The greed & perceived (or otherwise) collusion/price fixing of the big players in the industry will slowly kill the sport if it hasn't started already. Boards will become unaffordable. Semi or Fully Foiling boards even more so.

Ocean Surf Ski's 50% longer (twice as fast) with more than twice the material, technology & build complexity are either similarly priced or marginally higher in price than a SUP. Go figure.

Some manufacturers in the industry have to be taking the piss...

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GusD said...
Probably still speculating about the FX 14

That made me laugh.

I am a fan (addict maybe....?). But go down to your local beach, see how many surfers there are out. Then check out how many bike riders you see on the roads / on the weekend coffee circuit. These are popular well supported sports.

SUPing is a fringe sport and therefore susceptible to the fad continuing...or waning.

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magillamelb said..
The greed & perceived (or otherwise) collusion/price fixing of the big players in the industry will slowly kill the sport if it hasn't started already. Boards will become unaffordable. Semi or Fully Foiling boards even more so.

Ocean Surf Ski's 50% longer (twice as fast) with more than twice the material, technology & build complexity are either similarly priced or marginally higher in price than a SUP. Go figure.

Some manufacturers in the industry have to be taking the piss...

Surfskis are now sold direct from factory pretty much - retailers in South Africa make virtually zero margin. This would explain the pricing. Surfskis are on the decline and maybe its the only way of keeping the factories still in business.

It's hard to imagine, if not impossible, to have collusion and price fixing in SUP with over hundreds and hundreds of brands world wide (there has been 40+ in South Aftica alone).

The problem with the SUP industry is the mismatch between the actual cost of making a sellable SUP (light-ish and durable) and what the customers are prepared to pay.....

PeterP - how do you explain the fact that a carbon construction Starboard (or many other brands) will cost you 40% more than a standard glass one, yet the materials cost increase will be less than half that?

It has got to the point where in many countries you can buy a custom for no more - or even less - than a Cobra-built board. That also doesn't sound right.

Cobra have a virtual monopoly on the market, which is unlikely to be doing the customer any favours. Of course, other companies will charge as much as they can, seeing what Cobra charges.

Some of the problem is certainly that it's hard to see the value in SUPs in the way that you can see it in eg. bikes. And then there is the hand-built nature of SUPs, small quantities, high transport costs, unfavourable exchange rates etc. But the brands are probably still extracting maximum moolah from us. Cobra boards were a lot cheaper a few years ago than they are now, even allowing for currency fluctuations.

But it's good news for the local shapers, so every cloud has a silver lining.

Cobra costs more because they make the best boards.....that's why most the serious SUP companies still choose to use them although their pricing is clearly becoming a problem for them. But that is not collusion or price fixing, that is just one supplier taking advantage of a superior production technology and consistent quality.

Naish for instance only make some of their carbon boards at Cobra, the rest are made in China - and most brands have followed suit and are utilising several factories spread across Asia each with their particular pricing and qualities - unfortunately none of them to date come close to matching Cobra's quality and hence Cobra have turned up their prices - while they can.

This proves to me at leat that there is no collusion or price-fixing at brand level, rather there is healthy competition with plenty of alternatives including custom. So in my view the problem is not overpricing, but rather a disconnect between the actual cost of the product and the price-expectations of the end user.

The brands are extracting more or less the same margin which allows them survive with a reasonable profit provided their volumes are sufficient. I doubt very many SUP brands are actually making serious profits.....competition is simply too prolific to allow it.

Well, if the array of smaller brands at the pointy end of the Carolina Cup graveyard race seems to show, domination of the bigger windsurf brands might be starting to come to an end, at least as far as inland SUP is concerned. I'm sure it won't be long before many countries find the local equivalent of what SIC represents to Hawaii, ie. a local producer who can make better quality boards using alternative and higher-tech methods than Cobra uses, and at about the same cost as a Cobra board. As the Chinese economy approaches the size of the US economy (and soon after will overtake it) this will mean that Chinese and probably other East Asian currencies will grow in value, and so boards made there will become prohibitively expensive. To a certain extent it has happened already.

So I suspect that the future of hard SUPs is probably a load of "Mark Raaphorsts" (or Dale Chapmans, or whoever), doing their things locally, and using higher-tech methods of production through making use of the specialised engineering talents available in the more affluent Western and US countries, to offset the higher wage costs.

The windsurf brands have had a stranglehold on many markets worldwide because of their distribution networks. But their link to Thailand and China might start to become their Achilles heel not their strength if (or perhaps I should say when) manufacturing costs in those countries start to soar for macroeconomic reasons. A large part of the cost of a Cobra board is shipping/transport costs. Locally made boards don't have that burden - all that money can go straight to the local shaper.

So what do you guys think is a fair price for say raceboards?

I think all the brands understand that some of the top end boards are priced to high at the moment and i am sure most are working on ways to bring the costs back down a bit.

Personally i feel a 14ft carbon light weight board should be around $3000 to $3500 depending on construction but that could just be me!! i also understand why and how some of the boards are $4000 plus right now but it will be interesting to see where it heads.

As for the future growth will still be strong in some areas and in others it might drop. I see social paddles growing for a while and then most of these people after time wanting more and the race scene will have a good second wind in growth which will help give the the whole sport a new level to go to. Surfing side of the sport will stay steady for the next few years.

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paul.j said..
So what do you guys think is a fair price for say raceboards?

I think all the brands understand that some of the top end boards are priced to high at the moment and i am sure most are working on ways to bring the costs back down a bit.

Personally i feel a 14ft carbon light weight board should be around $3000 to $3500 depending on construction but that could just be me!! i also understand why and how some of the boards are $4000 plus right now but it will be interesting to see where it heads.

As for the future growth will still be strong in some areas and in others it might drop. I see social paddles growing for a while and then most of these people after time wanting more and the race scene will have a good second wind in growth which will help give the the whole sport a new level to go to. Surfing side of the sport will stay steady for the next few years.

Sub $3k for the mass produced boards.

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magillamelb said..

paul.j said..
So what do you guys think is a fair price for say raceboards?

I think all the brands understand that some of the top end boards are priced to high at the moment and i am sure most are working on ways to bring the costs back down a bit.

Personally i feel a 14ft carbon light weight board should be around $3000 to $3500 depending on construction but that could just be me!! i also understand why and how some of the boards are $4000 plus right now but it will be interesting to see where it heads.

As for the future growth will still be strong in some areas and in others it might drop. I see social paddles growing for a while and then most of these people after time wanting more and the race scene will have a good second wind in growth which will help give the the whole sport a new level to go to. Surfing side of the sport will stay steady for the next few years.

Sub $3k for the mass produced boards.

Sub $3000 is cool but what do you want to give up to achieve this weight, strength bit of both? NSP do a Element board in 12'6 and 14 for around $2000 but is heavy and from my experience it is also impossible to sell but the price is right and it is very strong. Do people care if the boards are well tested? this adds a pretty big expense but with out it the boards might not progress and where we are now might be where we stay. What about strength? do you care if your board is just a straight glass lay up or do you want a full PVC carbon board. There are ways to make it cheaper but sometimes the way to do it might not be worth it.

We just did a first run of our ONE sup boards which retailed for $3200 and this was a full carbon full PVC board weighing around 9kg and pretty tough but we payed alot for them and will for sure not get rich anytime soon. We also don't have the overheads of a Starboard or Fanatic so really it should be a bit cheaper.

There are a lot of things that make a board cost more one thing i can say is most are not getting super rich and some are just surviving, IMO the price for race boards should be around $3000 to $4000 for a top end board made with top materials and this is a fair price where most will make a fair living and is this not what we all want in life? Fair days work for a fair day's pay!!

In 10 years time we will just 3D print our boards at the beach so we always have the right board for the ocaision.

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magillamelb said..

Sub $3k for the mass produced boards.

And therein lies the disconnect. $3K in the real world is wholesale price. Assuming, as proposed above, that the cost from factory is highly competitive and cannot be reduced, then a price of $3K would only allow brands and custom builders to sell direct to market - there would be no room for a retail margin which would mean no shops to go demo at and grow SUP'ing in their local area.

But if that is the general consensus then SUP as an industry is in trouble and will go the Surfski/Windsurf (and many before them) route of dying out slowly as the sport battled to justify their existence and price-point....but as Paul says, maybe the 3D printer will be our saviour.

The challenge for SUP is on the demand side - SUP'ing has to become so sought after that whatever the price-point is in a competitive market - it is still considered fair and justifiable to the buyer.

(In Australia at least) the movement in the exchange rate against the US$ (which is the currency I assume most boards are wholesaled in) has probably added around $1K to the price of a board in the past 2-3 years. Most top brand boards seemed to go up in price by about that much in 2014/5 when the AUD went from above US$1 to around US$0.70, so that is the nature of the beast living where we live. I have no knowledge of the industry but presumably, when faced with that situation, retailers either take a haircut to keep prices down, or add their margin to the increased price, and I assume the latter is the case.

When Trump gets in and the US$ dives, we will all be buying cheap boards again!

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paul.j said..

magillamelb said..

paul.j said..
So what do you guys think is a fair price for say raceboards?

I think all the brands understand that some of the top end boards are priced to high at the moment and i am sure most are working on ways to bring the costs back down a bit.

Personally i feel a 14ft carbon light weight board should be around $3000 to $3500 depending on construction but that could just be me!! i also understand why and how some of the boards are $4000 plus right now but it will be interesting to see where it heads.

As for the future growth will still be strong in some areas and in others it might drop. I see social paddles growing for a while and then most of these people after time wanting more and the race scene will have a good second wind in growth which will help give the the whole sport a new level to go to. Surfing side of the sport will stay steady for the next few years.

Sub $3k for the mass produced boards.

Sub $3000 is cool but what do you want to give up to achieve this weight, strength bit of both? NSP do a Element board in 12'6 and 14 for around $2000 but is heavy and from my experience it is also impossible to sell but the price is right and it is very strong. Do people care if the boards are well tested? this adds a pretty big expense but with out it the boards might not progress and where we are now might be where we stay. What about strength? do you care if your board is just a straight glass lay up or do you want a full PVC carbon board. There are ways to make it cheaper but sometimes the way to do it might not be worth it.

We just did a first run of our ONE sup boards which retailed for $3200 and this was a full carbon full PVC board weighing around 9kg and pretty tough but we payed alot for them and will for sure not get rich anytime soon. We also don't have the overheads of a Starboard or Fanatic so really it should be a bit cheaper.

There are a lot of things that make a board cost more one thing i can say is most are not getting super rich and some are just surviving, IMO the price for race boards should be around $3000 to $4000 for a top end board made with top materials and this is a fair price where most will make a fair living and is this not what we all want in life? Fair days work for a fair day's pay!!

In 10 years time we will just 3D print our boards at the beach so we always have the right board for the ocaision.

The only thing that has to done away with to have a carbon raceboard for less than $3000 are the over-the-top margins in the supply chain. The greed doesn't necessarily come from the retailers. It's the brands and their distributors that are taking people for a ride. Hopefully, in time when the distributors and manufacturers have to dump copious amounts of boards at the end of a year for a year or two, they'll understand.

You guys are all still assuming that in the future boards will still be being made at Cobra, or Chinese factories. Start making the boards in the same country as you sell them, under licence. There is nothing special about what Cobra does that can't be done locally. Then all the shipping and distribution costs can be reduced, and all the money goes into the local economy rather than disappearing overseas. Make boards to order, so there is never oversupply. There needs to be a complete shift away from the current manufacturing/distribution model. I can buy a SIC board made in Maui by Raaphorst and team that costs only a fraction more than a Cobra version, were it not for the shipping costs for one board. But the Maui-built board will be built much better. So what is the point of building the board at Cobra if it can be done for the same price local to the market to which you'll be selling it? I assume that no - or very few - Cobra SICs get sold in Hawaii. That situation could be the same for all the local markets. We need some enterprising local people to set up board manufacturing facilities that use different methods to Cobra (because no doubt in Thailand you can get away with environmental impact and worker treatment downsides that you can't in the more affluent societies), and the well-known brands to start working with these local people, in partnership. The boards might not end up much cheaper, but people won't mind paying so much for them because they will be able to see with their own eyes how much work and skill goes into the manufacturing of them.

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Area10 said..
We need some enterprising local people to set up board manufacturing facilities that use different methods to Cobra (because no doubt in Thailand you can get away with environmental impact and worker treatment downsides that you can't in the more affluent societies), and the well-known brands to start working with these local people, in partnership. The boards might not end up much cheaper, but people won't mind paying so much for them because they will be able to see with their own eyes how much work and skill goes into the manufacturing of them.

There is new technology being commercialised right now which might make this happen as a SUP/surf brand could have a contract manufacturer in a country and make a board to order using robotic shaping machines rather than at a big manufacturer like Cobra and bypass needing a distribution network.

The future of surf and SUP board manufacture could be shifted back to local shapers using a Kiwi company Kina Road's robotic shaping technology: kinaroad.com/

I mentioned this earlier but this company in NZ has the technology and is deploying a system in Queensland for a well known local surf/SUP brand there.

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Area10 said..
You guys are all still assuming that in the future boards will still be being made at Cobra, or Chinese factories. Start making the boards in the same country as you sell them, under licence. There is nothing special about what Cobra does that can't be done locally.

It is becoming a reality: Since Gong has relocated its production in portugal, in a "Surf City" (Peniche) with plenty of real expert shaper/glasser/sanders, the difference is incredible. Basically a board done by Portugese craftmen with a surf background is 2 lbs lighter and 4x times more impact resistant.

On your idea of producing locally, the issue is stealing the shape: Brands will be very wary of the local factory re-using its templates to sell unauthorized copies...

Talk of Cobra versus Local construction in the future is interesting.

I have visited the Cobra factory and was lucky enough to get a tour around the factory and saw windsurf boards, surf boards and SUPs being made. It is a massive facility with hundreds of people working in the production area. I got to appreciate how much labour goes into making a board and the composite technology construction and lay ups that different boards and brands have. Windsurfing boards are the most sophisticated construction followed by SUPs and surfboards. A lot of people have an opinion that "Cobra construction" is good/bad, but it is the brands that decide what construction they want and Cobra just builds it so their spec as they are a contract manufacturer.

I currently have two well known Aussie made brand SUPs in my quiver, one custom race board and a production surf SUP. I hate to say it but I have been pretty disappointed with their construction compared to the many Cobra made boards I have had with very few issues.

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Area10 said..
You guys are all still assuming that in the future boards will still be being made at Cobra, or Chinese factories. Start making the boards in the same country as you sell them, under licence. There is nothing special about what Cobra does that can't be done locally.

Area10 I think you are trolling right?

Labour cost, unregulated labour markets, no stringent safety or OHS regs, weak environmental controls...what else..........

How is the health of the UK car manufacturing industry? Or Australian for that matter. The commercial principles and realities are the same.

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Whassup said..

Area10 said..
You guys are all still assuming that in the future boards will still be being made at Cobra, or Chinese factories. Start making the boards in the same country as you sell them, under licence. There is nothing special about what Cobra does that can't be done locally.

Area10 I think you are trolling right?

Labour cost, unregulated labour markets, no stringent safety or OHS regs, weak environmental controls...what else..........

How is the health of the UK car manufacturing industry? Or Australian for that matter. The commercial principles and realities are the same.

I'll let Area10 defend himself, but the health of the (little remaining admittedly) UK car manufacturing industry puts us (Australia) to shame - beyond comparison
That got off topic.
And Colas, once one board is out there it can be copied - my surveying company (co incidentally) has the ability to 3d laser scan a board and produce a point cloud of it's shape to allow re manufacture / cnc profiling etc. I prefer slowly measuring them with a tape and spirit level and a beer.

Correction. The health of the Indian and German car manufacturing, with their plants in the UK, is robust.

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Whassup said..
Correction. The health of the Indian and German car manufacturing, with their plants in the UK, is robust.

By that definition, did Australia ever have a car manufacturing industry?

We had a car manufacturing industry: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrant_automobile

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A lot of people have an opinion that "Cobra construction" is good/bad, but it is the brands that decide what construction they want and Cobra just builds it so their spec as they are a contract manufacturer.

I currently have two well known Aussie made brand SUPs in my quiver, one custom race board and a production surf SUP. I hate to say it but I have been pretty disappointed with their construction compared to the many Cobra made boards I have had with very few issues.

Stev0 is right, it is completely up to the brands as to what construction they want and how light/durable any board will be.

I bought a large number of boards that were made at Cobra from one of the top brands and there were a number of manufacturing defects, some major and some not so bad but by in large I thought the fit and finish was pretty poor considering the price paid, I now only ride one brand which is made in China and I have found the fit, finish and durability considerably better than the boards that were made at Cobra, admittedly they are slightly heavier but I think this adds to the durability which as a weekend warrior I'm more than happy with.

i say the future is looking good.

Possibly board shapers will become board designers as we print them out on a 3D printer. It's probably not that far away and whoever comes up with the right material will be a very rich person.
Imagine just downloading a design and printing it out.

If this really works - then this is the future......

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PeterP said..
If this really works - then this is the future......

That doesn't appeal to me one bit, if thats the future then im out.

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PeterP said..
If this really works - then this is the future......

Thought it would come eventually , board should be half the cost Your fked if the wind dies though I would imagine.

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teatrea said...

PeterP said..
If this really works - then this is the future......

Thought it would come eventually , board should be half the cost Your fked if the wind dies though I would imagine.

Ummm arent hydro foil boards powered by the wave....