tuesday 17 april 2018

There's a rumor that Boards-and-More lost the license for the name North Sails.
http://forums.boards.co.uk/showthread.php/78933-Interesting-rumour-on-the-beach-here-in-Cap-Verde

Rumor is that they will continue under the name Duotone.

Boards-and-More has bought many brands in the 90s. Eventually they owned: Mistral, North Sails, F2, Arrows, Fanatic, ART.
This made Boards-and-More market leader windsurfing equipment supplier, and they had a lot of tops riders on the payroll: Naish, Dunckerbeck, JP, Goya etc.
Almost all these riders left Boards-and-More within a couple of years, no matter what they tried, semi-custom name branded series etc.
Soon Boards-and-More stopped ART (2001). Few years later they stopped Arrows (2004).
10 years ago it began rumbling with the Mistral brand. They had a license to build Mistral branded equipement, and the license holder didnt want to continue with Boards-and-More (according to the rumors).
F2 was sold in 2007 because it no longer fitted into the vision of Boards-and-More.

North Sails is primarily a sailing boats brand, Boards-and-More has had a license to produce North Sails windsurfing sails. I guess they have to pay for this every year.
But this now all seems to come to an end. I'm a North fan, I think like the idea of loosing North for the windsurfing market, but ultimately for me, it is all about the quality and innnovation of the sails, no matter what brand is on it.