hey silly , ive seen those boards from New zealand , real nice work , i used to have this one kiwi who always brought his boards to us for repair because we were the only guys who even knew how his board was even made , so could fix it with some care …
some interesting comments …
one important thing i have learnt from being involved in this project , it takes a bunch of real talented people to put something like this together , sometimes i take a step back and just go WOW when i see the professionalism of everyone around me …
that being said , the whole thing ,like any business ,is a constant exercise in refinement , there is always room for improvement and everyone is always looking at ways of making things better …
epac made the comment about the cart before the horse …
marketing always has a lag period , by the time articles or adds eventually hit the stands , team riders get results , feedback starts to circulate you could be looking at 6 to 12 months , then there is always the challenge of having to make a little more noise to get noticed if your selling the same thing as everyone else , so crew in marketing usually have a tough job …
but in this case there may be an element of truth in your comments , as there has already been some hype , plus the uniqueness of the boards makes the marketing a little easier , for me the reaction to the boards was predictable as ive seen it all before and was warning of some serious interest , but for some of the crew who have more recently got involved , there have been some surprises at the level of response and interest …
while we are still going through interviews in the states for suitable people , our gold coast factory is now producing nicely , we already have a good core group of long established board builders , in fact now that i think of it , there is not one guy in our current factory with less than 20 years of board building behind them …
so over 90% of our current production is heading to the states every week , so while it may look like the marketing is out of sync with the rest of the business , its just that whats being set up in california is not as established as what is set up in Oz …
the production numbers i saw quoted are a little higher than anything ive seen before , while its good to set the bar high , i think its a case of just doing it and see what we can achieve , it sounds to me like the comments may have gone past one or 2 people and grown on the way …
the china comments ?
no boards will be produced in china or in any asian country at all in the forseeable future …
while there was a plan to run a cheaper entry level molded board , basically a groms board to hopefully be made in thailand , that whole direction has now been scuttled , due to the potential to devalue a core locally produced premium surfboard brand , plus the whole concept was greeted with a not so welcome reception once certain comments were made public , this helped to make things clearer , so to all the passionate responses on the import subject , thanks guys …
you all know my feelings on the import issue , so the decision was welcomed by me …
so now the full focus is on the gold coast and san diego for custom boards , with the crew who were going to work on the molded boards now focussing solely on our local production …
while the focus is on custom , in the early stages we would prefer to get some production line stuff going , by making set models to create a routine and to help establish our systems and train crew …
it is just the beginning , and im sure were going to make a heap of mistakes , so the value of feed back even here at sways is invaluable and it really helps us refine things even quicker …
that means comments that come across as critical , in reality have real value to us …
i also noticed someones first post …
hey scotty …
if everyones attempts at building composite boards are as good as the ones ive seen rsl do , then were in for some major change , one real talented board builder , scotty has an even bigger reason to be thankful as well , before i left west oz and moved the whole factory permanently , scotty inherited a furniture trailer full of goodies , at least i know it all went to a good home …
tell J.R. that he should have something in 3 weeks …
well thats some of the latest …
regards
BERT
ps , speedneedle recomended Greg for a nobel prize and i second it , never in my life have i used such a production friendly epoxy , flipping and sanding laps within 2 hours , hot coats that flow out like a gloss but dont run off the rails , clearer than water , the lowest odour of any resin ive ever used …
if it wasnt true i would suspect it was marketing hype , but no way , its the real deal …
production times resembling mekp cured polyester resin , i cant believe i was doing it the hard way all those years