If true strange decision www.windsurfing44.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28583&start=15

Did Elon Musk buy both companies?

Boards and More own both companies, maybe just streamlining their products.

Not sure this applies to windsurfing boards, where Fanatic has a long brand history. For foiling, it makes sense. Wings and sails are Duotone, anyway. Foiling and especially winging is newer. Many wingers come from kiting, where Duotone is well established, while Fanatic may or may not be known as a windsurf brand. Winging is likely the much bigger market with more growth potential. so re-branding foils as Duotone makes a lot of sense. Our local shop used to be a windsurf shop, but switched to kiting when the masses went that way, and adding winging when that became popular. He has lots of Duotone kites and wings, but nothing from Fanatic. He already has a lot of foil brands, but perhaps he'll add Duotone foils after the rebrand.

Sounds like a strange move. Why destroy 40 years of brand equity? There are only two reasons I can think why you'd want to do this. Either to save money by merging brand systems or to distance the brand from Windsurfing/ SUP because you think it has an image problem.

But then again dummer things have happened... remember how they destroyed the F2 or Mistral brands?

The topic is also discussed on the German surf-forum at surf-forum.com/forum/thread/27720-fanatic-soll-ab-2024-unter-duotone-laufen/?pageNo=1

The Fanatic brand manager, Craig Gertenbach, chimed in and promised a detailed announcement on September 4. Some of the posts and speculations are quite funny (or perhaps sad?). They include the idea that "Fanatic" nowadays has too much negative connotations. Someone also pointed to Neil Pryde as a name that may need to be changed, although he might believe that DeSantis will be the next US president .

I'm more interested in the gear itself - besides which, as with the NS to Duotone transition, the team behind the boards will remain entirely the same.

New Grip 3 (thruster/more compact outline) than the (existing, now) Grip 4 (quad)

So the speculation can now end, with the official launch of Duotone boards happening today.

It's all over my Facebook feed.

Plenty of talk from the top Fanatic / Duotone / Boards & More guys at www.surf-magazin.de/windsurfen/people/traditionsmarke-verschwindet-aus-fanatic-wird-duotone/. A lot of marketing talk, but two things stand out: Duotone is the biggest brand for B&M, and winging is the fastest growing segment. Seems they ended up with different, incompatible pieces for kite foiling, wind foiling, and wing foiling, and plan to change that to a unified system in 2024. That's the right idea ... except perhaps for anyone with current Fanatic or Duotone foils who may have to switch to a different system in the future. But with Duotone, there is at least the hope that they don't "improve" the fuselages every year in an incompatible way, as SB has done.

More new things to come, including in the racing segment
I don't have any insights re foils, but the NS > Duotone switch has shown no desire to create backwards incompatibilities.

The kite foiling mast-fuse connection uses a "pocket", the windfoiling connection has a flat surface. Duotone plans to unify this, so one of these options will become history (let's hope just one - if this was SB, they'd ditch both and come out with a third version).

Until Duotone makes clear which system they will use in the future, I'll stay away from Fanatic/Duotone foils. I already have a whole bunch of SB fuses that would last for years to come, but for which there are no more wings available.

Is there is there already info pricewise?

Lost me at hello! Fanatic is one of the last few 80's brands still going strong with its history intact! Only recently they did some retro graphics based on their old 80's boards the rat etc.

I can't stand that new name duotone sounds like a paint supplier or a 1950's BBC radiophonic machine,
"bring me the duotone machine so I can kill Dr Who...Buhahahahahaha."