I say YES it's possible because materials used in the boards are exposed to fX, typically purchased in US dollars. Add in the labour wage and manufacturing index in Asia plus freight.
I was wondering when this "windsurfing gear is so expensive" ranting was going to start, pretty much every year when new gear photo's start to pop up on the net.
buying a new top of the range carbon board cost what around $3000, sail $1000, mast $1000, Boom $1000 so your around $5300 once you get the rest that's the best gear on the market!!
Now walk into your local bike shop and order there most expensive mountain bike get ready to pay up to $10000
snowboarding $4000 before you even get in your car to drive to the snow.
How about a dirt bike $13000 plus rego and all the gear you have to wear.
then there is Wake boarding $80000 just for a boat to drag you around.
Sure you can buy a surfboard for $350 these days but it will prob last 2 surfs before the fin boxes fall out and it has heal dints the size of pot holes and the $1000 ones aren't much better. Also in a 2 hour surf session if you paddle for every wave you get to actually surf for about 2 minutes all up, and get bashed in the car park for snaking everyone.
Yer its a hard sport to learn but imagine if when you started to learn to ride a bike you only got to actually ride it for 10 seconds at a time, would take a long time to pop a wheelie.
so even if cobra are going up 30% the retail prices of boards wont go up that much, and what board is retailing for $4000? is it made by Swedish virgins weaving the carbon by hand or something, pretty sure that figure was made up.
most of the people who winge about the price of gear are usually the ones typing the BS about it on there latest $2000 laptops or there $800 phones and prob have an $80000 car in there driveway and there worried they will have to pay and extra $100 for brand new gear this season, I bet your new phone or car wont ever bring you as much fun as your new board will.
Yer Hoops but it's a trade secret, but I have a friend who has a friend and there cousin herd a rumour they do it naked to stop impurities, so it's definately worth the extra cash.
Select to expand quoteP.C_simpson said..
I was wondering when this "windsurfing gear is so expensive" ranting was going to start, pretty much every year when new gear photo's start to pop up on the net.
buying a new top of the range carbon board cost what around $3000, sail $1000, mast $1000, Boom $1000 so your around $5300 once you get the rest that's the best gear on the market!!
Now walk into your local bike shop and order there most expensive mountain bike get ready to pay up to $10000
snowboarding $4000 before you even get in your car to drive to the snow.
Yer its a hard sport to learn but imagine if when you started to learn to ride a bike you only got to actually ride it for 10 seconds at a time, would take a long time to pop a wheelie.
But pointing to the very small number percentage of people who buy $10,000 MTBs isn't really relevant, since there are so few of them. And whenever I'm in a bike shop I see the staff being very careful to sell people the cheaper, more practical bikes.
Even in road and track racing circles, you can race competitively on a very cheap bike - ignore what the cliched cafe poseurs say and listen to what the club racers say. The UCI rules (and other factors for some MTBs) mean that the difference between cheap bikes and expensive bikes is a lot less than the difference between average racers and good racers, or between cafe poseurs and even D Grade racers - it's the heart and legs that make the difference. I race cheap gear (no bike over $1000) and no racer has EVER been snarky at it in the way some windsurfers get snarky about my boards.
You can sum it up by saying that today I could get a brand new 2015 carbon bike for $1499 that would be competitive in the masters nationals next weekend. That's dramatically less than a windsurfer, even ignoring the fact that your $5300 doesn't allow for the extra sails, mast and boom you need to cover the wind range with today's "efficient" sails.
"Snowboarding $4000 before you even get into your car"???? Where the hell do you buy kit? I'm not the greatest skier but my full set of gear, which is good enough for me, cost about $500 if I remember rightly.
PC you make some good points and I am a massive fan of your work. Like you, I reckon bang for your buck you can't beat windsurfing, but....
As has been mentioned by some, the retailers are going to have to suck up some of the cost. The guys that own the shops are already struggling as it is and these guys to me are really important to the survival of our sport and probably first port of call for beginners who don't have windsurf schools around them.
At present it is 3.5k retail for a waveboard from the big names which is why I rightly or wrongly assumed it would be pushed to 4k. What do you think is fair for a new board? you would know being involved in the board building side. I have made plenty of sails so I can appreciate what go's into the making of products
At the end of the day what I was asking was if windsurfing was going to get more expensive? If what we are hearing is wrong I apologize for starting 2 pages of bull**** and name slinging
Also in 20 years I have been surfing I have never been beaten up in the carpark and I dont know any sailor that has one mast and sail
Just asking the question.....
Millsy you are dick
Should point out that I have a ****d old van and sent this post via my $150 desktop PC
Pretty comical topic , if you cant afford or cant justify the price of a brand new board don't even entertain the thought .
Personally ive bought 1 brand new board and regretted it , I prefer to buy 1 to 2 season old boards that are still in good condition,
And as a previous business owner ( not windsurfing gear ) can appreciate how hard it is to make money .
Select to expand quotehoop said..
Jas, do you have anymore info on the hand woven carbon by Swedish virgins?
Too late to change the layup on the new board Hoop???
Select to expand quoteMarkSSC said..bc said..
I have been in the windsurfing retail for over 30 years (owned my own shop for more than 10 years) . I can remember in the early 90's Mistral Energizers new where $2000 .... My parents bought a new Holden commodore for $20,000 that year from memory makes you think boards have not really gone up . For those of you out there that think that retailers make a huge profit come and visit my shop in winter where you might not see a customers for days but I still pay rent , power etc . In my case I run a IT business in the mornings before work so I can keep the shop going through the whole season .. Sure if you ever sell a board for the RRP price you make good money , but then end of season when you still have stock left that you discount your margin gets eroded . I don't do kites cause I am not into it but I do sell sups because its great to do when there is no wind ... But unlike many shops I will always put windsurfing first because I love the sport.
Its a funny world I constantly get asked especially online is that "my best price". and it make me think when do you ever ask your doctor or plumber or your local super market is that your best price ....
We all do deals for our regular customers that's the way the industry works , if someone is a loyal customer I do my best to look after them.
At the end of the day I just want to make a living like anybody else and fill my shop with lots of cool gear because windsurfing is the best sport in the world and I will own my shop until I forget where it is cause I have dementia
Well said.
Ditto
Chris I think you completely missed my point, I was comparing brand new top of the range equipment from each sport as the original post was about people worrying that boards are going to now cost $4000 which would have to be the best board ever made.
Windsurfing does not offer super budget $800 mass produced no name boards like you see in SUP stores these days, but if they did there would be another post on here saying how you bought a new board and the fin boxs fell out after 2 months and then it exploded on the beach from being made form the cheapest materials they can find..
A cheap sh@t van to carry all your toys around sounds good to me I too drive a van that cost less than the paint on my newest board.
As for wave boards there is always the custom route, get what you need and seam to be a lot cheaper buy the prices I'm hearing on here. I think no more than $3000 for a premium model board seams fare and the price should be scaled by size like sail sizes are.
Yeah PC I completely agree with 3k for a top product. Could stretch the budget to fit in the swedish virgins
I would hate to see the shops being burnt though. Like I said, they are in my eyes pretty damn important.
I would still like to know if the numbers we are hearing are real. I would hate to be stirring crap over nothing.
Re Fanatic02 surely if new board prices go up, the second hand market follows?
Hell by the look of it a 20 year old plastic dunger is worth $350
20 years ago in 1995 an off the shelf production board would have cost $2000 plus or minus $100 I'm sure if you worked out that price now at an average of say 3% yearly inflation, it would be more expensive than an off the shelf board today!
So stop your selfish whinging and your " oh poor me" victim attitudes. We are among the privileged few in this world who live in a first world beautiful country. 80% of the people on Earth survive on less than $10 dollars a day, over 3 billion people live in poverty on less than $2.50 a day.
Select to expand quoteP.C_simpson said..
Chris I think you completely missed my point, I was comparing brand new top of the range equipment from each sport as the original post was about people worrying that boards are going to now cost $4000 which would have to be the best board ever made.
Windsurfing does not offer super budget $800 mass produced no name boards like you see in SUP stores these days, but if they did there would be another post on here saying how you bought a new board and the fin boxs fell out after 2 months and then it exploded on the beach from being made form the cheapest materials they can find..
A cheap sh@t van to carry all your toys around sounds good to me I too drive a van that cost less than the paint on my newest board.
As for wave boards there is always the custom route, get what you need and seam to be a lot cheaper buy the prices I'm hearing on here. I think no more than $3000 for a premium model board seams fare and the price should be scaled by size like sail sizes are.
I didn't miss the point - it's just that I think your figures are tilted to making windsurfing look comparatively cheaper than it is.
The beginner's windsurfing package from one retailer - with just one sail - is $2790. That's about 2.8 times as much as a beginner's road bike, and the windsurfer with just one sail is much more restricted - it's only really good for what, 12-18 knots? The same sort of money will get you a couple of cheap road bikes that could be in the top 25% in a racing club and would burn off all the cafe racing poseurs, or it will get you into a bottom end of a prestige-brand roadbike.
For top-end windsurfing gear the list price is a lot higher than what you're talking - $1000-1380 for a mast, over $4100 for some Raceboards, $1499 booms, let's not mention fins and the extra couple of masts and sails you'll need. I did some rough pricing on Raceboard gear a few months back and got to $7000 pretty quickly.
As another comparison, a Laser (the most popular sailing dinghy) is $11000 with a trolley and covers - but unlike windsurfers you don't get the manufacturer trying to make it obsolete as soon as you buy it, so you can race the boat in big fleets at dozens of clubs for years on end, and still sell it for decent money. And why do you have so many people to race against? Partly because the boats don't become obsolete, so many people can buy a cheap old one and still race competitively. The guys who want to buy new benefit because they get lots of people to sail with and the people who want to by used have access to lots of cheap boats. Everyone wins because the builder doesn't make the gear obsolete.
Sure, windsurfer may never be in the $800 region. I believe they make nothing out of One Designs, which sell for around $1800. But it's not hard to believe that windsurfing has been chasing "performance" (I use the italics because it's only performance over a narrow range of conditions, most modern boards are hideously slow a lot of the time) at the expense of simplicity, versatility, economy and long-term ownership, and that the sport has suffered because of it.
Select to expand quoteR1DER said..
20 years ago in 1995 an off the shelf production board would have cost $2000 plus or minus $100 I'm sure if you worked out that price now at an average of say 3% yearly inflation, it would be more expensive than an off the shelf board today!
So stop your selfish whinging and your " oh poor me" victim attitudes. We are among the privileged few in this world who live in a first world beautiful country. 80% of the people on Earth survive on less than $10 dollars a day, over 3 billion people live in poverty on less than $2.50 a day.
Yep - and no.
My first Windsurfer One Design in 1978 would cost $3280 today, inflation adjusted, and that was before the sport really kicked off so it was comparatively cheap. So yep, boards used to cost a lot more. And yes, we are incredibly lucky to live where and how we live.
On the other hand, it's reasonable to say that windsurfing may have let itself become too expensive. While boards have become cheaper, the industry's attitude has also changed. When it was booming, we didn't buy a board and expect to "have" to upgrade within a year or two, for a minimal increase in performance. You either assumed you could hang onto a board for years AND sail it every weekend no matter what the weather, or you were upgrading to something with vastly higher performance in the right conditions. That meant that the cost/benefit was very, very different.
Select to expand quoteR1DER said..
. 80% of the people on Earth survive on less than $10 dollars a day, over 3 billion people live in poverty on less than $2.50 a day.
So we could get them shaping and laminating for $3 a day........ a $500 new board..... win-win
Right?
Select to expand quoteWindWarrior said..
OK, but how many boards do they need to purchase in order to achieve that price ?
What's the minimum order quota required to secure that price ?
Seems cheap until you times it by 1000 to 2000 units or so...
Far from it... not sure what the exact number is these days but it used to be 150 boards minimum.
Dont know about all this hysteria!
Prices i have seen from a couple of the big names are not $4000 . Increases of only $150 -350 on top of the line wave boards is not $30%.
Sure there has been a drop in the dollar but a lot of bargaining with companies-manufactures and importers has helped minimise massive price rises.
Continue to support your local/ i am sure he/she will be able to help you out with your new board order and you might be relieved at the pricing.
Lets all relax and wait for spring!!!!
I agree that in real terms, taking into account inflation, the cost of sailboarding has not changed that much during the last 25 years.
The difference now is that we own more gear. 25 years ago I used 1 board, 1 mast, 1 boom and 2 sails, all purchased new, total value in 1990 about $1500. Today I use 4 boards, 2 masts, 2 booms and 5 sails, about 50% purchased new, purchased over the last 3 years, total value in 2015 about $10,000.
Ultimately the price for sailboarding equipment will be what the market will bear. If its too expensive, sailors will stop buying it or buy less often or someone will figure out how to bring the goods to the market cheaper.
Select to expand quoteSpocktek said...
Are you going to get some of that sexy new carbon cloth R1der?
Maybe I'm going to visit the factory with my camera and watch. Might chat to the girls and see if I can get a SAMPLE 
Select to expand quoteMark _australia said...R1DER said..
. 80% of the people on Earth survive on less than $10 dollars a day, over 3 billion people live in poverty on less than $2.50 a day.
So we could get them shaping and laminating for $3 a day........ a $500 new board..... win-win
Right?
Kind of. That comment was to show people how lucky we are and to look at the positives in their lives.
geared4 knots, thanks for the update. Question answered. One day when I get to BOL I will stop into your shop and say gday. Winter has been pumping here so I wont be waiting!!
Sorry for being a selfish whinger Rider, will let you get back to your charity work.....
Select to expand quoteJohn340 said..If its too expensive, sailors will stop buying it
I think that pretty much happened, which is why the sport is so much smaller these days. A book on the economics of sport by a professor at the Sorbonne mentions that in the '80s, one third of all households in France had a windsurfer.
At $4 g a pop I would like to see Cobra make consistently sized tuttle boxes. Jeez I would like to see it now, or is it a conspiracy where the factory uses different sized tuttle boxes between brands so the consumer has to continue to buy brand A B or C so your fins fit year to year (insert music from twilight zone) 
Brand "A" from cobra fin to loose
Brand "B" from Cobra fin to tight
Brand "C" from Cobra - perfect fit but fin wont fit A or B
Got a new fin so guess what I did on the weekend, now fits A but not C 
Indeed Col. but is it the fin or the box thats out of whack.
Is it really that hard to make them all the same. Fin and box.
Buy a new fin and spend an hour or 2 sanding it to fit.
Barn you crack me up
Back to crap, I'm getting far better value than I did 20 years ago re boards, sails etc. But I'd still go a CA, Lockwood Mistral or a local custom board first, just saying
