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| WHAT IS KILLING BODYBOARDING PAGE 4 |
| SOLUTIONS: THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, OR BE BURIED IN IT |
| Fixing the problem is easy to do! The easy way to do it involves both the bodyboarding companies and the bodyboarding magazines to open their focus beyond that limiting 12-19 year old age range, which is really nothing more than a target marketing group. You need to understand your core market to keep businesses running - no argument there. But you need to go beyond it to expand. Establish the history of bodyboarding in context: Bodyboards as they are currently constructed, basically with a soft foam or deck, are part of a long line of prone surfcraft. There were wooden Hawaiian Paipo boards, surf mats, the more conventional paipos or bellyboards, and kneeboards...all before Tom Morey used some new materials. All of these precursors have been documented in the surf magazines of their times; the material exists. Most manufacturers of bodyboards also make and sell swim fins: All the previous forms of prone and knee surfing use swim fins. A crossover market exists, albeit captive anyway. What about bodysurfing? There is an active bodysurfing community out there. In recent years the most dominant bodysurfer at the Pipeline contest has been a guy named... Mike Stewart. But Slater, Machado, and Tom Curren all entered in 2002. Real bodysurfers wear fins. Is there a financial opportunity there to be developed? Bodyboarding is ripe for revolution: Word is out that surfboard builder Rusty is R&D'ing a bodyboard made of conventional surfboard materials, perhaps like the bellyboards of the late 60's. Recent issues of BODYBOARDING GEAR GUIDE usually have industry insiders talking about new, stiffer materials. Small fins have been appearing on boards primarily used by dropknee riders. If riders keep placing performance demands on bodyboard builders, pretty soon we might catch up to...the 60's? Yet as bodyboards get stiffer, flex properties get lost. It isn't known how stiffer bodyboards will handle the situations which crease lesser boards - more durable or more "creased". More and more variables are created. Somewhere out there, somebody is tinkering around with something. Rigid limitations cage some, and release others. Surfers with experience pre-dating bodyboards are starting to re-investigate the limits of flex with custom surfmats. While a return to kneeboarding is not forseen, it makes more sense to many observers than dropknee bodyboarding. Once riders get a look at something different, a whole Renaissance could begin. But it will take the magazines to present it to the community as a whole. |
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