That's not how it works. A brand will work with a designer to design a wing. The designer can be a permanent member of the company, or an outsider that is contracted for that job, and who could be contracted by other brands as well.OzBungy wrote: ↑Tue Jul 12, 2022 6:30 am
I find it hard to believe that all these niche brands are designing and manufacturing their own products from scratch. The overheads are way too high for that. My suspicion (based on no data whatsoever) is that there's a few companies that design and build wings and foils and the various brands are simply selecting from a palette of features and color schemes. At best the brands test the prototypes and request different options from the menu.
For instance, Damien Girardin was in house designer for Naish for a while, then he later designed some of the Takuma Wings, and he's probably now only designing the Reedin products. I believe Ken Winner is the in house designer for Duotone. In terms of design contractors, Alain Bernard, Sylvain Perretti, Mat Pendle, to name a few ... have at some stage designed for quite a few brands, including their own. On top of designs they produce with the brand, they have experience with manufacturing, contacts with factories, and the brands will then receive a series of prototypes, that will be tested and refined till the product is right and put on the market. All these designs are protected by contracts, and factories aren't allowed to just copy and rebrand and sell on alibaba. (or they'll lose their future business, and get some heavy fines). Design contractors of course have a portfolio of their designs, which they can reuse and tweak at will, according to whatever terms of contracts they are bound to. That's why you can find some wings from different brands that are extremely similar.
Then there are sub-par brands that will contact some factories directly and get access to some knock offs, kind of generic products that the manufacturers can produce outside of all legal copy issues. They'll produce a wing, but without any clue on the why and how a wing is designed in the way it is, it's likely that it'll be a shit performer. That's what you see on alibaba for just the manufacturing cost. (zero R&D, zero testing,... ) and what you'll see in Lidl in a couple of years. Gear that is outdated, with corners cut in terms of manufacturing.
I'd say, typically, small brands that come out of nowhere, without much legacy in the kite industry, and without much weight, will go for plain off the mill contracted designs, and a very limited series of prototypes to validate the product.
Big brands like F-One, Duotone etc... will capitalize on their history and design experience, or long term collab with desingners and will be able to afford enough prototypes to really push their products, and innovate.
Don't get me wrong, big isn't always better, there are also small brands, kind of one-man brands like Zeeko, with in-house designer, running extra lean, that can equally well put quality products on the market.