Aluula? New Revolutionary Material from Ocean Rodeo

[madworld]

I see one strut kite people micro sizing as they do not have a large wind range, they lack top end, they are all low end kites. I prefer a delta shaped three strut kite.

[jumptheshark]

mmmm not really. No doubt they are designed to shine in their bottom end, but 7m and down have plenty of top end range. Low end bias is just different from kites of old that were almost exclusively top end biased. Better suited to the more recent developments in freeride foiling, but same number of kites with pretty comparable gaps. 3 for the standard tt or sb wind range, and 4 if you want the ultra low end they tend not to bother with. That's a 8-40 knots with a 3.5, 5, 7 and 10m kite.

In reality I could get 80% of my foiling days..... so 200+% of my old surface board time on the water with a single kite.

[pmaggie]

I wonder why at the moment only OR seems to be really into the game with aluula. If I'm not wrong it's not something they own exclusively, so why none of the big fishes jumped in? Are they waiting to see if it works at OR expenses (maybe OR in their vision is not a "dangerous" competitor)?

[tomtom]

They just want to someone else to either burn themself /as BEST in past/ or to do do heavy lifting R&D. Nothing else. Like car manufacturers vs Tesla

[Ponser]

They might be researching and developing something behind the scenes. Big companies don't reveal everything they're working on.

[tomtom]

dream on

[Pierrot]

I wonder why at the moment only OR seems to be really into the game with aluula. If I'm not wrong it's not something they own exclusively, so why none of the big fishes jumped in? Are they waiting to see if it works at OR expenses (maybe OR in their vision is not a "dangerous" competitor)?

Other companies should be scrambling to catch up. I tried the 10m roam aluula early in the fall and it is soooo much better... unless duotone comes with a Neo in aluula before the summer, I’ll be switching to OR.

[norcom]

If Aluula isn't owned by OR, other manufacturers will probably start using it soon. I believe Naish was the first to release a kite with "Quad-Tex" (quadruple ripstop) canopy. Now there's plenty of other manufacturers who use it and plenty of those who still don't. Is quadriple ripstop necessary, maybe? It's not something I'm personally interested it because it adds weight. I'm interested in Aluula because I live in a light wind location but I doubt I'll jump on it right away because of the price. If you live or sell to a location that's blowing 20+ all day, every day, will anyone there care for a lighter kite at double the price? The majority of windsurfing and kitesurfing gear is tested and sold to places with wind. I love seeing Robby Naish in his videos "Ah yes, this works great in very light wind!" and I'm thinking "bitch plz, you have NO IDEA what ilght wind is!" Similarly like the Hawaii boys measure wave size completely differently to the rest of the world.

[Laughingman]

They just want to someone else to either burn themself /as BEST in past/ or to do do heavy lifting R&D. Nothing else. Like car manufacturers vs Tesla

Meanwhile they all took the risk on the Wing.... they are apparently not very smart i guess.

[leeuwen]

Meanwhile they all took the risk on the Wing.... they are apparently not very smart i guess.

I think of the wing the risk is probably relatively low.
Sure you needed to have the idea and make a prototype but materials are known, design easy compared to a kite and production is probably very similar to a small kite.
The only real risk I see is in inventory: you build to many of them and you cannot get them sold.

I would not be surprised if building a (mass production) aluula kite is actually harder to figure out even if you could just copy the kite design.
You need a factory that can work with this new material and things that are trivial/known with Dacron might know cause issues in production.
Also you run the risk that the material is not suited for kites after all because of sand/salt/sun/whatever causes issues in the real world.