After the boot show 2024 a few months ago it became clear, the water sport industry has problems. Particularly the SUP Segment. The hang over from Covid is being felt across the industry and the retailers are being hit particularity hard. Manufacturers have eroded prices to clear their warehouses from over stock. During Covid when everybody bought toys the manufactures thought these sales would continue to grow and produces accordingly. The market got saturated, people stopped buying and retailers were left to pick up the pieces. Now they are all scared and don’t want to order inventory.
The most prominent example was the 30K inflatable SUPs that Fanatic had sitting in their warehouses. They cut prices extremely hard and retailers with existing inventory on hand had no choice to match the price. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Boards and More decided to discontinue their legacy brand of over 40 years.
We heard similar stories on in the exhibition hall in DĂĽsseldorf, Aqua Marina told us that there are sitting numerous (we forgot the exact number) of high cube containers filled with inflatable SUPs on warehouse properties costing them their margin and they don’t know where to go with all the boards.
Over the last month we have written hundreds of E-Mails to retailers across Germany, Switzerland and Austria, this is where we distribute our print magazine. We have lost key advertising accounts from otherwise reliable clients. Making a SUP – Wing – Foil Magazine in 2024 was hanging in the balance. Now we have the budget for one magazine in the summer.
Out of the 146 retailers on our distribution list, already more than thirty have told us they are out of business or cutting down their expense so hard that even a annual contribution of EUR 24.95 is too much. We are thankful for the other plus minus forty retailers that said they would support a core water sport magazine. Then are are roughly about 80 outlets who are straight up ghosting us and will not return our emails and messages. Having a hard time is one thing and saying No is OK, but the having the lack of decency to return a message when you received free magazines for years is another thing.
In this video we talk more details and how that all happens on the back ground that our office is in the middle of a burn zone that destroyed over 3000 properties.
Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube.
Mehr erfahren