Starboard Dealer Meeting: General

Netarts Oregon, just after dark: I’m stumbling down a steep and slippery trail in pitch blackness, holding a pan of blackberry cobbler in one hand, trying decide what to do with it when I fall…

Netarts is a little town on the Oregon coast that sounds like it’s spelled backwards. Straten–hmmm, that sounds a lot better. Diane picked me up from the airport after a typically screwed return (canceled flights and all that modern air travel irritation) from Boston and the Cape Cod Challenge. We dropped off my bags from that trip, tossed a different set into the truck and headed for the Starboard Dealer convention.

I had traded emails about accommodations with Declan Sacre and his wife Tracy from Trident Sports–Starboard’s North American distributor. I told them I’d arrive a little late. Now I was wandering in the dark, looking for Tracy so she could tell us where we were staying. I finally staggered back to the campfire where Diane had remained while I searched, listening to Ekolu Kalama and several other Starboard guests playing guitars and singing. They sounded fantastic. The cobbler was still intact. My jet lag and recent lack of sleep has me somewhere in a time zone around Greenland. Tracy was there and she steered us to our accommodations. I’m seeing double. Off to bed.

Starboard Conference headquarters

Next morning–a good breakfast refreshed what’s left of my mind. We gathered in the living room of one of the houses Trident rented. While the first day of presentations mostly concerned sailboards (a topic I still have a lot of personal interest in) there was a lot of attention paid to general marketing trends, focused mainly on ways to revive the abysmal windsurfing marketing and the synergy between SUP and windsurfing. Starboard has access to a substantial body of market research both from trade organizations and it’s own surveying efforts.

Svein Rassmussen, Starboard’s CEO, holds forth on the windsurfing market

It’s clear that windsurfing did not follow the typical adoption curve of most active sports. After reaching a very strong peak it declined precipitously leveling off at a much lower participation rate than similar sports. They typical boom/leveling cycle for active sports goes through a very fast growth period when the sport is “cool” and everyone knows about it, then declines to a maintenance level at perhaps 60 percent of the peak. Windsurfing declined to something like 20 percent of the peak participation. Starboard maintains that was because all manufacturers focused solely on the performance end of the market, abandoning longboards and the simple fun of being on a board in light wind in favor of sinker shortboards and high-performance sails that required careful selection and tuning to meet conditions. They are looking to SUP to rectify that problem! More on that later.

The second day was devoted to Stand Up Paddlesurfing and wavesailing using SUP boards. It’s clear that Starboard is investing heavily in SUP and considers it the next major active watersport. Their manufacturing plans bear that out. For 2008 they planned to build 2750 SUP boards and actually will deliver over 3000. That’s more than double their 2007 production. For 2009 they plan to build 6800 boards–again, more than double, and for 2010 they expect to build 14000. That’s three years of 100 percent growth from a single manufacturer. That’s an important trend given that Starboard is perhaps the most sophisticated SUP manufacturer in terms of understanding international distribution and demand.

A SUP Board with a centerboard! The SUPer is super versatile

I’ll talk about the crossover they expect between SUP and Windsurfing in another article, but this new board, or perhaps more like this modification of their best selling board, is the prime example. I think we all forget sometimes how versatile a SUP board can be. You can surf it, race it, paddle flatwater, sail it, camp with it, fish from it, run whitewater rapids, wake surf it, and take the kids and dog for a ride. There really isn’t anything like it in any sport I know of, and that factor alone should account for a great growth in SUP popularity–if it gets properly communicated. The showcase for the sport is the performance end–people surfing big waves–but the characteristics that can give this sport huge growth and maximize it’s sustained level after that growth is the mundane use: poling around on a river, fishing in a mountain lake, surfing little knee-high shorebreak that no prone surfer cares about. We’re going to make a special effort to continue coverage of those aspects in Ke Nalu.

Svein demonstrates the special no-leak centerboard gasket

A little about this SUPer board. It’s a 12’6 with a very sophisticated full centerboard. The channel under the centerboard has a special L-shaped design so water can’t push up thought it and add drag to the board. The centerboard can be easily removed or it can be left in place with just the control knob removed to ensure it doesn’t get in the way. With the centerboard down the board goes upwind wonderfully under sail. Kick it back a little and you have more stability and drive for reaches, and you can kick it up completely for downwind.

The centerboard is a full foil and is very flexible

The centerboard also adds stability for teaching students to balance a SUP board. With the centerboard down the 12’6″ has much more initial stability. I didn’t like the feel once the board is tipped–the centerboard makes recovery slow, but I’m very used to the way a 12’6″ feels, so it probably bothered me more than it would a newb. Starboard foresees this board being used extensively in training facilities, both to teach windsurfing and SUP–or BOTH!

Complete sail kit–all in one compact carry bag

Starboard also has several complete sail packages for it’s boards from Severne Sails. I assume Severne is a subsidiary of Starboard. These packages are brilliant bits of marketing–a complete kit of everything you need to stick a sail on a board: Mast, booms, sail, extension and base, all in one handy carrying case. They have a line intended for SUP sailing that would stand up to the rigors of wavesailing. They start at about $699 complete. But for most uses I would actually bypass that and get the sail kit they have created for their beginner windsurf boards. It’s also complete, and it’s not designed for serious wave use, but it uses ultralight kite cloth for the sail, a very light boom and mast, and costs $399 to $499. Perfect for playing around on a lake or river, and probably even some lightweight wavesailing. I loved the light weight, easy rigging and fine sailing characteristics. With a few inserts on the nose of a SUPer board you could bungee this to your board and head out, confident that if the wind came up you could go wherever you wanted and continue to play. The price point makes it a casual purchase. Unless you bought well-used equipment you couldn’t duplicate this setup for less than $1200.

We’ll cover the rest of Starboard new lineup, and their plan for continuous refinement in the next article.