The kites you never see.

[windmaker]

With the multitude of small kite companies on the market today it makes me wonder how easy it is to start producing kites and how many kites per year must one sell minimum per year in order to make ends meet.

Rather than pimp on who's is selling most, list a number of kites that you hear of, but never or rarely see on your local spots. This will off course be different from country to country but perhaps at the end of the day we will get a global image of how little it takes for some brands to survive.

I run a kite& sail repair center in Cyprus (small market, more or less 100 kites sold per year island wide) so I am well awear of what kites fly ( or in this case don't fly) in our skys :

Gin
Advance
Core
Gaastra
Mutiny
Peter Lynn
RRD
Epic
Ocean Rodeo
Caution
JN
Blade
Latitude
Nobile kites

A lot, and there are probably others I can't think of right now. Are any of these brands well represented in other countries ?

[angelinversace]

Ocean Rodeo definatly has a good presence in Canada and i have seen a few Caution kites as well but for all the other brands not much.

[Kupono]

Not to forget Griffin Kiteboarding of Australia.
They have three lines of kites: The Griffin, The Argonaught, and the Chimera
http://www.griffinkites.com.au/

[Ginotrab]

Here in dubai the kites you probably see the most are RRDs.
The distributor here has a big part of the market.

Ive met the Gaastra distributor but dont see a lot of his kites in the air, and ive also seen a couple of Nobiles. Also 1 or 2 Core.

For the rest, i dont think they ever came to the UAE.

[jedi1]

Gin, Advance, Mutiny, Epic, Caution, Latitude - never seen one
Peter Lynn, Ocean Rodeo, JN, Blade - very few ones
Core - not that many of those, as prices are way higher than most, but usually there's at least one on the spot
Gaastra - used by one kite school here, not many bought by individuals though
RRD - loads, loads, loads of those
Nobile - quite popular here, nothing weird about that though, as Nobile is a Polish company

From the bigger kite companies Liquid Force and Airush are almost missing here, though there's an official dealer of Airush now, so that's likely to change if the prices are ok.

[completeKOOK]

It might just be because I ride in Hatteras a lot but there's a strong eclipse/epic following that rides down there. Out of your whole list the only kites I haven't seen much of between hatteras, VA, and RI- would be caution,gin,advance, mutiny, latitude- dont think i have ever seen one in person I used to see a few gaastras flying but havnt seen one in atleast 3-4 years. When i lived in RI even a seeing a Naish was pretty rare- just all north, best, slingshot liquidforce and cabs up there

[Kamikuza]

Best, Naish, North, Cabrinha, Fone and one guy on Liquid Force ... and apart from my Peter Lynn's and Flysurfer, they're the only kite brands we see here!

[grantman54]

Windmaker, I don't even own a repair center and have seen all of those brands at least twice at local beaches.
I can't believe you put Caution, RRD, Epic, Blade and Nobile on there. Just because they aren't at the only beach you kite doesn't mean they aren't out there. I see those brands specifically at almost every location on the West Coast.

Get out and ride!

[danie178]

here we have

Ozone
Cab
naish
north airush
L/F
eclipse(yuk)
Best (yuck)
Waiman
Gin
Fluid
Vari
Gaastra
Flexi
griffin kind of seen one or two
Slingy
Eh
Peter lynn but more in the south island
Gk
OR

seems every one is importing them.

[alexrider]

"here" we have
.....

@ Dan and Kamikuza: where the heck is "here"?
I've been searching on Google Earth without much success.

Alex