (Boardriding Maui-Cloud), Damien (Naish-Trip), Scott (Airush-Zero) and another company who will release their design with their 2014 line on their strutless kite concepts. Was very interesting to say the least and the interview will come out in the Vol 10, No 1 edition which will start mailing out at the end of this month to shops, schools and subscribers.We are also getting all three designs to demo and will post our feedback at www.thekiteboarder.com in the coming weeks.....

We are currently working to get our new app up and running available via Itunes with a new company. In the meantime, those of you wanting a digital version of the mag can get the multi-media PDF of the mag at the TKB store starting March 26.

Can't wait to try this concept out!

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Re: Naish mid-season catalog reveals no-strut kite!

Postby Aummm » Tue Mar 12, 2013 4:13 pm

zact wrote:So Naish is marketing their strutless kite as a travel kite?
It travels and packs better but still can't come close to the foil kites of the same size, but if only strapless is your style and wanna play around,
than go & roll :roll:
Are they implying that the performance suffers?
One of my friend and me were testing different sizes of strutless from a french brand at these islands and we came to the conclusion of the above
and nobody wants you to know that limitation and boosting performance :nono:
I’m just surprised to see Naish not focusing how their kite actually performs.
Why should they, cause it's not a performance kite with limited range like 10 years ago or you wanna go back in time, or unless you're a beginner
and you don't know better what is performance or maybe stoke about the fluttering vibration in mid & high range :?: :oops:

:pump: :rollgrin: :surf:


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