Norden 2020 Surfboard Preview
Retail Buyers Guide: Surfboards 2020
Brand: Norden
What stroke you most during the past year as far as the Surfboard market is concerned? (sale figures, pricepoints, design, competition, distribution…)
Especially in northern Europe the weather has a big influence on the market. While we were spoilt from an epic 2018 season, the second half of 2019 wasn´t as good as we would have liked. The rest was just business as usual.
What will be the popular designs of 2020? (high-perf, hybrid, retro-oriented, midlength, longboard, softboard…) Why so?
While on performance boards seem to grow even more into the epoxy construction, the retro and alternative designs are still PU boards. On the classic design front, Twin Fins are really popular. Our core market is still and always was the good old Mini Mal, the shapes are chosen in all sizes and construction, whether it will be softboards for the beginners, durable epoxy composites for the families or the polished polyester boards for the good looks.
1rst Ride Malibu Sage
Innovation wise, which new design features and constructions are you implementing?
We offer many different constructions, depending on the customers need. Epoxies for the performance boards, polyester resin tints for the retro classic designs and epoxy composites and softboards for the beginners.
Do the sustainable surfboards account for a significant part of you turnover and what is your ethos regarding eco-friendly production?
For us as a company, “durability is sustainability”. We build boards that will last and are easy to fix for any ding repair service. Next to that we try to create minimum waste in our production and we are using only paper and cardboard materials to pack our boards, all plastic packaging has been eliminated. It is questionable what an eco friendly surfboard really is, using bio epoxy and recycling blanks does not make a board eco-friendly.
Retro Fish Blue
How do you handle distribution, between brick & mortar retailers, online retailers and D2C?
We have always supported the retail business as this is the best place to show our products. Also in the past 3 years, the trend went back to buy boards in the store. People like to see what they buy, boards can get damaged on transport and the shipping prices are also going up. In markets where we do not have a complete retail network, we sell online direct which in the end creates more interest off new dealers in the area as products have been seen on the local beach. We believe that retail, online retail and D2C feeds off one another.
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