LIVE CHAT with Tiesda You

Hi Keep it simple,

You raise some very important points in your question. I’ll try to reply as best as I can, but bear with me because it’s 4am here!

Firstly, I believe that the symptoms you describe are mostly symptoms of a contracting market. If the market was growing, those same symptoms would gradually fade away. If you look at the growing SUP market, for example, they have even more products and even more brand saturation than windsurfing. However, because demand continues to grow, boards are sold at full prices; new brands continue to pop up, even new factories.

Brands, assuming fair and free trade, are as much a reflection of the market as they are a reflection of the individuals within the brand. Therefore, a large part of a brand is a reflection of the consumer’s wants and needs. iPads, TVs and cars are also renewed day in day out, in man’s quest for progress. Markets can expand and contract, prices can go up and down, but the reason for these tidal changes in market isn’t due to product updates and incremental improvements, in my opinion. I believe that the source of these changes is more macro in scale.

My lead theory for the contracting of the windsurfing market is due to the missing “Friends and Family connect effect”. The theory came to me after reading up on the book ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’, then inverting the basis of the book somewhat.

Consider the way an infectious virus spreads: it goes from you to the people close to you. Windsurfing also spreads best in this way. If you survey enough windsurfers, say ten, you’ll see that the majority got into windsurfing through friends and family. Probably between six and eight of the ten people you surveyed. I got into windsurfing because my Dad taught me. He got into windsurfing because his friend taught him. What about yourself?

Back in the days, the equipment we windsurfers used on a weekly basis was easy enough to teach your friend and family. So it was easier to infect and spread the windsurfing virus.

As we switched to smaller boards, it became more difficult to share our passion for windsurfing. There’s no way anyone will learn windsurfing on my Kode 72. Or your favourite board, I’m sure. The same goes for the hundreds of thousands of windsurfers out every weekend. Our tiny gear will not bring in new windsurfers. So slowly but surely, the virus loses its ability to spread.

Today, with the return of longboards and lightwind windsurfing through this new sport I like to call ‘Wind-powered SUP’, or Windsupping for short, we are at the stage where the trend is reversing. I just completed a forecast presentation where I plan for 48% of our sales will be windsupping boards by 2015. Assuming that the other sales have remained somewhat stable, this means that the windsurfing market will have doubled.

For the sheer love of windsurfing and the desire to share a good time, I’m teaching my friends and family windsupping on the weekends. So are other windsuppers. If shops, magazines, internet sites, windsurfers were to embrace windsupping, we would re-connect the Friends and Family effect.

Hi Rushman,

The virtual monopoly is a relatively minor factor. To be fair to Cobra, they’ve managed their position well and always have windsurfing’s interest in their heart. The main reason for the price increases over the last few years have been petrol prices and the weakening Euro and Sterling compared to the Thai baht. The exchange rate EUR-THB used to run around 47-49 and now it’s down to 40. That’s 20% in exchange rate alone. If the Eurozone and the UK could bounce back, a price decrease could very well happen.

As for technology options, the strange thing is that the top technology options still sell the most – more than their lower-priced siblings. We used to have more price point segments (e.g. Technora) but the sales have dropped so much, and with the pressure to reduce our board range (see comments further down below), we even had to take them out from our offering to simplify our range. We still have a lot of price point offerings of course: the Carve Tufskins for example or the SUPers or the Kode Technoras.

At the end of the day, we’re trying to achieve the best balance we can, on a yearly basis, between a solid range of excellent products, covering a wide range of tastes and budgets, while still keeping the whole collection simple enough yet still as innovative as possible.

80% R&D and 20% freesail.. I have a trip to Bali at the end of this month though. Scored a free ticket from a raffle! So I’ll get to balance it out again. During that long weekend, it’ll be 100% freesail!

The west coast of Australia is pretty much as good a windsurfer’s destination as it can be. Fresh, clean waters, windy, beautiful waves. It’s stunning. Maui has a bit too much of a saturated feel. There are some nice remote locations too, but you’d need to be a pretty hardcore traveller to fully appreciate the far flung destinations. South Africa is a wonderful place too. A bit more of a European touch – so ok, maybe South Africa would top my list.

Well, the whole Olympic thing has so many angles to it, with so many vested interests from so many parties. It’s pretty hard to see the wood from the trees. In these kind of situations, I like to go back to fundamentals. Windsurfing’s planing aspect is a key to its popularity. We were unable to guarantee that in the Olympics but kiteboarding seems to promise it. Had we done it first, we could have had a better chance, because fundamentally, I believe that planing is what people wanted to see. This is just my best guess. I really haven’t figured out where to go next. Formula? UltraSonic? Raceboards? Bid for 2020?

Big news indeed. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure it out. I mean, the consequences, the roadmap that we windsurfers need to adjust to in terms of keeping our sport ticking and hopefully growing. The way I see it right now is that we simply lost to the competition (i.e. our sport vs other sports). Agendas aside, I guess the core reason we lost our spot was because the Olympics are keen to refresh their image – they too need to compete against their competitors such as X-Games, Premiere League, World Cups and so on. So naturally, the market tells them that they need to gravitate towards more impressive and fresh sports. Unfortuntately, we weren’t able to offer a 100% planing, visually impressive windsurfing class, so the door was open for kiteboarding to take that spot. Where do we go from here? I’m not quite sure.

I agree! To be honest, I didn’t work on the Flare 2012 – it was the brainchild of Taty Frans and Sven Akerboom. The tests and general feedback was amazing, so I took it for a spin. It blew my mind. Both the Flare 101 and 111. When I worked on the 2013 Kodes, I tried to bring a lot of elements from the Flare. Some were 80% Flares, others where just 20% Flares… I tried a whole range of fusions but the result is still inconclusive. Basically, in lighter winds, the Flare-inspired shapes worked very well, but in higher winds and more right conditions, the original shapes worked better. I just finished re-testing with a larger test panel in Maui, during our photoshoot, and people preferred the original shape 6 vs. 2. So in the end, the 2013 Kode 86/94/103 will remain the same shape as 2012, albeit with some pad thickness adjustment.