Thank you for the tip. We will do so!
Who designs our kites? At this moment we cannot tell. He designs kites for 10 years already. More may become clear during 2014! What I can tell is that our kites are manufactured at GS Lanka. This is the factory that also produces all North kites. This is no surprise as the owner/founders of Zian kiteboarding, a Dutchman living in Austria, has been the CEO of this factory for 5 years till 2012. He already made a
comment and explained a bit some time ago in one of the topics. We develop and test our kites thoroughly in Sri Lanka where there is wind 8 months a year. This is also done in corporation with experienced kite teachers and in corporation with several kite schools for long term tests.
How do you test before buying? I take care of sales in many countries but not for South Afrika, Australia and America’s. You could contact
Zian America's for this question.
What sets your kites apart from the rest? I will try to answer this question a bit but also have to respect forum rules. “The rest” is already a brought spectrum of design qualities, flying characteristics, durability, finishing quality, quality of canopy treatments, quality of Dacron and off course pricing. Some short and simple points that may answer your question:
- Prices are low* (low marketing budget, no team of riders traveling around the globe, we have cut out parts of the chain between design and end user)
- We use the highest quality/expensive materials. For example; Real Kevlar, Teijin canopy and Dacron.
- We offer spare parts from stock very cheap as we believe this will promote maintenance hence safety in our sport. In EU sometimes down to 1/4 of which is common.
*The new European website and shop will be online Q1 next year. Prices change from "advice" to "this is what you pay" which are prices that people already get when they ask me for an offer. There will always be some price difference between US and EU simply because (from memory); import tax 0 v 4.5 – VAT 0/6 v 21 – Salary tax 15 v 40 – Tax on profit 6 v 20/40.
As mentioned, 2014 is a special year for us and many interesting things will become clear