Dead or dying kiteboarding companies

[Faxie]

Add Switch to the watch list. Go to their forum
and read how they ran out of funding for R&D on a new mono strut and had to start over on a bar update.Sounfs like bad news to me.

Bullshit Switch is alive and kickin

Quote from Bill regarding the Monostrut and V4 bar:

We've had a serious review of both of these projects.

The MonoStrut is currently on hold in lieu of other more significant kite projects which have consumed our product development resources. We will return to it, time-permitting, but there is no release schedule for it.

The Controller has been delayed when several issues were discovered in final testing with the conclusion to halt the release. As a result, it has undergone a complete re-design to eliminate them and improve the final product. The good news is that a great, new safe and reliable bar system is moving forward rapidly. Again, no firm release date but it is a top priority and will happen as soon as possible.

Good things are coming...

[edt]

it would be nice for switch to finally put out a great control bar even if it costs a bit more than their previous efforts.

[alford]

For the record I hope they are doing well, just sounds like a company on a shoestring budget. Why are things so tight? I'd guess sales, if sales were great they'd have more money.

[Bletti]

For the record I hope they are doing well, just sounds like a company on a shoestring budget. Why are things so tight? I'd guess sales, if sales were great they'd have more money.

You're reading way too much into it. TIME is tight and limited, not money for product development resources. Like all kite companies they have a head designer and tester that can only focus on so much at a time so they prioritize which products are next in line. Sure they could hire more staff, spend more on riders, move their offices to San Francisco, and ended up bankrupt like Best but they have built a great company running lean and selling direct (which ironically Best use to do), so why throw more resources at it to keep things to a tight schedule when they have a sound lean business model?

Frankly, Switch are far more open and transparent with the state of their product development. Most kite companies stay quite till the product is announced and the fancy video is shot, but Switch give updates on their forum and when you email them up they are even more open so it's hard to fairly compare them to other brands that don't share their progress or delays. We just don't hear about the f*** ups in other companies until their products are recalled.

I was one of the guys waiting up until last month for an updated release of the element 6. However after chatting with felix he assured me the drift on the element 5 was a big improvement from the element 4 and the kite had no immediate improvements so there was no point in changing the color just to have an annual release like most of the other brands do. I like that approach better than what I see with North, Cabrinha, Naish, and Slingshot. I went ahead and bought an element 5 7m pretty much a year after it's original release and I'm super happy with it. Last week I used it for the first time foiling in 11kt gusting 16kt and it drifted, floated, looped, and responded like a dream.

I'm doing a trip around NZ in October and will stop by their headquarters to check it out. I'll let you know if the windows are boarded up.

[alford]

You're right about Switch being more transparent, refreshing isn't it? I hope they're future releases are excellent and timely.

[Faxie]

it would be nice for switch to finally put out a great control bar even if it costs a bit more than their previous efforts.

Well, they're gonna lose the costly swivel, so that'll compensate for other things that might get a bit more expensive.

I'm pretty happy with my V2 bar. It's not the most aesthetically pleasing bar (lol) but it works like a charm and is pretty much indestructible. I see no reason to get a bar from a different brand that does the same thing but costs twice as much.

[juandesooka]

Seems to me that regional kite focus flows from kite schools. They get kites cheap, people learn on them and then buy them from the school. School sells off used stock annually. Market gets flooded with cheap kites, with that brand dominating that market. [sorry if point already made in the prior 13 pages, I didn't read it all]

Interesting from this thread too how many small kite brands there are. Probably just 2 or 3 people -- design them on computer, produce them in the factory in China (and it's become clear that there are mega factories that now make kites for multiple brands), then market and ship. Not sure it's a real "job" or a labour of love / hobby job, i.e., make enough money to get by vs get rich and retire young money. So "out of business" may just mean tired of barely breaking even, so stop bothering. Which also means if they get stoke revived, just start up again, as there really isn't much barrier to entry.

I have been riding BWS kites a few years, was curious if they were on the way out, as a bunch of key staff seemed to split off to form DSD Intel, who is then producing generic unbranded kites out of philipines. But now they seem to have another partnership about Stallion board, so maybe they are back together. Still, seems like a small scale operation.

[Flyboy]

For the record I hope they are doing well, just sounds like a company on a shoestring budget. Why are things so tight? I'd guess sales, if sales were great they'd have more money.

I'm fairly certain that none of the smaller companies have "great" sales & lots of money. I suspect they are "subsistence businesses", supporting the principals in the company & a few employees. They would not find it easy to attract serious investors to expand the business & even if they did, there's no guarantee they would produce substantial profits above what is required to provide salaries for the staff.

[alford]

For the record I hope they are doing well, just sounds like a company on a shoestring budget. Why are things so tight? I'd guess sales, if sales were great they'd have more money.

I'm fairly certain that none of the smaller companies have "great" sales & lots of money. I suspect they are "subsistence businesses", supporting the principals in the company & a few employees. They would not find it easy to attract serious investors to expand the business & even if they did, there's no guarantee they would produce substantial profits above what is required to provide salaries for the staff.

Well said!

[longwhitecloud]

How is the kiteboarding season in the northern hemisphere this summer - is the kiteboarding industry growing?

In NZ it died - but i see lots going on northside?! - used to be the other way around.