RS500 ...

We seem to have come full circle with boat design.  Single trapeze boats are very unfashionable theses days (the Fireball's revival perhaps being the exception) and the L4000 is the only non-youth single-wire asymmetric you can buy, I think (can you still buy an ISO or Buzz?).  The irony is that it was RS that made them so unpopular, marketting the 400 and 800 as 'fairer' because you weren't reliant on lightweight helms and beanpole crews.  Having killed this sector off, they now spot the gap!  Far from being naive, I think RS are marketting genii.

Please don't think I'm sl*gging RS off, their boats are great and better sorted than most other SMODs, and I hope the 500 succeeds - but no one is in business for philanthropic reasons.  

 

personally i would say there is a large gap in the market for single trapese. Cant think of why there is not a gap to be honest. 29er = too tippy for many 505 = dated 420 = dated 470 = dated 4000 = dated no offence meant to anyone but i just think there is a gap here please correct if im wrong though.

Personally, if your the right weight with a good crew...... I think you must be tragically sick not to sail a 420. 96, rept:96 boats at the last nationals, good cheap boats with resale value, international competition, big enough for dad, exciting, well developed etc.

Boats harder to sail than a ent are always going to have to take market share from one class - that is why we have mass hysteria over a new class that isn' very new. I don't see anything new here, so its sucess depends on the failure of classes like the 420.

I repeat again..... you'd have to be sick......

My personal view is that the gap in the market is definitely there.  At my club the shift to Assys (200s, L2000s, 400s) is almost complete with just a bunch of Fireball crews hanging on getting annoyed when they can't perform to handicap on assy-biased courses.  800s are too high performance for our waters - you barely get going before the board hits the sand- and the existing single-wire assy boats are seen as out-of-date compared to the modern hikers.  So I think there is certainly a gap in the market for an assy Fireball that works for teenagers but is also competitive with 2 big adults on board; the question is whether this is it.  A 14ft 'youth orientated' boat with a yardstick of 1000 feels like a missed opportunity.  I was hoping for a 400 / 800 crossbreed, not a cheaper 29er / 420 alternative.....oh well

 

Originally posted by JimC Originally posted by ed490 Buzz?  PY 1007, single trapeze, stable, great boat to learn assymetric sailing and trapezing The Buzz is hardly the most modern hull shape, the rig is nothing special, and, most to the point, RS don't sell it! Whenever several companies compete they are always going to go head to head in popular market segments: you don't see Ford not making a hatchback because Peugot do one!

Jim,

But Ford don't make hatchbacks to race together in a class... it is not a valid comparison.

RS can do what they like; it's a free market but it's an enthusiasts market and the dynamics to a general consumer market are very different.

The internet empowers owners groups just like this forum does and companies like Dell and Apple have had a bad time on the web recently through the power of bloggs and forums when they have ignored the market ... they qucikly learned to listen to the voice of on-line forums.

Rick