NeilPryde Will to Win by NeilPryde

This is the story of how a business in Hong Kong went from making sails to building a commanding position in water sports and beyond, with market-leading brands that are perhaps the most expensive and the most desirable in their categories. It’s a journey of design, innovation and determination that has spanned water, sky, snow and road… so far...

The Pryde dynasty: Three generations of the Pryde family at Neil’s 70 th birthday, Koh Samui, Thailand, October 2009.

Copyright ©2010 Neil Pryde Limited. All rights reserved. Published by Neil Pryde Limited. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database, hard drive or any other retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. possible in regard to the subject matter covered. The publisher has made every reasonable attempt to ensure this history of Neil Pryde Limited is as accurate as possible. Much of the information has been gathered from interviews and is therefore reliant on memories and opinions of events from individuals. That information is included here as honest personal opinion. Neil Pryde Limited accepts no responsibility or liability for omissions or any information that is deemed to be inaccurate, nor for consequences of those actions. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional advisory services. If professional assistance or advice is required, please seek the services of the appropriate professional person. ISBN: 978-988-19118-1-0 Printed in China.

ISBN 978-988-19118-1-0

WILL TO WIN

The remarkable story of Neil Pryde Limited

PHOTO: Jérôme Houyvet

WINNINg dOesN’T HappeN Here,

Or Here, PHOTO: Jérôme Houyvet

Or Here, RIDER: Andrea Schuler. PHOTO: Ryan Hughes.

Or Here, PHOTO: Stephen Whitesell

THe eveNTs are WON befOre THe race sTarTs. THe guy THaT’s besT prepared, WITH THe besT equIpmeNT, OrgaNIsed, WITH a cOOL Head, THINKINg. He’s THe ONe WHO’LL WIN...

- NEIL PRYDE

022 042 068 078 178 232 242

ever THe THe cOmpeTITOr cOmpe OmpeTITO Ompe mpeTITOr TITOr Meet the man behind the brand.

sea

The rise and fall of the yacht sail business. T

LOOKIN OuT LOOKINg T frOm frOm O THe TH

fragraNT Harb H HarbOur Our Going global from Hong Kong. K

aIr I Ir

Becoming the number one brand on the water.

142 ADVERTISING 158 BRANDS BRANDS BRA 160 RIDING IDING WITH PRYDE

earTH TH aNd aN Nd d sKy sK s Ky Ky

Growing the footprint; expanding the offering.

226 A PRODUCT TAKES KES SHAPE SHAP SH APE APE

a WHOLe

WOrLd W WO OrL Or rLd Of Of excITemeNT excIT exc ITemeNT ITeme emeNT New discipline; new structures.

fasTer Ter T er f fOrWard fO OrWard Or W The future for the Pryde Group. T

254 THE T NEXT RIDE

foreword If someone had told me of the life I would have in the years after I left New Zealand to come to Hong Kong, I would never have believed them. I would most certainly have been overwhelmed by what lay ahead. But one of the great things about not knowing the future is that you deal with it as it arises, and the sheer necessity to get through makes things happen. There have been sleepless nights. Many of them. But there have also been huge moments of satisfaction. And along the way, I’ve personally met, and often worked with, people with extraordinary visions and drive. You’ll meet some of them in the course of this book – sports people, business people, creative people – many of whom have collectively and individually built Neil Pryde Limited into the company it is today. We’ve never told the company’s story up until now, simply because we’ve let our products speak for us. We’ve always said that actions speak louder than words. But as time marches on, there’s a risk that some of the stories, and the

acknowledgements, that lie behind this company’s successes will be lost or forgotten. Even now, a lot of people, even people who did or do work here, simply do not know our history. 40 years seems a good time to record some of the highlights, as best as memory permits anyway. I’m in no doubt that by the time this company hits 50 years, it will have changed dramatically – again. That seems to be the nature of this business. I have no problem with that. It’s healthy. We began as a no-name manufacturer making yacht sails. Then we moved into making windsurfing sails. We became a brand. We diversified into water sports. We took to the air and to the snow. This year, we’ll launch a high-performance bike business. We’ve covered so much ground and the connections between the many phases are intriguing, sometimes serendipitous. What unites them, in my eyes, is the passion for competition that people across this company, our distribution networks and our customer communities share. We all have this will to win that is inspiring and energising and remarkably infectious.

To everyone who believes in what we do, who buys our products and sports our brand names on their gear, a huge thank you for your support. It’s great to know we share this love of action sports. To all those who I have been privileged to work with over the years – Neil Pryde Limited people, distributors, joint venture partners, and especially our investors, in particular Mark Shriro – I hope you are proud of what we continue to achieve. Sadly, I know that some of those who played important parts in our story are no longer with us. My very best to their families. Finally, and on a deeply personal note, thanks beyond words to my wife, Nina, who has patiently and skilfully raised our family and offered me immense support. It is a huge tribute to her that we have a wonderfully stable life away from work and that our three children, Katherine, Anne and Michael, all have professional qualifications and successful careers of their own. Neil.

IN 40 years

Neil Pryde Limited opens for business with the Sea Snark contract.

NeilPryde USA established.

First branch factory opens in Tuen Mun.

Neil Pryde Limited is making 100,000 sails a year for Bic.

Fred Haywood breaks the 30 knot speed barrier.

Shriro Group becomes new partner investor.

Neil Pryde Limited launches the fully Integrated Rig.

Neil Pryde Limited is the number one windsurfing brand in Europe.

Windsurfing operations move to Bao’an, China.

Neil Pryde Limited partners with F2 to buy assets of Tiga.

Neil Pryde Limited becomes a minority shareholder in Tiga.

Laminated Products has a 20% global share of the OEM market for paragliding equipment.

Yacht sail-making operations move to Bao’an.

Famous ‘naked man’ ad appears for NeilPryde wetsuits.

Neil Pryde Limited buys out F2’s shares in Tiga.

Shriro Sportsvettrieb takes over distributing NeilPryde products in Germany.

Tim Yourieff buys NeilPryde Sails Inc and changes the name to NeilPryde Sails International.

Flow is now one of the leading snowboard binding brands in the world.

Neil Pryde Limited selected as official sail supplier for Olympic 49’er sailing class.

Flow brand sold to Shriro Group.

Launch of Cabrinha kitesurfing brand.

Neil Pryde Limited launches NPX, a new line of NeilPryde Waterwear.

NP USA shuttered.

Sails International takes worldwide licence to manufacture and sell NeilPryde Yachtsails brand.

Victory Element established.

Neil Pryde Limited is producing more than 340,000 sails a year.

Neil Pryde Limited supplies windsurfing rigs for the Olympic Games in Barcelona.

Factory opens in Thailand.

Neil Pryde Limited wins the DHL/ SCMP Hong Kong Business International Award.

NeilPryde Waterwear launches.

Neil Pryde Limited teams up with Spanier and Bourne. R&D facilities established in Maui.

NeilPryde Maui opens. Laminated Products Limited sold.

Flow extends its offering with a line of boards.

Flow debuts at ISPO trade show.

Mengam Marine closes, NeilPryde Europe operations all move to Bethune France.

Factory in Fanling opens.

71 Company secures the Hobiecat contract. Albin Marin and O’Day become clients.

Neil Pryde Limited is probably the biggest mass producer of yacht sails Neil Pryde Limited signs contract in the world at the time. with Jeanneau, one of France’s largest yacht manufacturers.

Inchcape buys into the business, becoming a majority shareholder.

79 Move to Success Industrial Building in Tuen Mun. Factory opens in Ireland. Talks begin with Bic about windsurfing sail contract.

NeilPryde windsurfing brand launched.

Neil Pryde Limited wins the Men’s and Ladies’ divisions at the 1981 Division II World Championships in Miami, Florida.

Pascal Maka sets new world record.

Ken Winner wins at the Pan Am World Cup at Kailua.

Relationship established with Carl Kohl in Germany.

First Gerber computer cutter installed at Wo Fung Industrial. NeilPryde USA sets up a sail loft in Southern California.

The company installs its first Wang computer.

Yuri Farrant’s film ‘Wings of the Future’ debuts.

Office in Fanling closes and the whole Hong Kong-based business moves to Tuen Mun.

Factory in Ireland closes, as volumes drop.

Laminated Products sets up.

88 The first Robert Masters’ video ‘Fast Forward’ appears.

93 Adventure Sports Inc launched in America.

Tiga sold to Bic.

Neil Pryde Limited acquires rights to JP Australia.

The Pryde Group established. Company moves into its current offices. NeilPryde RS:X board accepted by ISAF as the official One Design board for the 2008 Olympic Games.

08 Antoine Albeau sets a new outright sailing speed record of 49.09 knots. NeilPryde RS:X class rig successfully used at the Olympic Games in China. Confirmed as the official rig for the 2012 Games in London.

10 NeilPryde Bikes launches.

ever THe cOmpeTITOr

NEIL PRYDE AT OTAHUHU SAILING CLUB, CIRCA 1951

John Chaw, American Windsurfer

24 | WILL TO WIN ever the Competitor.

meeT Neil Pryde A large number of people, even inside the sport, would have no idea that the company is named after a real man. Many think Neil Pryde is just a brand name. He leads the number one windsurfing brand in the world, employing more than 2500 people globally and with sales in 2008 that exceeded US$100 million. But Neil Pryde himself doesn’t windsurf. He’s a champion yachtsman. He is one of New Zealand’s most successful entrepreneurs. Yet most New Zealanders have never heard of him. He still works the better part of 12-hour days, six days a week and travels for up to four months every year. He is a man with strong views who admires that in others. One of his great skills is that he can bring highly opinionated and confident people together and get them to work as a team. He loves the thrill of the deal. Neil will make a deal work long after others have given up hope. He has an appetite for finding new markets, graphically illustrated by a saying among the Neil Pryde Limited dealers in Poland. “Hardly had the Russians left, and Neil Pryde was there talking to us.”

NEIL PRYDE SAIL TESTING ON HI FLYER, CIRCA 1993.

26 | WILL TO WIN ever the Competitor.

NOT QUITE AN ALL BLACK: AUCKLAND GRAMMAR SCHOOL RUGBY TEAM, 1954.

GrowiNG uP iN New ZealaNd Neil was the youngest of the three kids in the Pryde family. His father was the Bank Manager for the local Bank of New Zealand in Te Aroha, a rural township in the Thames Valley, where farming was the main sector. It was, Neil reflects back now, a long way from the water, at least culturally. Every year though, come Christmas, the family, just like families across the country, would embark on that great summer tradition – the long break. Like some massive national salmon run, cars everywhere would be filled to overflowing with as much of the house as could be fitted into such a confined space, a yacht or caravan would be loaded onto a makeshift tow bar, tea would be poured into thermos flasks and the great escape to what New Zealanders refer to as “the back of beyond” would begin. This perilous and often arduous journey, undertaken without seat belts in cars of often questionable safety and terrible suspension, would be broken up by regular stops at rest areas on the side of the road for home baking, weak tea and ablutions in the nearby bushes, usually in order of family seniority.

inch of capacity – but nothing, it seems, would stop New Zealanders from getting away to their holidays, as the whole nation shuddered to a halt to enjoy the sunshine and the great outdoors. It was not unusual for businesses and shops to be closed for weeks at a time. Then, as if on an agreed signal, the great return would begin – and the roads would be clogged as the nation upped sticks and headed back to work en masse.

Cars would overheat, tempers would flare, camping grounds would be filled to within an

When Neil’s father became Bank Manager in Papakura, the family moved to what was then the

The Prydes were no exception to this chaos. Every year, they too would head for the sea and the beach house they rented at Thornton’s Bay on the Thames Coast. That’s how Neil’s older brother, Ian, got into sailing. It’s also why Neil was out on the waters off Thornton Bay by age nine or ten in a rowing boat, and sailing P-class by the time he was twelve.

outskirts of Auckland, and Ian joined the Otahuhu Sailing Club down on the Tamaki Estuary. The house the Prydes lived in was literally behind the bank itself. Before long, Ian was building boats in a car shed at the back of the property. Sheds have been a staple of the New Zealand way of life for decades. On the one hand, they have fulfilled the purely functional role of being a place to store tools. But, much more importantly culturally, they were, and still are for many, the place that New Zealand men go to be alone and to tinker. In their shed, surrounded by papers, plans, half-abandoned meals, glue, lawnmowers and usually under a single inadequate lightbulb with a second-hand radio belting out the classics, New Zealand men have happily slaved away at their favourite projects for hours, days, years. Whole families can recall growing up only seeing the males of the household sporadically or waving the shed goodnight as they went to bed. This tinkering could take many forms. For some it was cars. For others, furniture or things around the house. Some used their tinkering time to invent. And in the case of Ian, and later Neil, the shed was the place where all manner of boats were built. Hardly surprising. This was a time when everybody who was into sailing built their own boats, sailed them, sold them and then built another one. Which explains why building boats in the garage became quite the norm in the Pryde household from the time the boys were teens. Slowly everything else in the space was edged out as boatbuilding took up more and more of Ian and Neil’s lives.

START OF THE BIG ADVENTURE: NEIL PRYDE AT AUCKLAND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ON HIS WAY TO HONG KONG, 1962.

Even the family car was forced to find alternative accommodation as hulls and tools invaded precious space. Most days after he finished school, Neil would get home, quickly do his homework and then he and his brother would disappear into the garage until around midnight. This meant of course that they literally grew up making and sailing boats together. To this day, Neil credits his brother as the major reason why he got into yachting and Ian remains one of the people he still truly admires for his commitment and contributions to the sport. Neil was a young teenager when Ian married Ruth and the couple started building their own house in Papakura. That was also the year Ian started his shoe shop. Not surprisingly, what with just being married, starting a new business and of course sailing, the house took longer than expected to finish, and one of the intended bedrooms was soon reassigned as the workshop. Neil recalls actually living in that room in his final year at primary school when his father was transferred to the Queen Street branch as Assistant Manager and his parents moved to Epsom. Ian was a real believer in the emerging Cherub class – one of the first – and it was in the workshop/bedroom at Ian’s house that some of the first Cherubs in the country got built. There was no choice. Looking back, Neil says it’s almost impossible to over-estimate the impact of the import restrictions of the time. The lack of materials pushed everyone to make everything for themselves and to simply invent answers to the problems they encountered. It’s an idea,

a commitment to creativity and doing things yourself – the number 8 wire mentality – that is still deeply embedded in the New Zealand psyche. Hugh Poole, a good friend of both Pryde brothers for many, many years (he first met Ian at a regatta in 1952), recalls that several nights a week after work Ian would ride his bike to Otahuhu College for night classes. There he learnt how to make the fittings he needed for his boats. The shed itself, Hugh recalls, was filled to the brim not just with boat-making gear but also with all the tools and paraphernalia normally housed there. He clearly remembers the day that Ian’s son Philip got into huge trouble with his father after the young man reached up to get a spade down off a hook in the crowded space and succeeded only in dislodging the implement. It went clear through the boat Ian was building at the time.

Industries, which was part of the Fisher & Paykel Group and made Murphy television receivers, Remington razors, car wiring harnesses and other electrical products. That job taught him a whole lot about why attention to detail is so important, and also about how a business that creates products makes its money.

At the end of the school year, Neil moved to Epsom to live with his parents, but the family soon moved back to Papakura when Neil’s father took up a new role touring the North Island for the bank and Neil once again crewed with Ian. By the time he’d finished at Auckland Grammar, Neil had his own Cherub class boat.

In the meantime, Ian represented New Zealand in a boat called Calypso at the International 14 Class for the Prince of Wales Cup. (The event itself was, to the huge surprise of the Brits, actually won by another New Zealander, Geoff Smale.) On the way home, Ian went to the World Flying Dutchman Championships in Germany, where he met Rolly Tasker who had lost out to Peter Mander at the 1956 Games but who would win the event in Germany. Ian returned full of enthusiasm for the new class, suggesting he and Neil team up and try and make the Olympic team. In fact, rumour has it that when Ian went to the International 14 competition, he packed his 14’ boat in a 20’ container. The container that came home though did not contain Calypso, which had apparently been sold, but rather two Flying Dutchman hulls, one for Ian himself and one allegedly for another sailor, Don Winston.

High school was followed by time at Auckland University studying accounting – a profession Neil’s father said Neil could always rely on. At the same time, Neil worked at the Tax Department, because they paid him to study and gave him plenty of time off to do so. After a year, he moved to another job as an accountant at Allied

The high-performance Cherub dinghy proved a useful stepping stone for Neil, and he didn’t take much persuading to graduate to Flying Dutchman. In part, the attraction was the speed. But there were two other developments that had occurred within a year of each other that made the Flying Dutchman really appealing. Firstly, in 1956,

28 | WILL TO WIN ever the Competitor.

Neil was already New Zealand champion in the Cherub class when the Pryde brothers made a serious play for selection as the flying dutchman crew for the rome olympics. ian skippered and Neil crewed, and they just missed out, coming second in the selection series. ever the competitor, Neil went back into Cherub class and continued racing. later, he would return to flying dutchman hoping to make the 1964 Games with his own boat. Peter Mander won the country’s first yachting gold medal in Melbourne. His success made the dream of winning at the Olympics a reality, and reset everyone’s sights. Then, in 1957, the Flying Dutchman was selected to replace the Sharpie at the 1960 Olympic Games. Neil was already New Zealand champion in the Cherub class when the Pryde brothers made a serious play for selection as the Flying Dutchman crew for the Rome Olympics. Ian skippered and Neil crewed, and they just missed out, coming second in the selection series. Ever the competitor, Neil went back into Cherub class and continued racing. Later, he would return to Flying Dutchman hoping to make the 1964 Games with his own boat. In many ways these years marked the coming of age for New Zealand sailing, even if the participants themselves perhaps didn’t realise it at the time. Sailing off the Tamaki Yacht Club on Auckland Harbour every Saturday afternoon were sailors who would go on to be ranked as amongst the very best in the world. Geoff Smale sailed there, so did Laurie Davidson, Ian Pryde and Ron Watson. On any given weekend, you’d find Helmer Pedersen, who would go on to win the gold medal at the 1964 Games, out on the water. Jock Bilger was there too. The whole group sailed together and developed together, and in the process, they welcomed new talent – formidable talent – into their ranks. All were drawn by one idea – the chance to compete as New Zealanders for Olympic glory. It was a time, says Hugh Poole, to “sail, race, drink beer, argue and then sail boats again”. As his passion for Flying Dutchman increased, Neil became more involved than ever in organising the running of the class and raising much needed funds. He became the Secretary Treasurer of the NZ Flying Dutchman Class Association, working alongside Don St Clair Brown, who was the Association’s Chairman and a highly respected and prominent sailor in his own right in Auckland. Together, they organised the first Interdominion Championship, bringing a big team across from Australia for a major Flying Dutchman event involving 60 yachts on Auckland Harbour. Rolly Tasker made the trip across. Of course, it didn’t take long for Ian to introduce the champion sailor and sailmaker to his younger brother. Ian was so impressed by the sails that Tasker was making that, according to Hugh Poole, he had a batch of them stashed in the front of his own boat and started selling them to other sailors at

EARLY DAYS IN THE CHERUB CLASS: IAN AND NEIL PRYDE, CIRCA 1954.

the regatta. After a time, learning that Neil had an accounting background, Rolly offered the young New Zealander the chance to come up to Hong Kong and work in the business he was setting up there. For now though, Neil’s head was elsewhere. In 1963, as part of the build-up and as a precursor to the selection races for the 1964 Games, it was announced that a New Zealand team was going to be sent to Europe to sail for the whole summer in a trip sponsored by one of the tobacco companies and NZ Yachting Federation. The Federation itself had been set up in 1952 specifically to help New Zealanders get to big international sports events such as the upcoming 1956 Melbourne Games. Game on. The brothers, close as they were, didn’t hesitate to compete intensely against each other for one of the coveted places at the selection races at Lake Rotorua. In the end, it all came down to the last heat of the last race. Neil was lying second in the overall placings, with his brother Ian third. In that last fateful round, a handling mistake saw Neil capsized and out of the race. Ian was chosen to go to Europe, and a disappointed Neil made a decision that ultimately would change his life. If he couldn’t go to Europe as a build-up to the Olympics, he would take up Rolly Tasker’s offer and head overseas for a few months to Hong Kong. There he hoped to gain an inside understanding of the business of sail making, before coming back to New Zealand for the Olympic selection races. Of course that’s not what happened. Neil says that once he got to Hong Kong, he got so involved in what he was doing that he didn’t get back in time to compete for a place in the New Zealand Olympic team. The race at Lake Rotorua would be one of several ’what-if’ moments in the life of Neil Pryde. Neil himself is in no doubt that if he’d won that last race, or even come second, he’d have gone to Europe with the New Zealand team and then come home and carried on getting ready for the Games. In fact, he’d already sold the boat he’d had in Rotorua and started building a new boat for the trials. But, fortunately as it turns out, it was not to be … Of course, it didn’t exactly feel like that at the time. Meanwhile, the team that had been chosen for the build-up tour made their way to Europe, and, true to form, Ian won many of the races that the team competed in across Europe. He took part in a keenly competed event held back at Browns Bay on the North Shore to decide who would represent

New Zealand at the Games in Tokyo, at which the lead changed several times in the course of the 10race series. But when Helmer Pedersen beat him and then won gold at the 1964 Games, Ian was so disappointed that he pretty much gave up sailing after he got home. Hugh Poole says he remembers Ian being at an Interdominion Flying Dutchman regatta in Melbourne in December 1964 - January 1965 but he thinks that was Ian’s last race. After that, Ian took up gliding and sailplanes. With his characteristic grit and competitiveness, he went on to become the New Zealand gliding champion and even fixed up gliders under his house. Years later, he would die in an event at Omarama in the South Island. Just before he left for that competition though, and in his last conversation with Hugh Poole, Ian told him he was actually going to give up gliding and intended coming home to build a Farr 38. Clearly the man who had first introduced Neil to the water, and who had done so much for New Zealand yachting, retained a deep love of the sea. Life’s strange that way.

30 | WILL TO WIN ever the Competitor.

moviNG To hoNG koNG In August 1963, Neil Pryde arrived in Hong Kong on a flight from Australia to be met by Rolly Tasker. The place was hot, humid and crowded – a huge culture shock for a young man who had just left the relative calm and cold of an Auckland winter. Everything was bustling and busy. Security was tight, with road blocks everywhere, trying to stem the huge numbers of illegal immigrants fleeing across the border from neighbouring China. Neil had come all the way from Auckland to work as a manager for the acclaimed sailor in the new joint venture Tasker had established with American Marine Limited. The sail loft was situated in the American Marine shipyard and had only been open a matter of months when Neil arrived. The idea was that the factory would produce sails for American Marine’s boats as well as any other boat builders it could persuade to become clients. Tasker and his wife had an apartment in the countryside near the factory, and Neil stayed with them there. Neil’s view of his own future was that he would spend a few months, no more than a year, getting to understand the sail-making business a little better. Then, perhaps, he’d return to New Zealand and get ready for the Olympics. Given how hard it was to import goods like sails into New Zealand, he’d also be able to start a sail-making business. Hong Kong, in other words, would be a great break and a good next move. If Neil ever thought there was going to be some hand-holding involved, he was in for a rude awakening. After just a couple of months, Tasker announced he was heading back to Australia, leaving the young and inexperienced New Zealander to live in the apartment Rolly and his wife now had in central Kowloon and to deal not just with the day to day running of the business in a country he barely knew but also the banks and other important relationships. Welcome to the deep end. With just three years working experience behind him, Neil had no idea how to

run any business, never mind one as logistically complicated as sail making. He learnt though. And he learnt fast. He quickly took a shine to being in business, and six months later, when Tasker returned to Hong Kong, Neil bought the 20% shareholding that American Marine owned. He met two other very important people at this time as well. The first was Nina, the woman who would become his wife, who was working as a supervisor in the factory. The other person was David Wilson, who had recently been appointed to run the finances of American Marine. David and Neil would flat together for a while, and later David Wilson would be instrumental in helping Neil gain a new business partner. David says Hong Kong worked for Neil then – and since – because it provided the perfect environment in which to apply the New Zealand spirit. There’s something in that. Because although Neil himself has family in Hong Kong and says he feels more connected to Hong Kong than New Zealand, to this day he retains some key ’Kiwi’ attributes: he thinks laterally; ignores tradition; moves quickly; doesn’t play games; builds strong relationships; and loves to compete. Even now, though Neil Pryde Limited is spread across the world, with Neil at its helm, that spirit of “Why the ____ not?” still resonates throughout the culture. Nine months into a new job thousands of miles from home, Neil Pryde became a partner and the Managing Director of a business he’d only intended to stay with a short time.

Neil’s timing, though accidental, was impeccable. The demand for sails made in Hong Kong was actually growing globally, as fibreglass and other technologies made mass production of yachts a reality, and boat builders worldwide worked out they could source good quality sails for those yachts at very attractive prices compared with Europe or the United States. Hong Kong was becoming the smart place to source, and Rolly Tasker HK Ltd and several other companies now had the chance to make the most of their new-found status. As the orders came in, the business grew. To add momentum, Neil worked to build relationships, getting to know people, forming connections in Europe and the United States through telex, cables and writing endless letters. It was "hard yakka", as New Zealanders like to say, but it worked. Communication was not the only aspect of doing business then that was worlds away from what we take for granted these days. Shipping, too, was in its pre-container phase, which meant every order had to be packed into wooden boxes and taken down to the docks. There, it was loaded on junks to go out to the ships that would be sailing later that night. Neil still recalls bobbing about on the harbour late in the evening trying to persuade an unimpressed captain to take his cargo. Conditions, he says, were amazingly primitive – a far cry from the efficient and well run harbour that is Hong Kong today.

32 | WILL TO WIN ever the Competitor.

ON THE WAY TO OLYMPIC GAMES MEXICO, 1968: NEIL PRYDE AND PETER GAMBLE

Nine months into a new job thousands of miles from home, Neil Pryde became a partner and the managing director of a business he’d only intended to stay with a short time. A couple of years into his time in Hong Kong, as the Cultural Revolution took hold in China, there were bombings and gunfights in the streets, as Communist insurgents and the British fought to gain the upper hand. Police stood guard at the site where Neil went to work every day, and for years Neil and others had police escorts there and back home. By the time of the Vietnam War, Hong Kong was also home to the American Seventh Fleet and Pan Am was running a huge number of flights from Saigon to Hong Kong every day. The streets were filled with sailors and army people, many of whom were on rest and rec from the battlefields, and looking for good times. The restless energy was palpable in the unforgiving humidity. Around 1967, Neil established a business relationship with Hans Dreifaldt, an exporter/ importer from Sweden who was interested

in sailing. Neil can’t remember the details of how they met but he does recall that Dreifaldt approached him saying he wanted to become an agent for the Tasker business in Scandinavia. Dreifaldt’s idea was simple: sell inexpensive sails made in Hong Kong by Tasker to Swedish boat builders and customers. The Swedes love their sailing and the country boasted a sizeable pleasurecraft industry, particularly yachts. It was a no-fail formula. And it worked. Too well. Dreifaldt soon had orders flooding in – to the point where they completely overwhelmed the factory’s capacity and clients became frustrated by the inevitable delays.

Europe and America. Tasker, for whatever reason, didn’t seem interested. Meanwhile the orders kept coming, and the delays and frustration mounted. In the end, it would be the Swedish agent who would make a suggestion that would see a parting of the ways between the two owners. The proposal from Dreifaldt that Neil leave Tasker and set up in partnership with him came at the right time, and Neil accepted it on that basis. Seven years at Tasker was about to come to an end.

Popularity proved a problem child. To Neil, recently married to Nina, starting a family and wanting to grow the business, there was a real need by the late 1960s to invest resources and gear up to meet the new levels of demand coming from

NEIL PRYDE VISITING THE MECCA OF SAIL MAKING: HOOD SAILS, MARBLE HEAD, MASSACHUSETTS, LATE 1960'S.

PHOTO: Darrell Wong

34 | WILL TO WIN ever the Competitor.

The ComPeTiTive yaChTsmaN The interesting thing about plans is how much they change, and what that comes to mean. As the short time away working for Tasker in Hong Kong turned into years, Neil never did make it back to New Zealand to start a sailmaking business. He also didn’t make it back for the yacht trials for the 1964 Olympics nor for the 1968 Olympics.

changes. He is absolutely, completely focused on winning. He believes in his crew and he lets them do their work while he does his, which is steering the boat around the course as quickly as possible. Then, as soon as the race is over, that’s it. He’s out of there.”

The fact was that in his first year in Hong Kong, Neil was so busy that he did virtually no sailing at all. But around 1965, he started teaming with Peter Gamble in the 505 class – a high-performance dinghy with a two man crew – and they became the Hong Kong champions. And it was because they were the reigning 505 champions, and also because of Neil’s track record in the Flying Dutchman in New Zealand, that the pair ended up representing Hong Kong in the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico.

Torben recounts how on one occasion when Neil was visiting him in Denmark, Torben invited him to be part of a regatta that the local sail-boat club held every Wednesday. Thinking Neil might enjoy an opportunity to relax and enjoy his favourite pastime, Torben asked Neil to come to the race – and was met with a blunt and colourful rebuttal. Eventually, Neil relented but was absolutely adamant he wasn’t going to steer. As they headed for the starting position, Torben quietly invited Neil to take the helm – and from the moment he got hold of the wheel, Torben says Neil showed absolutely no interest in giving it back. They absolutely trounced the rest of the field (until, ironically, a technicality meant they actually ended up being disqualified).

The build-up was restricted to the time Neil could afford to be away from the factory – three months off work in America getting ready. Neil brought his boat up from New Zealand and the team competed at the North American Championships before travelling to Acapulco. There they teamed up with the New Zealand Olympic team and manager Hugh Poole and trained with them. Even with the little time they had allocated for preparation, Neil and Peter still finished in the top half of the fleet for the Flying Dutchman class at the Mexico Olympics – the best result Hong Kong had ever achieved up until then. The experience, he says, was amazing. After the Games, Neil sold the boat and he and Peter drove all the way back to San Diego in their hired Ford Falcon – a trip Neil describes as “the longest drive of my life”. In 1970, Neil went to the World 505 Championships, again with Peter. He came back to start the Neil Pryde Limited company, and getting the business established and stabilised would prove so time consuming that he would, by his own admission, only sail intermittently over the next 10 years. He would, however, succeed in a bid to have the World 505 Championships hosted in Hong Kong in 1972. That one-hundred boat event did a lot to consolidate Hong Kong’s standing in the world of yachting. Towards the end of the decade, Neil began being invited to sail on ocean-racing yachts with owners that he had met through business, and this time his passion for competitive yacht racing refused to be held back.

NEIL PRYDE RACING ON HI FLYER, KENWOOD CUP, HAWAII, 1994.

He sailed in the Quarter Ton Cup in Sajima, Japan in 1978, then in San Remo, Italy with Helmer Pedersen in 1979, and again in Auckland in 1980. He took to the Etchells class from around 1981 and over the next 10 years went to the World Championships three times. He was also the Hong Kong National Champion for quite a few years. In 1983, he finished third in the One Ton Cup in Brazil, again with Helmer Pedersen, with sunstreaker, a boat designed by Tony Castro and owned by Ray Banham, who also funded the campaign. The ocean racing bug then really took hold, and by the late 1980s, Neil says he had pretty much stopped racing the Etchells and was moving into bigger and bigger boats – a Farr 40 steadfast, then another Farr 40 hi flyer, a Sydney 46 hi fidelity, a Welbourn 46 boat also called hi fidelity, because it was a reincarnation of the Sydney 46, a Farr 52 hifi, and then another hifi, his current 52, a reincarnation of the Farr 52, designed again by Welbourn. Today, Neil Pryde still helms, racing throughout Asia with a hand-picked professional 15-man crew who he flies in specially for events. At the end of 2009, he won the King’s Cup in Phuket, Thailand an unprecedented fourth time. In 2010, he won both Line Honours and Overall in the 2010 Rolex China Sea Race. (He had won Line Honours the last time the race was run in 2008.) Word has it though, that even after he has won, Neil sometimes catches the next plane home. Once the competition is over, it’s time to get back to work. He is without doubt the region’s most successful yachtsman, having won the Asian Circuit several times and the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy on six occasions. But then, no-one who knows Neil is surprised by his success. He is a man who says quite openly he sees little point in doing something unless you’re very good at it. Torben Kornum, who's known Neil for many years in the business and has sailed with him on a number of occasions, says he’s never met anyone who is so competitive. “He switches,” says Torben. “Before a race, he’s totally relaxed and fun. But the moment the countdown starts, he completely

Kevin Costin, who has been Neil’s yachting campaign organiser and tactician for more than 10 years, says Neil commands huge respect within the yachting fraternity. “It’s no accident that he is the most successful sailor in Asia. He hasn’t just won all the major regional events – he’s won many of them several times. There are at least three reasons for that. First of all, Neil has amazing concentration. He says yachting is his distraction from business but when he’s racing, he’s locked in – and he can drive as good as the best of them. Secondly, he’s got a great crew who are loyal to him, and he to them. When he’s racing, he’s just part of the crew. He concentrates on the driving and leaves everybody to do their jobs. Thirdly, he never rests on his laurels. He wins a lot of races but he never stops looking for ways to improve the boat.” It’s easy to forget that the man at the helm is 70 years old.

36 | WILL TO WIN ever the Competitor.

NEIL PRYDE ON HIFI TAKING LINE HONOURS IN THE ROLEX CHINA SEA RACE, SUBIC BAY, PHILIPPINES, 2008.

38 | Will to Win Ever the Competitor.

Aside

Surviving a tsunami On Boxing Day 2004, Neil, his wife Nina and Torben Kornum and his family were all on holiday together, anchored just off the beach at Phi Phi Island in Thailand. It was 10 o’clock and the group had just finished having breakfast on the beach. Torben wanted to go and use the restrooms a few minutes walk away but Neil for some reason remembers being impatient to be off. A few minutes later they were at the yacht and as they got there, they saw that the water in the bay was receding quickly. Fishing boats were now sitting on the sand. Recognising something wasn’t right, Neil quickly raised the anchor, got the motor running and they headed out. They were around 300 metres offshore and barely out of the way when the water came rushing back in again.

as three huge surges demolished, broke and drowned everything in their way. Neil remembers looking back at what had been the crowded beach and seeing no-one and nothing there. Just a huge cloud of dust climbing into the clear warm air. Everything had literally disappeared, and the waters were suddenly swarming with debris. The six of them had been there on that beach literally fifteen minutes before.

Neil says he doesn’t remember a big wave or anything dramatic. The real damage occurred as the waves receded, taking people, houses and everything else with them. “The place was crowded,” says Neil. “Hundreds of people had just got off the ferries to have a nice day on the island.” 1500 died there in that bay that morning in the space of just minutes,

They left the area when the rescue teams started to arrive. They only learned how lucky they had really been when they stepped ashore the following morning to have breakfast. CNN was playing at the little restaurant they chose, and the full extent of what had happened became clear.

“It was impossible to imagine what would have happened if we had stayed there just that few minutes longer. A beautiful morning, people everywhere, smiling and happy – and literally within the shortest space of time, complete mayhem. You couldn’t believe that everything and everyone who had been there was gone.” A few days later, on his way back to Hong Kong, Neil had to pass through the area again. “The bodies of hundreds of people had surfaced,” he says. “They were pulling them from the sea or from where they had washed up. It was terrible. The sights and the smells of what I saw that day will stay with me forever. To have been so close to such an enormous human tragedy was life-changing.”

sea

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sTarTiNG The ComPaNy By 1969, Neil Pryde was becoming frustrated. Working with Rolly Tasker had been a great experience and Neil felt he had seized the opportunity and done a good job of building Rolly Tasker HK Ltd into a credible business. But by the end of the decade, with orders flooding in from Europe and America, the company was under-resourced and feeling it. In fact, Neil felt Tasker’s head was somewhere else, and that the two now faced a philosophical cross-roads – with Neil keen to up the ante and grow the business, and Tasker, it seemed, content to leave things as they were. In early 1970, when Hans Dreifaldt suggested Neil think about leaving the Tasker business to set up in a 50/50 partnership with him, Neil hesitated – for good reason – but not for long. This was not a decision to be taken lightly. Apart from the loyalty Neil felt to Tasker, doing so meant walking away from his shareholding in the business. Then there was the small matter of the non-compete clause in his employment contract that specifically stipulated he wasn’t to do what he was on the verge of doing. For all that, the idea was exciting for a number of reasons. It meant a new company name – his own. It meant a new partner. Most of all, it meant a running start. The new business would start well and truly with the wind at its back. But while Neil and Dreifaldt could see the opportunities, Neil claims Tasker didn’t seem to take discussions about his leaving very seriously

at all. “I don’t believe he thought about the repercussions,” says Neil, “perhaps because he felt he owned the relationships. I think he thought I’d fall flat on my face without the Tasker name to back me up.” If Tasker did indeed think that, he’d under-estimated the state of play by a large degree. After 7 years in the job and all the travelling he’d done, Neil had a sizeable portfolio of clients who trusted him. They included Alex Roth, who would play an important role in the months ahead, and the people at Hobiecat, whom Neil had built a strong relationship with. Couple those contacts with Dreifaldt’s booming Swedish business, and the business held by Art Thompson – a Tasker agent based in Chicago who had a good portfolio of US boatbuilders to supply – and the potential order book looked pretty healthy. In fact, given the work that was backing up, the new company would start with more orders and a bigger base of operations than had been the case with Tasker.

Around May 1970, Neil resigned as Managing Director, took time off to go sailing in England and then came back ready to set up the new business in September 1970. Meanwhile, Tasker flew back to Hong Kong and took over the running of his business. Once he found out what Neil was doing, he promptly sued for breach of contract and the parties seemed headed for court. It was a messy way to start a business – but you know what, at least something was happening.

TIM PARSONS FITTING A SAIL BATTEN, LATE 1970S.

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faNliNG With his mind made up that he would go, Neil started sharing his plans to leave and set up his own business with his key contacts. They responded positively. On his way to England to race in the World 505 Championships at Plymouth, Neil went via New York and visited Alex Roth, the President of Sea Snark, who he had worked with while he was still at Tasker. There he signed a deal with him. He also spoke to a number of other key clients while he was away. So Neil arrived back in Hong Kong with business in hand. That only left the small problem of the fact that the new company didn’t actually have a factory. James Ho, a decorating contractor, had done some work for Neil renovating the Tasker factory. When Neil shared what he was planning, James introduced him to a man who owned some farmland in Fanling in the northern New Territories, right out near the Chinese border. It was the perfect site for a factory. To build a factory on this type of farmland in the New Territories at the time, you needed a ’temporary industrial permit’ issued by the New Territories Administration. In theory, such permits were only for small-scale businesses and there was a limit on the size of the buildings. But it seems lots of things were possible. A common

factory and installed 20 staff with machines to get started on the orders. There, he could make small sails in large quantities. These were payment on delivery contracts, so in just its first month of operation, the company was generating much needed cashflow. The space didn’t have room for much else though. “We converted the toilet into the office, so I tell people that in those early days I spent many days in the bathroom,” says Neil. While he got on with running the new company and the factory, Maria Wu ran the administrative side with extraordinary efficiency. She would be there throughout the formative years as Neil Pryde Limited found its feet.

Meanwhile, Neil’s partner Mr Dreifaldt left Sweden and moved to Switzerland, placing his investment in Neil Pryde Limited through his Royal Group of Companies based in Lichtenstein. He and Thompson sent through their orders and Neil’s team got on with doing the work. The two partners had little to do with one another on a day to day basis. Just like when he was at Tasker, Neil took hands-on control of operations. One of the big sailing successes of the late 1960s was the Hobiecat. Named after Hobie Alter, the company’s founder, these small catamarans were an instant hit. Neil had first been involved in making sails for them at Tasker but, once again,

“we converted the toilet into the office, so i tell people that in those early days i spent many days in the bathroom.” practice was to build a single storey building, then a second building, then add storeys to both buildings, then put a corridor between them … which might explain how Neil Pryde Limited came, over the course of ten years, to have a 100,000 square feet factory purpose made for sail making. For now though, time was a-pressing. Based on the contracts he’d already been offered, Neil Pryde Limited was scheduled to start delivering sails to its new customers in October, a month after it officially opened for business. The problem was that the factory wouldn’t be finished until at least December. So, in the meantime, Neil rented a couple of apartments in a low cost area of town, knocked out the walls to make a small sewing FANLING FACTORY UNDER CONSTRUCTION, 1970.

By the end of the year, the Fanling factory was ready and Neil moved his staff out of the apartments and into the new building. The place was so remote that getting there every day was an adventure in itself – taking up to one and a half hours from Kowloon along a single narrow road, with frequent hold-ups for livestock and other obstacles. By January, the 20 staff who the business had started with had increased to 50, many of them skilled people who were lured out to Fanling from Tasker. With the new factory in place, the company was soon generating large quantities of sails for clients throughout Europe and the US.

here was a case where the Tasker factory couldn’t deliver what was needed and the contract had fallen over. When the new company started, Neil looked to take up things where they had been left and soon picked up almost the whole business. The Fanling operation mushroomed. By 1971, business was pouring in and the case with Rolly Tasker had finally been settled out of court. Conditions in the factory were tough, hot and uncomfortable – for the first year, there wasn’t even any air conditioning – but somehow, most days at least, it almost didn’t matter.

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sea sNarks The Sea Snark was small and made from polystyrene, with some wooden components. Its makers envisaged it would soon become ‘the Volkswagen of the sea’. The idea was to build a small, inexpensive sail boat that, at just $99, everyone could afford and that would bring families to the water in their thousands. Alex Roth came to Neil looking for someone to build the wooden components for his little nine-foot-long boats. Each Snark would have a centreboard, rudder and seats made from marine grade plywood. The rest of the boat would be polystyrene. Neil put Alex in touch with James Ho, who got started with a small factory in the

of course by the fact that no-one knew how to actually do the screenprinting. Just as well Neil’s a New Zealander. With his Kiwi can-do attitude, he made it his business to become the screenprinting expert and was soon spending many hours screenprinting sails and then hanging them up all over the factory to dry overnight.

KOOL were responsible for all the marketing but under the terms of the contract Sea Snark had to deliver the boats anywhere in North America, including Canada, within 14 days of receiving an order. What’s more, the company projected that it would need 60,000 boats. Which meant 60,000 sails. Which meant all the materials and stock needed to be ordered and prepared ahead of time. The team worked day and night throughout the summer months in a building with no air conditioning to fulfill the order. And this was on top of the deluge of orders they had coming in from Europe and America.

“we’d print all night, and sew all day, because there wasn’t enough room in the factory to do both. once the sails were laid out to dry, you couldn’t do anything else.” back of Kowloon. Soon, Ho had carpenters and woodworking machinery churning out thousands of kits of parts. 10,000 of them at a time would be packed into a container and sent from Mr Ho’s factory. Neil’s team was making the sails – and it was this work that kept them going through those early months as the factory was completed. “They weren’t really sails in the sense that we think of sails now,” explains Neil. “In fact, they were made of umbrella material. And the real challenge wasn’t making them, it was screenprinting the graphics on them.” Not helped

“We’d print all night, and sew all day,” says Neil, “because there wasn’t enough room in the factory to do both. Once the sails were laid out to dry, you couldn’t do anything else.” A year later, Roth pulled off a massive deal – perhaps the biggest promotion involving sail making ever attempted. The company arranged for KOOL cigarettes to use the Sea Snark as their summer promotion. The offer to smokers was simple: buy a carton of KOOL cigarettes, redeem a coupon and you could buy a Sea Snark decked out in the KOOL colours with a screenprinted KOOL sail for under US$100 delivered to your door.

Neil Pryde Limited would keep making products for Snark for many years after this promotion. But they would never even attempt anything so epic in such a compressed timeframe again. Thank God.

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“THey WereN’T reaLLy saILs IN THe seNse THaT We THINK Of saILs NOW, IN facT, THey Were made Of umbreLLa maTerIaL. aNd THe reaL cHaLLeNge WasN’T maKINg THem, IT Was screeNprINTINg THe grapHIcs ON THem.”

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yaChTiNG beCalmed The early 1970s were big years in the world of yachting. But mid-decade, an industry recession meant even established boat builders were starting to see drop-offs in their business. A number of factors contributed.

NEIL PRYDE ON SUNSTREAKER (KH1088) ON HIS WAY TO WINNING THE CHINA SEA RACE, 1988.

The biggest one of course was the oil shock crisis that decade, which cut discretionary spending. Another was the glut in fibreglass yachts and the corresponding filling up of marinas. The boom in these yachts had had the desired effect – it had indeed brought more people to the sport – but marinas had not expanded at the

full sails As soon as the factory at Fanling was completed, Neil Pryde Limited picked up the O’Day account in the US through Art Thompson. O’Day was a famous name in boat building in the US. Neil had first dealt with them during his time at Tasker but they brought their business to Neil Pryde Limited in January 1971 because they recognised that the new company had the capacity they were looking for. In the second half of 1971, Hans Dreifaldt secured Albin Marin, one of the largest sail-boat builders in Europe, as a potential client. The Swedish boatbuilding company made between two thousand and two and a half thousand 25 - 30’ sail boats per year and while the boats themselves were supplied with sails, Albin Marin didn’t make the sails. This was a huge opportunity. The account was about the same size as the O’Day business and unlike Albin Marin, Neil had had no dealings with them previously. Neil Pryde Limited invited Albin Marin’s key decision-makers to Hong Kong and successfully pitched for the business. Delivery started the following year and Albin Marin quickly became one of the sail-making business’ largest clients. Thanks to these two large pieces of business, the Snark contract, the Hobiecat business as well as dozens of smaller boat-building firms, Neil Pryde Limited was making hundreds of sets of sails for

sail boats by 1973. In fact, Neil estimates, they were probably the biggest mass producer of yacht sails in the world at the time. The two key elements to success were scale and an international clientèle. Sails were still made of woven fabric and Neil’s dream was to make them on a volume basis, like clothes, only bigger. He took his cue from his surroundings. Hong Kong was the garment making centre of the world at the time, home of the famous ‘Hong Kong shirt’. Why couldn’t he take the same manufacturing concept and apply it on a larger scale? He applied some hard-learnt lessons as well. One of the great tensions at Tasker had been that the company oscillated between making custom sails for individual sailors and mass producing sails for export. With service expectations at a local level being so much higher than they were for international accounts, balancing international

and local demands led to inevitable and at times overwhelming conflicts around priority. When the new company started, Neil had already decided he didn’t want to sell to consumers. The answer to that was a new business model: an OEM sailmaking business that was just for boatbuilders. It was easier, the orders were bigger and it meant they could focus on manufacturing. This was a significant departure from tradition because sail making at the time was still very much a custom trade oriented around private clients. This new style of working suited Neil’s partner Dreifaldt too because it meant that he could handle the company’s big accounts from his new home in Switzerland. Still the company found itself doing local work. To help look after these clients, Neil drafted in two men he had sailed with – Tim Parsons and Tim Yourieff – to do the designs and run the sailmaking operations for Hong Kong clients. Being locals themselves, it was a natural fit.

required rate to meet the rise in demand. So even if people wanted to build new yachts, and could afford to do so, finding a berth for them was a challenge.

Fortunately for Neil Pryde Limited, Hobiecat and Snark continued to do relatively well. The golden years of being an OEM sail manufacturer were over. Time to think about diversifying. But where? The answer was actually closer than perhaps anyone at Neil Pryde first realised.

As the crisis deepened, volumes fell and the money dried up. O’Day and Albin Marin struggled.

New ParTNer Neil and Hans Dreifaldt had gone into business together because they both saw opportunities and they were eager to make the most of them. But while there might have been agreement about the potential of the business, the relationship itself was uneasy. There was a sense of frustration for both parties from early on, and it never really abated. While there were probably a number of issues between the two men, the key problem it seems was one of control. As Managing Director, Neil felt he needed to be able to make the decisions required to run the company on a day to day basis. Documents needed to be signed more quickly and simply than having partners so far apart allowed. Neil also had control of the Board of Directors because his wife was a director. This meant he had a mandate to get things done because sign-off by two directors was required on all major decisions. Dreifaldt, who held his shares through his holding company, resisted and quite possibly resented

his partner’s autonomy. In time, a power struggle ensued. Various manoeuvres, including Dreifaldt having Neil’s wife removed as a director, led Neil to believe that the partnership was over and that he would have to buy Dreifaldt out. Dreifaldt however was not one to give up easily. The impasse was eventually broken by the bank that also recognised that Neil needed a new partner. It introduced Neil to a publicly listed conglomerate, Inchcape Enterprises, that were in expansion mode throughout Asia at the time and looking to diversify into new business lines. In 1976, Inchcape Enterprises bought not just

Dreifaldt’s half of Neil Pryde Limited, they also got 1% of Neil Pryde’s own share, making them the majority shareholder. Neil found himself a minority owner in a business with his name and, for the first time, reporting to another board. Though the dispute with Dreifaldt was frustrating, expensive and time consuming, it did yield some benefits. Neil found a partner business, Inchcape Enterprises, that would be with him through the boom years of windsurfing and right up until the industry consolidated. And he was reminded, once again, that the secret to success lies in surrounding yourself with good and loyal people. One of them was Peter Brown. Neil had first encountered Brown when he represented Tasker in the employment contract dispute. He was so impressed by the lawyer’s aggression and his commitment that, when it came time to negotiate with Dreifaldt, he didn’t hesitate to hire his former adversary.

WHAT THE HELL IS WIND SURF54 | Will to Win Sea.

- Neil Pryde, around 1975.

PHOTO: Darrell Wong

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TWO OF THE FIRST NEILPRYDE-BRANDED SAILS, 1982.

PHOTO: Darrell Wong

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NEILPRYDE PHOTOSHOOT, MID 1980S.

PHOTO: Darrell Wong

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wiNdsurfiNG PiCks uP PaCe Several people have laid claim to inventing windsurfing. Hoyle Schweitzer though probably made those claims loudly and more aggressively than most. In 1968, he and a man named Jim Drake filed the very first windsurfing patent, which was granted to them in 1970.1 Hoyle and his wife Diana then set up the company Windsurfing International to manufacture, promote and license windsurfer designs. The patent was jointly owned and then wholly licensed by Drake and Hoyle to Windsurfing International. Later, in 1973, they registered the term “windsurfer” as a trademark. That same year, Drake sold his half of the patent to Windsurfing International.2 Schweitzer went all out on an ambitious licensing programme to encourage manufacturers to take up production using his universal joint. The sport itself quickly gained momentum and by the time he was licensing European companies, the rush was on. According to Neil Pryde, one of the unsung heroes of this era was a sales and marketing manager named Peter Brockhaus, who worked in Germany, and who did a lot of hard yards to get the sport off the ground.

When Neil split from Tasker, the business carried on but only for a short time. Rolly Tasker sold out to Dutch sailmaker Gaastra, a famous name in European sail making who had seen the windsurfing trend way ahead of Neil, probably because they were based in Holland. That country had taken to the new sport with a passion. When Gaastra bought into the Tasker business, they changed the name of the company Neil Pryde had been in charge of to International Sailmakers Limited. Neil Pryde himself hadn’t gone looking for windsurfing business. As he says now, he didn’t know much about it and was very much a sailor at heart. But he kept reading about what Schweitzer was up to, and more and more of his people in Europe were talking about the windsurfing phenomenon. When companies from Europe

assembled a board combined with a sail in 19583. There was also reference to Newman Darby4 who had used a universal joint before the Schweitzer patent was granted. The lawyers claimed these cases showed that Schweitzer’s windsurfing concept was not new. The upsurge in windsurfing sails was great for Neil Pryde Limited though. It took hold as the yachting business was really running out of puff. In that sense, there’s an interesting parallel between Bic and Snark. Both added impetus at a critical moment and both did it through the sheer quantity of the orders they placed. The equation was a very simple one. As an OEM manufacturer for the big brands, Neil Pryde Limited had to do the numbers in order to make their numbers. It would change later of course. But then so would the sport. After the initial drive for footprint, there would be a fork in the road. Bic Sport would continue to plough the popularist route, while developments in Hawaii would kick-start the performance movement. Just as in any sport, some wanted to participate, others wanted to be

Neil Pryde limited was in the right place at the right time. as windsurfing took hold, european manufacturers started making equipment in europe. but they needed sails – and the place that was now an established name for sails was hong kong. The problems for Schweitzer started as windsurfing hit its stride and the big manufacturing brands started to challenge Schweitzer’s patent. Meanwhile, with yacht sail making slowing, Neil Pryde was looking for ways to supplement income. As he says now, he was in the right place at the right time. As windsurfing took hold, European manufacturers started making equipment in Europe. But, just like the boat builders, they needed sails – and the place in the world that was now an established name for sails – albeit sails for yachts – was Hong Kong.

FIRST OF THE NEILPRYDE-BRANDED SAILS, 1982.

Sailmakers like Cheong Lee had helped build Hong Kong’s reputation for modern sail making. There was no arguing with the craftsmanship of their handworked sails, and since the end of World War II they had steadily built themselves a global reputation. What Rolly Tasker’s company did was to add that extra element of design know-how to a traditional art. Tasker would also hire a supervisor from the Cheong Lee company to run the business. He didn’t stay. Instead, he spun off his own company – A Lam – which continues to this day. That, according to Neil, was the watershed moment because it meant that Hong Kong now had the critical mass it needed to meet the world’s new-found demand for quality sails.

started arriving looking for windsurfing sails, Neil wasn’t exactly going to turn them away. This was going to be big business, and Neil Pryde wanted in. The first order they picked up of any significance was Mistral. They didn’t keep them but they did get Bic – yes, the pen people – who had a windsurfer called the Dufour Wing, a super cheap windsurfer for which they wanted mass produced, cheap sails. The idea was to make a product that did for sport what the Biro had done for office supplies. By 1980, Neil Pryde Limited was churning out 100,000 sails per year for this one client. It snowballed from there, with HiFly, Sailboard, then Windglider when it became the official board for the LA Games (this was the year windsurfing was first introduced to the Olympics), and, that same year, the original Windsurfer company. Neil Pryde Limited took a licence from Schweitzer in order to secure his business but not long after that, Hoyle Schweitzer’s company was in trouble. Fighting the big manufacturers over patent infringement broke him financially. Lawyers in one case, Windsurfing International Inc vs Tabur Marine (Great Britain), argued successfully against Schweitzer’s right to claim the patent, based on the story of a boy called Peter Chilvers who had

the best. Certainly in the early days, the low-tech approach would attract people in their thousands to big events because it was so accessible. Later, as windsurfing became more demanding, many of those early acolytes would leave. Windsurfing itself would struggle to get credibility in countries that already had a strong water sports base – in that sense, it was no different than snowboarding in traditional skiing countries – but in places like Germany, France and Holland that had no strong surfing culture, this quickly became a cool sport. As it took hold and the big names came calling to feed the demand, the irony was that Neil Pryde faced the very concern that had forced him to start his company in the first place. How was he going to meet demand? The difference was that the demand itself had changed. Still sails. But now, more than just yacht sails.

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TueN muN Neil Pryde Limited continued to have an office and its factory in Fanling. But as windsurfing emerged as quite a different type of business from yachting, the company decided to set up a branch factory in the town of Tuen Mun specifically for windsurfing. Tuen Mun was once known as Castle Peak and had been all water. However, a Government plan to develop satellite cities in the territory had seen the land reclaimed and industry and housing added. The great attraction was that it was still very cheap, at a time when the rest of Hong Kong was becoming prohibitively expensive. Just like at Fanling, when the company first opened its factory there, people had to be bussed into work. The opening of the Tuen Mun factory marked the first separation of the two sides of the business. It also recognised that the dynamics of windsurfing were different: smaller sails; much bigger quantities; and that it required that same style of manufacture that the company had first applied to yacht sails, closer to the garment business. Neil hired BK Poon, a ‘garment’ man, to manage the factory and started using real garment technology. Just two years in, after opening the first factory in Tuen Mun in 1977, they needed more space. To produce the 100,000 sails needed by Bic Sport, the company moved to Success Industrial Building, a bigger factory, and bought a giant hydraulic cutting press, capable of pressing and

diecutting huge numbers of sail panels in a very short time. The press itself came from United Shoe Manufacturers. It might have been meant for footwear but in the context of Tuen Mun, this machine could belt out very simple, cheap sails at little more than garment prices. Output continued to climb and the operation in Tuen Mun moved again, to the bigger Tins Industrial Building, where Neil Pryde Limited had taken over three floors. Meanwhile, in 1981, the cutting operations were all centralised on one floor at Wo Fung Industrial, an industrial building close to the original factory in Fanling. The building was selected for the long, open spaces needed to house the Gerber computer cutter and was fully air-conditioned in order to provide a temperaturecontrolled working environment. In 1983-84, the windsurfing operation was brought together in one factory, Tins Centre, including all the cutting. Yacht sail making and the company’s admin continued to operate from Fanling. In 1986, with the sudden demise in demand for windsurfing sails and the change of business partner from Inchcape Enterprises to Shriro, the

office in Fanling was sold and the whole business – windsurfing, yachting and admin – all moved to Tuen Mun. To accommodate the extra people, Neil Pryde Limited took another floor in the building. BK Poon played a key role in seeing that many of these changes went through smoothly. Meanwhile, the Wo Fung building was sold to Inchcape as part of the change-of-ownership deal. They in turn onsold it. All that though, was years ahead. By the early 1980s, the windsurfing business was massive and the company was desperate to add to its capacity. As the factories in Tuen Mun and Wo Fung struggled to keep up with demand, textile quotas, agreed in bilateral negotiations between the Hong Kong and French Governments, became a real concern. The quotas restricted the export of textiles, including sails from Hong Kong to France, and unless the company could find an alternative way to supply the French market business growth would be restricted. The opportunity to resolve the problem showed its hand in Ireland, virtually on the other side of the world. The luck of the Irish? For a while, at least, it sure must have felt that way.

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Tuen Mun, mid to late 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Aside

BK Poon was a real character. Neil had first employed him in the early days of the yachting business, but he had only stayed a while. Later he returned to oversee the production of windsurfing sails. BK was famous throughout the company for his can-do attitude. Geoff Cornish recalls that you could ask BK Poon to take care of almost anything and the response was almost always the same. First, there would be an expression of outrage, followed by an extended torrent of abuse. Then BK would leave, and whatever it was would be done within a timeframe and to a standard that no-one believed possible. Cornish says you could always count on BK Poon to make it happen. But there was another side to BK, as Reed Lockhart explains. A man of huge integrity, BK would always do what he thought was right for the company, which was not necessarily what he was asked to do. If he decided that something was not good for the company, even if Neil himself asked for it to be done, he would simply state â&#x20AC;&#x153;I will never do itâ&#x20AC;? and, true to his word, it would never happen.

fragraNT HarbOur LOOKING OUT FROM THE

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a sTraNGe PlaCe To lauNCh a Global braNd In many ways, Hong Kong was a strange choice for a place to launch a global brand. Of course, the Neil Pryde Limited company didn’t start out like the brand it is today. Neil Pryde Limited began as a manufacturer – a role very much in keeping with the territory’s reputation throughout the 1960s and 1970s as a cheap place to manufacture things. Remember “Made in the British Empire”? It was a place to trade other brands or even rip-offs of other brands. So in those early days out on the road selling the benefits of doing business with a company based in Hong Kong, Neil had to work hard to overcome the stigma of where he was based. The main reason for that of course was that there were very few Hong Kong brands that had made it. Two actually. Cathay Pacific, yes. Hong Kong Bank, yes. So it was hardly like Neil could address the perception others had by giving them a roll-call of famous names.

“Brands grow out of an idea and a circle of people who love that idea and create the culture, and the idea usually starts out locally and then grows to the point where it’s ready to export over bigger and bigger distances. We bypassed all that. We had an idea and people, and we took on the world.”

There was another reason why launching the NeilPryde brand from Hong Kong was a radical concept. Most brands build out from their home market. They start somewhere, grow a little, grow a little more, export. But in Hong Kong, there was no local market, so Neil Pryde Limited had no choice but to hit the world running. The moment the company had a brand, it had to be an export brand. And this is the early 1980s, so it’s pre-Internet, and at a time when free trade and globalisation were little more than twinkles in the eyes of Ayn Rand followers.

Coming from a country where the pace of life was much slower and which had been heavily regulated, Hong Kong was a breath of fresh air for a go-get-em New Zealander, as it has been for ex-pats from a whole range of places. Hong Kong is an entrepreneur’s city. There’s minimal interference. It’s a high pressure, high success environment. And there have always been hard working motivated people looking to make a better life for themselves and their families. Those factors, together with strong work practices and competitive cost structures, would enable Neil Pryde Limited to overcome the lack of a home market and the distance from the company’s major markets.

Neil: “I’m proud of the fact that we built an international brand from a place where there is no home market to speak of. I think you’d be hardpressed to find another brand that has done that successfully.

In 1991, Neil Pryde Limited’s ability to grow an international business out of Hong Kong was

recognised when the company won the prestigious DHL/SCMP Hong Kong Business International Award. The Award was official recognition for the outstanding contribution the company had made to the Hong Kong economy. The successful launch and uptake of the NeilPryde brand would encourage the company to take the concept of being an international brand even further. Over the next few years, they would not only diversify their product range to include waterwear and kites, they would also successfully expand their brand portfolio to include new brands such as JP Australia, Cabrinha and Flow. What’s more, the subsequent success and expansion of those new brands would see the company as a whole grow into a significant, diversified and globally recognised presence in the action sports sector.

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PHOTO: Erik Aeder

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Aside

air PHOTO: Erik Aeder

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NEILPRYDE SAILS IN MALLOW, COUNTY CORK, REPUBLIC OF IRELAND, CIRCA 1980.

welCome To irelaNd Right up until the 1980s, sails were made from fabric woven from polyester yarn, which meant that, for the purposes of trade, they were classified as textiles. The trade in textiles was tightly restricted, with quota agreements decided at an inter-governmental level between countries over what could and could not be exported and in what amounts.

some 27 Chinese workers arrived in town, and then promptly moved into a single house. In a village where the church was the biggest building, there were now two men, one of whom was BK Poon, and some 25 women all living under the same roof, just down the road.

The huge demand from France, the biggest windsurfing market in the world, for sails made from woven textiles caused Neil Pryde Limited no end of frustration. Presumably to help protect their own sail-making industry, the French Government had imposed a quota limiting the quantity of sails that could be imported. This meant that Neil Pryde Limited could only ship a limited amount of sails out of Hong Kong into France every year; this at a time when Bic Sport alone were asking for 100,000 sails. Demand from Tiga added to the pressure – all this meant Neil Pryde Limited faced losing business.They needed to find a solution. And fast.

Kits were shipped by container to the factory in Ireland with all the components needed to put them together. They were then quickly assembled, finished and distributed, and the factory did the finishing work on the sails. In time, as the factory team’s skills developed they became an autonomous business.

Meanwhile, half a world away, Ireland’s economy was struggling and the Government was looking to invite industry into the country in order to generate jobs. IDA Ireland (the Industrial Development Agency) was offering significant grants for

companies to open up factories. This was the break Neil Pryde Limited was looking for. They could open up in Ireland, and because Ireland was a member of the EU, they could finish the sails there and then ship them to their major French clients without restrictions, enabling them to meet demand. In 1979, Neil Pryde Limited shipped an entire factory to Ireland from Hong Kong under the direction of BK Poon. Everything needed for the new operation was packed – machinery, tables, everything – along with 25 people from the Hong Kong business, including management and enough operators to do the work and train the local people. They were up and running in just three weeks. The village of Mallow was about an hour out of Cork and staunchly Roman Catholic. More than a few eyebrows of the faithful were raised when

On the face of it, this looked like the perfect arrangement, and in some ways it was. Certainly, from a management point of view, the Irish factory succeeded at what it was asked to do. But it was less successful from a financial point of view because by the time the factory really hit its stride, the boom years of simple sail making were over as the sport became more hi-tech. The Irish assembly operation struggled to adapt to this changing scenario, and in the end that resulted in Neil Pryde Limited having just too much capacity.

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huNdreds of ThousaNds of sails The Irish factory worked well from 1979 through to about 1982. When the market peaked, Neil Pryde Limited was turning out around 340,000 sails a year (that’s 170 pages of this) from its factories in Hong Kong and Ireland for the biggest names in windsurfing, including Windsurfer, Bic, Tiga, HiFly, Sailboard and WindGlider. That’s quite a turnaround when you think about it. Not even 10 years before, the company had been one of the biggest makers of yacht sails. Now, they were the biggest manufacturer of windsurfing sails. They were busy and they had happy clients, but it wouldn’t last. Even as the factories worked round the clock to meet orders, it was becoming all too clear to Neil that there was no future in for the company in these mass-produced sails. Ireland was a long way from Hong Kong and as demand changed and low volume, hi-tech became the new norm, the factory started losing money. More change was on its way … An interesting sidenote here is that even before they set up the NeilPryde brand, the company had started getting its name out into the marketplace by placing a label on some of the sails it made. That was how the NeilPryde name initially spread. But as Neil points out, the reputation that the company had at the time for being a reliable supplier of large quantities of quality sails at the low end of the market was very, very different from the reputation and the image that it enjoys today.

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The ComPuTers are ComiNG! The ComPuTers are ComiNG! Neil Pryde Limited has always tried to use the latest and best technology they could find. To become more productive and efficient, they needed to streamline processes. Workforce costs in Hong Kong had been cheap for many years. Now though, they were rising rapidly. While most of their competitors were still using scissors, Neil Pryde Limited was sourcing cutting machines and hydraulic presses to speed up the sail-making process. In fact, even their sewing machines were highly advanced, having been especially adapted for the process. Built by a company in Switzerland, they had longer arms, designed for big objects like sails, so they were easier to use and caused less damage to materials than conventional sewing machines. They’d use machines like these in Ireland. Neil Pryde Limited got into computer cutting technology in the early 1980s. Gerber Garment Technology were in the process of introducing their computer-cutting technology to the garment industry in Hong Kong. Needing to churn out thousands and thousands of identical windsurfing sails as quickly and cheaply as possible, Neil saw that computerised cutting equipment was the way to go. This new technology enabled Neil Pryde Limited to stack panels up to 100 high and then cut them all at once. The company installed their first Gerber computer cutter in 1981. It was a big investment at the time – a couple of million Hong Kong dollars, Neil recalls, and the first such machine to be used in Hong Kong. To house it, they had to buy one whole floor of

an industrial building, Wo Fung Industrial, with air conditioning to keep the beast cool. A young engineer YK Lo, who had joined the company in 1979, received training on the machine from Gerber and, because he knew how to operate the equipment, was responsible for the changeover. More than 30 years after he joined, YK Lo is still with the company. These days he’s the Pryde Group’s Manufacturing Manager. This specialised cutting and sub-assembly operation for both the low volume yachting sails and the high volumes of windsurfing sails fed the assembly lines in Fanling and Tuen Mun. By 1982, there was a Wang computer in the office and computerisation had been extended to manage purchasing, planning and accounting.

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The braNd is borN Necessity was the mother of the brand. Starting out as a scale-based manufacturer had its advantages. The company had built an international reputation in yachting and later in windsurfing. They’d learnt to make good products, and they’d learnt how to make them very cost-effectively. But as the markets themselves and the products within them started to change, Neil Pryde Limited was in danger of being all meat and no sandwich – substantial, but lacking the right packaging. There was no design element or performance image woven around the Neil Pryde Limited name yet other than through the performance of the products made for other customers. The good news was it was clear that windsurfing was here to stay for the foreseeable future, and it was also clear by 1982, after the winning of the Division 2 World Championship in Florida in 1981, that Neil Pryde Limited had opportunities to move away from being a pure OEM manufacturer. Designer Willi Blaauw’s work and the success in Florida showed design was a differentiation opportunity. So was sponsoring athletes to use Neil Pryde Limited products. Willi was born and raised in Hong Kong and had first met Neil through Tim Yourieff, who he had gone to school with. He started working with Neil Pryde Limited as a yacht sail designer in 1978 after turning up on the doorstep at Fanling and applying for a job. Less than three years later, his windsurfing designs would help the company strike out in a bold new direction. They needed to. As an unbranded manufacturer, Neil Pryde Limited was at the bottom of the food chain, where the pressure was always on price. And the direction was one way – down. At this point, volumes had never looked better but ironically the company found itself being – excuse the pun – significantly hemmed in. They were building bigger facilities to meet demand, volumes were ballooning, but they weren’t making any more money. With their margins being continually squeezed, there was no future in staying here. Scale-driven manufacturing had been good to Neil. It had generated some good revenue. But over time it became plain this would decline

if customers started their own sail-making operations. Right on cue, Bic Sport, one of their biggest OEM clients, started to do exactly that. The relationship began to deteriorate around 1982 and by the following year, just as production peaked, Bic announced they were going to open their own factory. Neil Pryde Limited went from making 100,000 sails a year for Bic to almost nothing. That change also meant the company soon found itself with excess capacity, particularly in Ireland.

wasn’t just about awareness, it was about creating a new business opportunity that would enable them to produce and market value-added products. By 1982, after the arrival of Geoff Cornish and the introduction of Spanier and Bourne to the business, the move to a windsurfing brand was well underway.

Neil Pryde Limited needed to add value, and the only way to do that was through cultivating a brand. As Neil says: “We needed to get away from nameless production. To do that, you need to offer the market something they can’t get from anyone else. And the moment you start spending money on design and innovation, you need to put a name to it.”

Neil: “Everything grew out of that necessity to turn our name into a brand in its own right. We hired expertise, we sponsored athletes, we worked on our image, we upped our design capabilities, we strove to achieve performance on the water … all of that was about finding a branded way forward.”

They’d made some forays in this area. As the yachting OEM business had started to decline, Neil Pryde Limited had started advertising in yachting publications as a company that made custom sails. In 1979, they’d got involved with the Hong Kong yachting team who were competing in the Admiral’s Cup, perhaps the world’s most prestigious ocean racing event. Neil Pryde Limited had helped them with the development of the sails and provided technical support, and the Hong Kong team had come third in the competition the very first time they entered. So the concept of branding itself was not entirely new. What was different was the motivation – it

Rather than create another name, Neil Pryde Limited kept the name it had, but quietly set about turning it into a brand.

Of course, the company continued to do both OEM and NeilPryde branded business – why gnaw off your foot to prove you’ve got a hand? – but the transition didn’t make for easy times. Companies that had been friends and customers suddenly saw Neil Pryde Limited stepping into their space and becoming a competitor. There were some heated exchanges. “Some clients just will not accept that you are going to start competing with them – especially after many years of not doing so. We accepted that risk. We set up a brand because we knew we had no future without one. There was a chance that clients could leave, but there was an even bigger risk that if we stayed where we were, we would

simply be crushed and vanish without a trace. Just as in sport, at some point you need to step up to the plate and have the confidence to say you’re prepared to compete.”

factory more capable of doing the hi-tech work that customers were now demanding. He would stay there two years before heading back to Hong Kong at the end of 1984.

By 1982-83, Neil Pryde Limited had really resourced up its design and innovation capabilities. The OEM business may not have been at its peak anymore but it would remain a significant contributor to turnover for the next couple of years. Ironically, as the actual volumes dropped, the demands for greater performance meant a greater variety of styles of sails were being made. To cover both its manufacturing orders and continue to design its own branded sails, Neil Pryde Limited needed to invest in more design resources.

These were complicated and challenging times. Yacht sail making was in decline, OEM clients were threatening to leave, windsurfing was changing … all of this was compressed into a timeframe of just a few years. The path forward needed to be negotiated with care and skill if the company was not to find itself stranded – too far on either side of the OEM or brand divide, without enough revenue to support it. That was the real danger. Commit too much in the wrong place as everything changed, and end up nowhere. There were signs that developing the brand could answer a lot of questions. At the same time, it was also causing flak from those who didn’t want Neil Pryde Limited to change.

Not that actually being an OEM manufacturer was a bed of roses. In 1981, when executives from Bic Sport left to set up Tiga, Bic tried to tell Neil Pryde Limited that they weren’t to support the new venture by doing business with them. Neil was having none of it. We’re an independent manufacturer, he told them, and we know the people who’ve left because we’ve done business with them. The problem was that while the OEM work was responsible for a great deal of the top line, it also tied up a lot of cash, filled up the capacity of the factory and operated on such low margins that the company was being starved of profit. By this time, Willi Blaauw was in Ireland, overseeing production and in his own words “teach[ing] the Irish to manufacture with something resembling accuracy”. As the volumes dropped, and the factory found itself with excess capacity, Willi did his damndest to make the

So, many years on from making the decision to become a real brand, what does owning a brand mean? Five things, according to Neil. First up, brand is about more than adding value. It’s about self-determination – about giving yourself a mandate to take control of your own space and your own direction, rather than having it continually dictated to you. In manufacturing alone, there is no loyalty, there is just price. Secondly, owning a brand brings responsibilities. Suddenly there are a whole lot of people – designers, team riders, distributors, employees – who are depending on you and who are impacted by the decisions you make. Those responsibilities are much greater and wider than when you’re a pure manufacturer.

Thirdly, there are new issues, like intellectual property. In any branded business, design and innovation are key differentiators. So you need to protect what you create, and that takes significant resources. You also need to recognise what you can protect and what you should protect. Then there is the need to continually instill belief. When there’s a string of people all over the world depending on your products, they become an ecosystem, and in order for that community to thrive, they need to believe in the product and be proud to be involved. Belief takes a lot of time. You need to travel hugely to meet and talk with people, go to events, be seen to endorse people, go with the distributors and meet their customers. “In manufacturing, systems deliver or they fail,” says Neil. “With brands, people deliver or the brand fails.” Finally, there is the understanding, gained over many years, that brands come to have a life of their own. They have their own DNA, which is definable enough to feel tangible and which can be leveraged in many ways to create more value. “Your brands”, says Neil, “become significant assets, they come to underpin your whole business. But getting them to that point takes determination and vision and the commitment to keep going even when you’re tempted to divert funds elsewhere. If you give in and starve your brands of support, ultimately you are shortchanging your business.”

PHOTO: Erik Aeder

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wiNdsurfiNG ChaNGes TaCk The early-mid 1980s marked a significant windshift in the sport of windsurfing. In Europe and North America, it was still very much about recreation but in Hawaii, the move was on to transform windsurfing into a much more technical, performance-based athletic sport. Hawaii’s winds and bigger waves were encouraging a small group of designers and sailors to try new things. As early as the mid-1970s, renowned surfing and windsurfing photographer Steve Wilkings remembers watching Robbie Naish and others making the most of the long, bulky boards in the conditions. Over time, Robbie, and windsurfers like Mike Waltz and Matt Schweitzer, began doing tricks in the waves. They were so good, Steve recalls, that it wasn’t long before crowds literally used to gather to watch these young guns pull off fantastic acrobatic stunts. That was the big difference between Hawaii and Europe, he says. In Europe, the interest was much more in flat water sailing; in Hawaii, the emphasis was on waves and wind, action. Because Maui’s big waves made the early long windsurfing boards very difficult to handle, shapers

NEILPRYDE PHOTOSHOOT, MAUI, HAWAII, MID 1980S

started making significant changes to set-ups: the boards became shorter to make them easier to manoeuvre, to help them plane at high speed and jump waves. Shorter boards also didn’t require a dagger board. Bigger waves meant higher speeds, and that in turn meant the boards needed less flotation. All these changes helped with riding but they also put the sails out of whack. Which is where Spanier and Bourne started to make a name for themselves – designing lighter and more efficient sails that had been radically reworked to add speed and performance. These changes in the very definition of windsurfing would have far-reaching effects. They would introduce new levels of design and technology. They would also make Maui the centre of the innovation universe, at least for those looking to windsurf on waves.

Willi Blaauw had successfully introduced new design ideas into Neil Pryde Limited’s product lines. Now Neil Pryde Limited also formed an alliance with two names that would soon be legends in the sport – Spanier and Bourne – to establish the company’s in-house innovation team in Hawaii. To help design products that would do well on flat water, he also hired Monty Spindler to work in Hong Kong and later in Italy.

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aloha! The hawaiiaN alliaNCe Neil first learned about Barry Spanier and Geoff Bourne from Hoyle Schweitzer. Hoyle had a holiday home on Maui and Neil was staying with him there while they hammered out a licensing agreement for Neil Pryde Limited to build sails for Windsurfing International. Hoyle drove Neil all over the island, showing him the sights. One day, as they went past Spanier and Bourne’s loft, Hoyle said to Neil that these were “two guys he needed to meet”. Spanier and Bourne had arrived in Maui after recovering from a shipwreck off the coast of New Zealand. Finding an old warehouse in downtown Kahului, they set up a yacht sailmaking business. A productive first year saw the company ready to hit the spring season with a full order book. Fortunes changed dramatically and quickly on 3 January 1980 though when a Kona storm wrecked 33 of their clients’ boats in around six hours. That effectively put them out of the yacht sail business and changed the direction of their company forever. That was when they turned their attention to windsurfing. They’d had some contact with the sport already but it had been limited. Barry Spanier says that towards the end of 1979, windsurfers like Charlie Dale, Mike Waltze, Ken Kleid, Vince Hogan and Matt Schweitzer, who had been working at the resorts teaching people to sail, had found their way to Ho’okipa where they proceeded to take on the monstrous surf. As the huge waves continued to chew their sails to ribbons, they soon became regular visitors to the MauiSails loft. In early 1980, two guys named Rick Sibthorpe and Ross Handy took their MauiSails to Lanikai on Oahu – a place Barry describes as “the center of the windsurfing universe, at least in the Pacific Ocean anyway”. There they caught the attention of Sigi Hoffman who worked for HiFly. He in turn took the sails to Munich, which is how the two Maui sailmakers ended up getting a letter from Ernst Drexler, one of the founders of HiFly, suggesting they come to Europe for a meeting.

When HiFly decided to upgrade a limited number of their boards by fitting them with ‘exotic’ sails, they asked MauiSails to do the designs. They then brought Spanier and Bourne to Hong Kong to meet their sailmaker, Neil Pryde Limited. The three patterns for the ‘Fathead’ designs that Spanier and Bourne had with them in Hong Kong for Hi Fly were unlike anything that Neil or designer Willi Blaauw had seen before. With their short boom, higher aspect sails and distinctive wing shape, these designs were a complete rethink. And they sold. 40,000 units. More than enough for Neil Pryde to see that he needed these guys on his team. The talents of the guys from Maui were also being noticed by others. At the Pan Am Clipper Cup, Bourne and Spanier met Eckart Wagner, owner of the North Sails Windsurfing brand, who they got on with really well. Barry says that by the last day of the Cup, the idea of a partnership had been discussed and it had been agreed that MauiSails would partner with North Sails and establish a design group in Hawaii. It all looked promising. Bourne and Spanier were sure a deal was just weeks away. There were even press releases about North’s new Hawaiian partners. But months went by and they heard nothing. (They found out later that Eckart had been involved in a terrible car accident and hospitalised for months.) Neil heard what North was up to and looked to get hold of Malte Simmer, one of the owners of SimmerStyle. That didn’t happen. After a time, Geoff Cornish approached Bourne and asked him whether he and Spanier had a deal

BARRY SPANIER AT HO’OKIPA

with Eckart. Geoff Bourne said no, and that’s how Spanier and Bourne Sailmakers became involved with Neil Pryde Limited. The relationship between Spanier and Bourne and Neil Pryde Limited would last from then through until 1997/98, and in that time demand for their sails would continue to grow. “We started out making just three sails,” recalls Barry Spanier, “then it was seven, then 12, then 20 … In the end, we were designing around 90 sails a year. Those were such great days. We’d be at the beach every day, and sail every afternoon. We were constantly making changes and it was amazing to know what we were doing was influencing the whole direction of the sport.”

FRED HAYWOOD, WEYMOUTH 1984

According to Willi Blaauw, the Maui team would develop new designs and these would then be finalised for production in Hong Kong. “The Maui team and the in-house team worked in different ways but between us, we managed to take these fantastic and exciting ideas and mass produce them. Spanier would develop the concepts and these would be sent to Hong Kong. There we would work with ideas like the V batten and the new fabrics to get them working in a factory where we were making thousands of sails a day.“ Much of what the Spanier and Bourne team developed is still being used today – like the vertical/horizontal construction for seamless, full-length luff panels that allowed the sails to be loaded from the top to the bottom. Before that, any attempt to load sails this way would quickly see them tear under the strain. The hip harness they developed completely changed the weight orientation for riding. It would remain the standard for years. Then of course there was the Rotating Asymmetrical Foil (RAF) sail with its revolutionary boomhead with clamp on feature, and smaller sails that rotated right around the mast to unify the sail body with the mast and sleeve as part of the total foil shape.

BARRY’S SAILS GAVE DUNKERBECK THE SPEED ADVANTAGE, HO’OKIPA 1989

HANDSEWING SAILS, STARBERGERSEE NEAR MUNICH IN 1980

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PRYDE BUS AT WEYMOUTH SPEED WEEK 1984

RODDY LEWIS IN CANARIES

BARRY SPANIER, GEOFF BOURNE AND MICHEL QUISTINIC WITH FRED HAYWOOD AT BREST IN 1983

BARRY AT WEYMOUTH SPEED WEEK IN 1986

BARRY SPANIER AT FUERTEVENTURA 1988

ARNAUD DE ROSNAY

LENA KERR SAILING FIRST ‘NOT NORMAL’ IN KAHULUI HARBOR

ARNAUD DE ROSNAY AND A WSSRC OFFICIAL

FRED HAYWOOD AND PATTI WHITCOMB IN LETHBRIDGE, CANADA FOR SPEED RECORD ATTEMPT

BARRY SPANIER SEWING IN FRANCE

HYDROIL TRIMARAN LONGSHOT WORLD RECORD LETHBRIDGE, CANADA

PRYDE BUS, 1984 WEYMOUTH

GEAR AT 1984 WEYMOUTH SPEED WEEK

GREEN AND WHITE RAF SPEED SAIL FOR BLACK AND WHITE SPONSORS

TEAM PRYDE 1988 FUERTEVENTURA WITH CAMELS (STEVE WILKINGS PHOTO)

THE FIRST HIFLY SAILS

PHOTO: Darrell Wong

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fasTer aNd fasTer The precedent for going it alone as a brand was set in 1981 when Willi Blaauw designed the sails for the Division II World Championships. “We won the 1981 Division II World Championships in Miami,” says Neil, “and it was our first big success. We took the Men’s and the Ladies’ divisions, first place in both, first time up. That was a real big step for us.” Big enough to give Neil the confidence and the momentum to accelerate the move to market. Suddenly they were on the world radar. The company that had been known as a manufacturer now had the platform to go forward with the NeilPryde brand. More successes followed. Neil Pryde Limited hooked up with Ken Winner and sponsored him to compete in the annual Pan Am Clipper Cup at Kailua. Ken won, again with sails designed by Willi Blaauw. Three big wins in just four months. In 1982, Neil Pryde Limited teamed up with Barry Spanier and Geoff Bourne to launch NeilPrydebranded sails into what was at the time the fastemerging, funboard-wavesailing market. The world of windsurfing had a new brand. That same year, rider Pascal Maka bought a sailboard from Sailboards Maui but shaper Jimmy Lewis made a mistake with the planer and decided to turn the gouge in the bottom into a double concave spiral ‘v’ shape. Maka paired that board with a NeilPryde sail and the first hip harness, both designed by MauiSails, and took them to speed events at Brest, France and Weymouth, England. In October 1982, Maka set a new world speed record of 27.82 knots at Weymouth. Jimmy Lewis may have said he made a mistake but it can’t have been that much of a mistake, because Maka broke the existing world record set at Weymouth by 3 knots. Neil Pryde Limited was literally on top of the world.

When Fred Haywood heard that Pascal Maka had broken the world record at Brest on a wave board that was actually a mistake, Barry says he was none too happy. Spanier says Fred came to him and said something along the lines of, “If this French guy can buy a stock board with a screwed up bottom and go break a record, then I should be able to do it even better if we make custom boards that are correct and tested. Will you make me some speed sails so I can go to France and England and whip his ass?” Which is how, according to Spanier, the MauiSails team ended up getting involved in speed sailing. In October 1983, Fred broke the 30 knot barrier at the Holy Grail of speed racing – Weymouth – on another board shaped by Jimmy Lewis and a NeilPryde sail designed by Spanier and Bourne. 30.8 knots. Another world record. On the back of that record, Geoff Cornish organised for Fred and Barry to travel around the world. That generated huge buzz. At the Paris Show in December, Yuri Farrant’s film of the record run in Weymouth ran more than 1000 times on the screens at the Neil Pryde Limited booth. So many people gathered to watch it, the aisles were regularly blocked. The buzz and the budgets that Neil Pryde Limited made available pulled in more great riders. Thomas Persson, Tim Aageson, Alex Aguera … these were some of the biggest names of their time and together in the Neil Pryde Limited stable, they made for one helluva powerful team.

“We went after the biggest name riders we could find,” says Neil, “because we absolutely wanted our brand to be associated with fantastic athletes, speed and performance.” The build-up of the professional team paralleled the first professional world tour for windsurfing. Neil was a prime mover in the establishment of the WBA (World Boardsailing Association), an organisation made up of board and sail manufacturers and headquartered in Munich. The WBA set up the sport’s first professional circuit and in so doing attracted significant sponsorship and air-time because it provided the structures and rules needed to take things to the next level. Now there was a viable way for men and women who loved windsurfing to turn it into a career. Being athletes, they naturally wanted to win, so professionalism drove up performance. And higher expectations inspired better performing gear. This demanded greater input from design. It was a trend that, once it took hold, just continued to accelerate. Windsurfing was also a sport that people could take up when they were older and continue to excel at. Fred Haywood was inspired to start windsurfing when he watched Hoyle and Matt Schweitzer ride up to the beach one day. Before then, he’d been looking at getting a Hobiecat. He started windsurfing when he was 29, got his first sponsorship when he was 33 and continued to sail professionally until 1990. In time, the WBA would become the PWA (Professional Windsurfers Association) and control would shift from the manufacturers to the riders themselves. It would remain a lucrative circuit for many more years, with TV rights, funding from a range of sources and big sponsors like Peter Stuyvesant.

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FRED HAYWOOD BREAKING THE CLASS A SPEED RECORD AT WOODMANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S POINT, AUSTRALIA IN 1985

NEILPRYDE PHOTOSHOOT, LATE 1980S.

PHOTO: Steve Wilkings

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NEILPRYDE PHOTOSHOOTS, LATE 1980S.

Photo: Steve Wilkings

PHOTOS: Steve Wilkings

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PHOTO: Erik Aeder

world sPeed sailiNG reCord aTTemPT Bjorn Dunkerbeck (33) the 12 times Windsurf World Champion and his team partner Roddy Lewis of Hawaii were on the island of Fuerteventura, Spain between 25 July and 15 August 2002, looking to challenge the world speed sailing record. They planned on using custom-shaped boards by Carlos Sosa of Proof, sails made by Neil Pryde Limited as well as fins designed by the Barcelona engineering office 50 Knots. After several days of setting up the speed course and testing some of the newly designed equipment, Bjorn started carefully monitoring the wind and wave developments near the Atlantic coastline of Morocco. Ultimately Bjorn Dunkerbeck was denied the opportunity to break the world speed-sailing record, but hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s his journal of what went down:

DAY 1 - 7

Setting up the speed course and testing some of the newly designed equipment.

DAY 8 - 10

The Passat winds started blowing, but from the East, breaking a prohibitive swell on the shores of Sotavento, which made any record attempt impossible.

DAY 11 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 12

Dead calm conditions on the island of Fuerteventura made us scout away from the shores to discover this Canary Island.

DAY 13

At last, the wind direction coming out of the North, gave hope that with increasing strength the Passat would give us perfect conditions. Strong offshore winds with a flat ocean surface.

FINAL DAY

We certainly gave it our best shot, but we could not overcome the lack of the Passat winds. The 20 to 30 knots winds made it impossible to challenge our existing record.

PHOTOS: Reinhard Müller

Why didn’t you break the record?

How would you describe the last 3 weeks?

Which kind of equipment did you use?

The main reason was that we didn’t have enough wind to take a chance to get close to the existing record.

It was a lot of fun to go speed sailing again. Most of the days during the last 3 weeks I was on the speed strip sailing between 3 – 4 hours

Boards:

Sails:

Together with Carlos Sosa of Proof we designed 8 special speed boards

We used the new 2003 RS Race Sails from NeilPryde. Sizes: 6.2, 5.8, 5.4, 5.0 m2.

I ‘m very glad to see how efficient our equipment had become.

4 boards of 264 cm length with 36 cm and 39 cm width

Using a 6.2 sail for example I went over 39 knots several times.

all 4 boards having a little concave and a more straight rocker and outline

We also tried a foil sail, but it turned out to be too heavy and too stiff.

We had 20 – 30 knots using sail sizes of 5.8 & 6.2 and boards with 39cm and 42 cm width. The fastest average speed was 40.5 knots with a top speed on the course of up to 43 knots. What we would have needed to break the record was wind of 40 – 50 knots, enabling us to use the 5.4 and 5.0 m2 sails and the boards with 37cm width. And flat water of course.

With a 5.8 in choppy and wavy conditions I went over 40 knots. So I think with the appropriate wind, I could have gone dammed fast with a 5.4 of 5.0 sail. During the last 3 weeks I sailed most days between 3-4 hours.

4 x of 263cm length with 36 cm and 39 cm width

Will you try again?

It was worth a try but the regular sails have been far out faster.

Yes I hope to be back on the speed strip as soon as possible. On the Canary Islands next summer there is another possibility for strong winds. But who knowsmaybe I’ll give it a try somewhere else before that. Now I’m going on “The Search” again to Australia – Westcoast and then to the next world cup in Sylt – Germany, at the end of September.

all 4 boards having a more concave and a rounder rocker & outline the boards were produced, as all the Proof boards, in Monocoque Sandwich technology. The board weights were between 4.2 and 4.6 kilos.

INTERVIEW WITH BJORN DUNKERBECK 2002

PHOTO: Gilles Martin-Raget

aNToiNe albeau breaks The world sPeed reCord It was the end of the season – and having won a world title in Slalom – Antoine Albeau decided he wanted to have a go at the world record, so he booked himself in for the speed event on the Saintes Mairies de la mer, a purpose-built artificial canal. Doing the runs there is a huge physical challenge. For a start, it’s cold. Below zero on the day. And the wind is fierce – blowing 45 to 55 knots in the morning, and with gusts of up to 65 knots in the afternoon. The run itself doesn’t take long, but the time needed to get ready to run and then get back to the start is actually about 45 minutes. Antoine says, “I don’t think people realise what a physical challenge it is just to sail there. After the run you have to walk to the road, which is 400 metres past the actual end of the run, then put all your equipment in a van, drive upwind to the beginning again, which is 1.5 km away, unload your gear and walk another 500 metres to the start … It is very difficult, and you need to really take the time to decide to take a run, to be sure that it’s going to be good, otherwise you’ll be using up a whole lot of energy for nothing! It’s not the same as racing on the Hydroptere or doing kiting in Namibi in the warm weather! In fact, it couldn’t be more complicated.”

Antoine wasn’t alone. There were a number of riders on the canal that day, including Finian Maynard, Cédric Bordes, Cyril Moussilmani and David Garrel. Antoine did 11 runs in all and fell four times. He broke the record at 12.12pm on a super small board that was just 47cm wide, with a special 4.8 RSR sail made by Robert Stroj and a Deboichet fin for speed. After the successful run, Antoine says he felt really happy because he knew it had been really fast and easy, and he thought it was over 48 knots. But he knew Finian Maynard was still in the chase, so he kept going for the rest of the day to see if he could do even better. Next up, he’s keen to have a go at the elusive 50 knot barrier on the same canal. “It’s closed right now, but as soon as it’s open,” Antoine says, “I’ll be there first in line!”

MULTIPLE WORLD CHAMPION AND NEILPRYDE TEAM RIDER ANTOINE ALBEAU ON HIS WAY TO A WORLD SPEED SAILING RECORD OF 49.09 KNOTS ON THE CANAL IN SAINTES MARIES DE LA MER, FRANCE, 2008.

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wiPeouT - almosT Things went pear-shaped in 1985. As the performance market boomed, the recreational side of windsurfing crashed, the market nose-dived and a number of the mass producers, including Neil Pryde Limited’s biggest clients HiFly and Windglider, all went bankrupt. It happened quickly, on a global scale, and it caught everyone unawares. Companies that had been struggling to keep up with their orders suddenly found themselves struggling with no orders … The bubble had burst. The factory in Ireland was shuttered in 1985. Without the demand for hundreds of thousands of sails, it had no business case. Neil Pryde Limited’s only way out was to put that business into liquidation.

and windsurfing (and more broadly, manufacturing) wasn’t part of that core. New investor needed. And as they saw Neil Pryde Limited’s situation getting worse, their desire to get out became more urgent.

As a sidenote to that – one of the very few men who came across to Ireland with BK Poon and stayed on ended up marrying one of the local Irish women. Clearly, someone also spotted the eatery opportunities of having this community of Chinese

Fortunately for Neil Pryde Limited, David Wilson, who Neil had first got to know when he came to Hong Kong, returned to Hong Kong around this time to head up Shriro Group. In the 12 years that he had been away, Wilson had worked for big

attention on turning round the finances of the operations, Neil and his management team had slashed costs to get the books rebalanced. At the same time, the branded product was contributing vital profits. By the time the deal was ratified, the business had been back in the black for several months. Ask Neil now and he’ll tell you that this period, when the company seemed headed for disaster were perhaps his toughest times. But the smoke

Neil says he learnt some valuable lessons. history means nothing. manage your receivables. don’t extend credit just to get sales – that’s false economy. people in town – or perhaps they just had their cultural horizons broadened. Either way, Neil Pryde Limited’s legacy for the village of Mallow? A mixed marriage; and a Chinese restaurant. Looking back, Neil says he himself was overextended, and that the company hit a wall, as a result of four years of extraordinary development. The demands of building the brand and extending the distribution network had been time and resource intensive, and to finance what they were doing, the company offered their OEM clients more credit than they should have. They needed the OEM business to continue while they built the brand. It was a risk that seemed worth it at the time, but in 1985, when their big clients collapsed with significant debts, it was a decision that hit Neil Pryde Limited very hard. To make matters worse, Inchcape, Neil Pryde’s long time business partners, also wanted out. The majority shareholder with a 51% stake in the business had decided by 1985 that they wanted to refocus on what they saw as their core business,

companies around the world. Now he was back to run the day to day operations of Shriro, having been head-hunted for the job by Mark Shriro, and as part of the revamp, he was looking to make some astute purchases. Made aware by Shriro’s auditors, who coincidentally worked for both companies, that Neil Pryde Limited was looking for a new partner to refinance the business, David called Neil and asked for a meeting. Neil Pryde Limited was David Wilson’s first acquisition for Shriro, and his approach was a cautious one. It took months to finalise the deal, but when it was done Shriro agreed to buy out Inchcape and to increase their shareholding in the company to 75%, leaving Neil the remaining 25%. They also bought the assets that the business still required, and made a capital injection of around US$1 million. The changeover in partners was negotiated towards the end of 1985, and although the deal was signed in March 1986, Neil Pryde Limited was already back trading profitably by then. Focusing all their

cleared to reveal a much clearer view of the brand than might have been expected. And he says he also learnt some valuable lessons. The first was that history means nothing. As he says, one of the hardest things to get your head around when you’ve run a successful business for a long time is that things are suddenly going backwards. After all the effort you’ve put in to get it to where it is, it’s very, very hard to recognise that it might be drifting away. Second lesson: manage your receivables. Most entrepreneurs enjoy selling but don’t let the wish to sell get in the way of making a profit, and don’t extend credit just to get sales. That’s false economy. A clean start brought with it a single-minded purpose. Shriro was focused on backing market leaders. If Neil Pryde Limited was going to be the brand they said they were capable of being, Mr Wilson’s view was that they needed to articulate that idea in a simple and direct goal.

CHARLES-EUGENE AND MARK SHRIRO

The seCreT To ParTNershiPs “The secret to a successful partnership is that each partner needs the other. There must be mutual interest and benefit for it to work.” - Neil Pryde, 2009 Inchcape: The Inchcape Group was largely built by James Lyle Mackay. Later, his grandson, the third Lord Inchcape, rationalised the family’s businesses and brought them together within one holding company. That company, Inchcape & Co Limited was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1958.8 In 1976, Inchcape and Company, took a 51% shareholding in Neil Pryde Limited after Neil and his first partner Hans Dreifaldt chose to no longer work together. The partnership worked very well for 10 years. By 1985 though, new management at Inchcape brought a decision on their part to refocus on core activities and the company divested its holding in Neil Pryde Limited to the Shriro Group. Inchcape’s decision to streamline their activities coincided with a cashflow crunch in the NeilPryde business brought about the sudden demise of key windsurfing clients.

Shriro Group: Founded in 1906 in Northern China by the grandfather of present chairman, Mark Shriro, Shriro Group is a privately-held family business. The group took a majority shareholding in Neil Pryde Limited in 1986 when they bought out Inchcape and provided a capital injection to help revitalise the business. NeilPryde and the Shriro Group have been partners since then, with the Shriro Group leaving day to day management of the business to the NeilPryde management team. The parties meet regularly to talk through direction and discuss strategy. In January 2009, Shriro bought the Flow business from Neil Pryde Limited.

Aside

118 | Will to Win Air.

“We want to be the number one brand on the water” – David Wilson 1986

THE Z1 SHEAR TIP RACING SAIL - THE MOST SOLD RACING SAIL EVER, DESIGNED BY BARRY SPANIER.

PHOTO: Erik Aeder

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BJORN DUNKERBECK ON NR WAVE SAIL BY NILS ROSENBLAD

PHOTO: Erik Aeder

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PHOTO: Reinhard MÃ¼ller

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FUN AND GAMES AT THE HIHO (HOOK IN AND HANG ON) EVENT: CARIBBEAN ISLAND TO ISLAND RACE

PHOTO: Jérôme Houyvet

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PHOTO: Darrell Wong

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The maN from markeTiNG Geoff Cornish came to the company in 1981 from Guerlain, where he’d spent three and a half years flying all over the Pacific building up the duty-free business. A sailor since he was just eight years old, Geoff had discovered windsurfing while he was in New Caledonia. One day, while in the Philippines on business, he spotted an ad in the South China Morning Post saying that Neil Pryde Limited was looking for a manager. Because he was by now right into windsurfing, he flew to Hong Kong and won the role. For the next six months or so, he quietly got to know the business. From there he progressed to head of marketing and later headed up the move to line extensions such as wetsuits, accessories and bags. With his background in the perfume industry, Geoff understood how to use branding effectively to generate more value for products. He brought to windsurfing a keen understanding of brand image, colour and the need to portray the products as having great intrinsic beauty. He also recognised the importance of sponsorship and how riders could boost the brand’s desirability. Over coming years, he would blend a more aggressive style of marketing with the amazing product advances being achieved by the design team, to firmly establish the NeilPryde brand on the world stage. Geoff himself says, “I was surrounded by brilliant, talented people from every field who brought amazing skills and ideas to their work, and who worked so hard to achieve and contribute … It was a once in a lifetime creative atmosphere that only someone like Neil could make possible and maintain. I admired all of them enormously.”

Building a global brand from Hong Kong would of course prove expensive and very time consuming. It would drain an amazing amount of money from the manufacturing business, which funded it for many years. Ultimately though that investment would save the company, because when the OEM business downturned and Inchcape wanted out, what Shriro saw and invested in was the NeilPryde brand … and its potential. One of the few upsides of the fall-off in the sail manufacturing business was that it deepened everyone’s resolve to make the NeilPryde brand stronger than ever. With the liquidity issues sorted and the books back in the black, the company ripped into 1986 determined to be the market leader. The big question was how? The answer – build on what they were already doing. Continue to build the brand, make the team stronger, lift and diversify the design opportunities … They started by securing Bjorn Dunkerbeck and his sister Britt who had been sponsored by F2 for boards and rigs. Both would become World Champions. Under the new deal, Bjorn and Britt stayed with F2 for boards but switched to NeilPryde-branded rigs. The move marked the beginning of a marketing relationship with F2 – the first time they shared the promotion of riders. Bjorn would go on to dominate the sport. The

introduction came through Aage Lyngs, who had met the riders’ parents. Bjorn was already making a real name for himself in windsurfing circles but he was still a teenager. To get him on the NeilPryde team, Neil and Aage first met with the Dunkerbecks’ parents in Munich where they set up the framework for the deal. Later, they flew to the Canary Islands and ended up thrashing out a deal literally at the kitchen table. “It took something like six months to get Bjorn and Britt on our team,” recalls Neil, “and they represented the biggest investment we had ever made in marketing. But I kept thinking about what David Wilson had said at that distributor meeting in Oregon about us being the number one brand on the water. The Dunkerbecks represented our future in the sport.” Recognising that there were a limited number of sails that could be sold, Cornish spearheaded improving and enlarging the product range and then the Neil Pryde Limited offer generally. Masts, booms and accessories were added as integrated products within the NeilPryde range. Design became more and more important. And the relentless push for footprint via distribution saw more people on the ground in key countries and Neil himself travelling more than ever. Neil Pryde Limited’s drive to be ‘the number one brand on the water’ led to it becoming a much more integrated company, more than capable of holding its own against fragmented competition. Ironically, and thanks to all the hard work done by so many, it emerged from the 1985 crisis, stronger, more focused, more integrated, diversified and ready to take on the world.

Aside

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The iNTeGraTed riG So far, the NeilPryde brand had been defined by sails. First yacht sails, now windsurfing sails. But increasingly, the company saw that sails were attached to equipment and that equipment represented a full range of opportunities. In 1989, they added masts and booms also branded NeilPryde to form the NeilPryde Integrated Rig. The way to maximise performance, the company started to tell its customers, was to invest in perfectly matched NeilPrydebranded rig components to go with their NeilPryde-branded sails. Masts had always been low-tech affairs, but Neil could see that carbon fibre was going to be the material of choice. The problem was no-one was making quality masts in this material at anything like the quantities Neil Pryde Limited would need. The masts were also notoriously unreliable. The breakthrough came when Neil met Peter Quigley, a sailor who had just graduated from MIT and who had invented a process to mass produce carbon fibre tubular products with predictable performance and controllable bend. That process was defined in a thesis Quigley had written on how to manufacture lightweight, tapered, tubular masts for yachts. Later, he would start a company called Fiberspar that made tapered tubular products, including masts for windsurfing. Neil still recalls their first meeting. He had gone to Boston with Vince Gurley to see his yachting client O’Day, but on this particular day, he found himself standing outside a non-descript garage with Peter, being asked to sign a confidentiality agreement

before he was allowed inside. “What I saw wasn’t particularly beautiful, but I could see immediately that it would work,” recalls Neil. Quigley had found a way to do what had eluded mast makers for years: by winding carbon fibre over a steel mandrel, he could produce a tapered tubular mast with uniform wall thickness top to bottom. Some time later, Neil approached Quigley and negotiated a deal that gave Neil Pryde Limited exclusivity amongst sailmakers on the process and patent Quigley had developed for the windsurfing business. Fiberspar was engaged to make between 40,000 and 50,000 masts a year, and the NeilPryde Integrated Rig with its unique carbon fibre mast hit the market. It was a breakthrough. Europe had never seen anything like it, and windsurfers were blown away by this perfectly matched rig that offered them exactly what the slogan said – “Ultra Light, Aerodynamic Performance”.

For Neil Pryde Limited, the development of the fully Integrated Rig meant they were now a total provider. It also revolutionised the price point for rigs across the world. No-one had ever offered such an expensive mast. For Neil himself, it confirmed his long-time desire to control as many aspects of the manufacture as possible. When you own the gear, you own the performance. And when you own the performance, you can take full credit as a brand for the experience. Willi Blaauw: “One of the great strengths of the NeilPryde company is its ability to deliver innovation and then to bring it to market at volume and at a good price. We were the first company in the world to mass produce monofilm sails. Later, there were carbon fibre masts and booms. This company is very good at creating and marketing new ideas that people quickly love.”

136 | WILL TO WIN air.

ROBERT MASTERS

boards oN film

YURI FARRANT

Over the years, some very talented people have been involved in helping to capture the Neil Pryde Limited spirit. Much of their work has gone on to become hallmark images for the various sports.

breaking run. Farrant’s films were the first true windsurfing films. They proved that a sport as visual as windsurfing would indeed come alive on film if it was shot by people with an eye for action.

Angus Chater joined the NeilPryde team as a professional sailor but he was also a gifted photographer who became part of the team that executed the photoshoots for catalogue and advertising layouts. His specialty was performing jumps, flips and all sorts of loops whilst capturing all the action on a camera mounted on the mast tip. To do this, he’d run a wire up the mast to the camera and have a shutter switch in his hand which he’d trip while he did the stunts.

“Cornish completely changed the scale of the game,” says Wilkings. “Up until then, shooting windsurfing had been a relatively low-tech affair. Suddenly, there were choppers and platforms out in the water and riders everywhere. It was chaos, but it was also fantastic.”

He was also one of the first to plant an A frame ladder on the reef, held down with sandbags – a precursor to the more sophisticated scaffolds that Robert Masters would later use.

He well remembers Keith Baxter and his crew taking Keith’s fully loaded Boston Whaler packed with scaffolding out to the reef, dumping the beams over the side and then working all day with dive teams to assemble the platforms in the breaking surf, complete with anchor ties. “The logistics of getting those platforms straight were complex – although they got better and faster the more times they did it.”

When Cornish approached video producer Robert Masters to collaborate on what he called a promotional video for Neil Pryde Limited, Robert knew that a traditional corporate video approach would never work for windsurfing. But he too saw that the sport held huge opportunities, not least because the endless waiting around for wind put a lot of the best film-makers off, which meant there was a real scarcity of great product. The key, he reasoned, was to make mini-movies about the lifestyle of the sport, shot with great gear, and then to put them in front of people who didn’t windsurf.

Angus actually got Darrell Wong involved with Neil Pryde Limited indirectly when they gathered up some sails and went out and took shots of Angus on his board. The following year, Wong was on an official Neil Pryde Limited shoot at Diamond Head involving all the team riders. It progressed from there. Darrell Wong worked for Neil Pryde Limited from 1982 till around 2002 and he says that most of the work he did with the company involved Geoff Cornish and later Simon Narramore. “Neil Pryde himself was seldom there,” he recalls. “I think I’ve only ever met the man himself once.” “At NeilPryde shoots, there was always this wonderful contrast,” recalls Wong. “On the one hand, you had these cool, laid-back riders, and on the other, there was Cornish, giving commands and urging everyone to get busy. But somehow, the whole thing worked.” Acclaimed watersports photographer Steve Wilkings got involved with windsurfing when he was asked by Hoyle Schweitzer to take some shots. Later, Steve worked full-time for Hoyle at Windsurfer Magazine. His first contact with Neil Pryde Limited was at the Windsurfer World Championships in Guam around 1982/83 where Neil Pryde Limited had supplied the sails. Not long after that, Steve, who already knew Spanier and Bourne, teamed up with Geoff Cornish. These were amazing years – as the Maui team turned out groundbreaking designs, Geoff Cornish worked his magic on the marketing and Steve and Darrell captured everything going.

Wlkings says the shoots were large productions that needed to be highly co-ordinated if they were to run smoothly.

Not everything they shot was in the water – and not everything made it to print either. “Cornish got this crazy idea one day that a particular type of sail was as good as dead. So he had me shoot some of the great windsurfers of the time standing around a gravesite. I took a shot from the bottom that showed all these guys looking down into the pit. That one never made it. Dramatic idea – but there was general agreement, on reflection, that maybe the whole thing was a little distasteful.” In later years, the still photography shoots would take place alongside video photography and depending on the weather, and therefore the windsurfing conditions, shoots could last weeks at a time. The first film made for Neil Pryde Limited was called ‘Wings of the Future’. It was directed by Yuri Farrant and produced by his company, Moana Films, in September 1983. A corporate film about the company, it includes an interview with Neil explaining how a sail works and how the company mastered the move to windsurfing, along with images of Fanling, the Gerber computer cutter and some sequences shot on the water in Hawaii. Around mid-1984, the second Yuri Farrant film ‘In Search of Speed’ was released. It includes Pascal Maka’s speed record and then the journey to Weymouth, including footage taken during the Brest Speed Week in the run-up to Fred’s record-

It worked. Distributors were encouraged to give away tapes. Videos were also given to airlines and to TV stations to play. And this at a time when video as a medium was coming into its own. Suddenly windsurfing was getting air-time it could never have afforded, and the NeilPryde brand was everywhere.

STEVE WILKINGS

According to Geoff Cornish, “At the time, I saw them in nightclubs, bars, and restaurants all over the world from Tokyo to SA to Oz to Paris, Amsterdam and London. The action at the time was riveting. People just stopped and stared.”

JÉRÔME HOUYVET

All up, Robert Masters’ crew made seven videos: fast forward 1988 moving Target 1989 rigmarole 1990 instant replay 1991 splashback 1992 rig it right 1992 rap n’ roll (for Tiga) 1991 To give some idea of the impact the videos had, Masters says most windsurfing videos sell only a few thousand copies – if you’re lucky. rigmarole sold 70,000 copies in just one year. “The videos were seen in places this type of material wouldn’t normally be viewed,” he says today.“ Footage from rigmarole even ended up being used in not one, but two Superbowl ads.”

DARRELL WONG

ANGUS CHATER

Aside

By the end of a video shoot, most of the equipment was ready for the bin. One day, as the shoot wrapped, Geoff Cornish suggested that since the sails were going to be trashed anyway, why didn’t they hold an almighty demolition derby and capture the whole thing on video? The riders were all for it. An appropriate level of mayhem ensued, and the results were captured on Rigmarole and later on Instant Replay. However, as Steve Wilkings drolely observed, in reference to the various injuries sustained, “This was not something you should do without some serious practice.”

Aside

adverTIsINg

Neil Pryde limitedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first advertising appeared before it was even a true brand, when NeilPryde usa placed some magazine ads in the 1970s. Just last year, the company bought a number of these items back when they appeared for sale on ebay. These days the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s marketing is very much focused online, using social media such as Twitter to offer content ranging from rider updates and video content to wind forecasts.

THE COMPANY MANAGES A PORTFOLIO OF FIVE BRANDS GLOBALLY:

www.neilpryde.com NeilPryde Windsurfing is the company’s original windsurfing brand, and the number one brand globally in the sport. NeilPryde Waterwear was launched in 1994 as a line of wetsuits for windsurfers. Today, it covers more than 100 products used across a range of watersports.

www.npxwetsuits.com NPX is a range of waterwear targeted mainly at the younger kitesurfing market.

www.cabrinhakites.com Cabrinha is now the leading kitesurfing brand in the world. The company produces kites, boards and accessories, and is very much driven and inspired by Pete Cabrinha’s personal philosophy.

www.jp-australia.com Named after Jason Polakaw, JPA is the premium, highperformance board brand.

www.neilprydebikes.com NeilPryde Bikes is a high-performance road bike brand and the youngest in the Group’s portfolio.

IN ADDITION TO ITS OWN BRANDS, NEIL PRYDE LIMITED HAS A NUMBER OF LICENSING ARRANGEMENTS:

www.neilprydesailing.com

braNds

The Neil Pryde Limited corporate identity has not changed that much since it was first designed. Simple and direct, it is one of watersports’ most easily recognised brands.

NeilPryde Sailing is looking to revolutionise small boat sailing performance apparel.

www.neilprydesails.com NeilPryde Sails manufactures sails for yachts in a variety of classes.

www.pierucci.net/neilpryde NeilPryde Fashion line designed and distributed by Pierucci in Italy.

rIdINg WITH pryde

Neil Pryde limited was one of the first windsurfing brands to actively include athletes in its marketing. and there was a feeling that if you were a rider and you featured in a Pryde ad, that was massive kudos. later, simon Narramore says, there was a very strong culture of us vs them with the team riders. They rode for Pryde and they competed with pride. “I thought that was great,” says Narramore. “I encouraged it like crazy. I wanted our riders to feel like rock stars. I wanted them to hang together, and feed off that belief. On the beach, it was palpable. The feeling coming off the Pryde team was that if you weren’t one of us, then you weren’t anyone … Perhaps that’s arrogance but it’s also a very intimidating emotion at a competition. It made our guys want to win, really want to win …”

Bjorn Fjelddahl, who was at Neil Pryde Limited, at the same time as Narramore, says that at one stage or another, most of the greatest names in windsports, and some of the greats of snowboarding, have been part of the Neil Pryde Limited story.

“A high-performance sports brand establishes credibility through its athletes,” says Neil. “Our riders continually reinforce our claim to be number one on the water.”

desIgNINg WITH pryde Nils Rosenblad

Monty Spindler

Nils Rosenblad joined the company in late 1989. In the early 1990s, he and Barry Spanier were both in Hawaii, with a mandate to push innovation as far as they could. They were very different men: Barry, with his relentless drive for greater functionalism; Nils, looser and more extroverted. There was rivalry, and Neil fostered that to a degree, says Bjorn Fjelddahl, because he was continually pushing his designers to come up with the coolest, the fastest, the best. It worked well for many years, and some great products emerged during those times, including innovations such as the Shear Tip and the Batcam.

Monty Spindler started working for the company in 1981-82 in Hong Kong at Fanling. He’d first been introduced to windsurfing and then Neil Pryde Limited through rider Ken Winner. (Ken and Monty had met at the University of Maryland in Indianapolis.) In 1984, around the time that Willi Blaauw returned from Ireland, Monty would take up Neil’s suggestion to open a small Neil Pryde Limited design centre in Europe to cater for European tastes. The loft at Lake Garda would make sails for the company’s big clients. This was also where Monty worked on the designs for flat water windsurfing.

By 1991, having invented the Intercam (the core component of the V6 style ‘volks–sails’) Nils had also developed the V8/Street Racer and introduced a more industrial design aesthetic to the brand with the first use of coloured monofilm and curved seams. In 1994, he began working on wave sails with the NR series and by the following year was making sails for Bjorn Dunkerbeck, Josh Stone and Jason Polakow. By 1996-97, Rosenblad was designing seven ranges and had responsibility for many of the OEM products. He also designed the race sails that saw the phenomenal Dunkerbeck win his 11th and 12th World Cup Racing and Overall titles.

Of course, he didn’t just design sails for flat water. Monty worked on the Ultranova range, an all-full-batten windsurfing sail that was very successful. The RAF-O-MATIC was another design of his that was more of a wave sail than anything else – named after the music group, The BarKays who had a hit with the song Sex-O-Matic. Geoff Cornish, the marketer who played a key role in shifting Neil Pryde Limited from a manufacturer to a world-renowned brand, says that Monty counter-balanced Spanier and Bourne, helping everyone to stay productive and realistic. “Barry [Spanier] was the purist, the out-there dreamer of high tension dragon-fly wings on fine bone-like structures,” he says. “Monty could take those ideas and add to them with fashion, image, and great design appeal. He has great taste and a great eye for market aesthetics and colours.”

NILS ROSENBLAD AND PATRICE BELBEOCH AT THE MAUI SAILS LOFT, HAWAII

Aside

An AmAzing Adventurer disAppeArs

Arnaud de Rosnay was a sailor who knew few limits. He was a man of passion and fire, with a huge heart and an air of invincibility. He had persuaded NeilPryde and Tiga to sponsor him to sail across open seas in a project he called the Seven Crossings. His journeys were famous in the windsurfing world, because he would pull off feats that no-one else would even contemplate, never mind attempt. He’d sailed to Cuba from Miami. He’d crossed the Bering Strait. He’d even sailed across the open seas of the Pacific for many days, fending off sharks and defying the scorching sun, trying to get from the Marquesas Islands to Tahiti . Finally, Arnaud’s luck ran out and he disappeared trying to sail across the straits of Taiwan. Those who worked for Neil Pryde Limited at the time all remember the very sad day they learned that Arnaud had vanished.

earTH & sKy RIDER: Scotty Lago. PHOTO: Dodds.

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Moving into China

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By the mid 1980s, Hong Kong was no longer the low cost production centre it had once been. Costs had started climbing from around the late 1970s, and that trend continued throughout the next decade as the territory attracted more retail brands and financial institutions and became more of an international service centre. Also, as living standards improved, aspirations changed and Hong Kong’s industrial sector found itself facing not just a limited labour pool but also one that was much more expensive. This deep change in Hong Kong’s economic character coincided with the opening up of China.

Across the border, China was moving away from the hardline socialist principles of the Mao Zedong era. According to Jonathan Spence5, the emergence of Deng Xiaoping saw the country begin focusing on technological growth and international trade. A different attitude was clearly evident – with two of Deng’s most famous quotes being “To get rich is glorious” and “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice”.6 Deng recognised that China needed to reawaken its entrepreneurial spirit and that there needed to be open acceptance of more capitalist approaches. As part of this, Spence says, Deng relaxed economic controls and launched what came to be known as Special Economic Zones.7 The first of these Zones to be opened was in Shenzhen in Guangdong province, immediately north of Hong Kong, and the invitation went out to Hong Kong industrialists and others to shift their business to the other side of the border.

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Neil Pryde Limited had first started subcontracting in Guangzhou in the Guangdong province in 1987 when the company found it couldn’t get the labour it needed to produce bags and accessories. BK Poon had set up the arrangement. Relationships were established and these led to the company taking part in a processing contract authorised by the Chinese authorities that allowed Chinese labour and Hong Kong know-how to do business. The Chinese partner provided a factory and labour; the Hong Kong-based partner brought knowledge, machinery and business. This was the basis for most of the contracts for businesses moving into China at the time. The benefit for the Chinese Government was that these partnerships – a classic example of Chinese pragmatism – also injected US and HK dollars into the Chinese economy and provided jobs. In fact, the magnitude of the move into China by Hong Kong’s industrialists meant that for many years Hong Kong was the largest investor in Southern China. Neil Pryde Limited moved their windsurfing operations to a place called Bao’an, just outside Shenzhen, in 1989. Two years later, they moved the yacht sail-making business there as well. Relocating required no big capital investment because, as per the standard agreement, the factory was provided by the Chinese partner, who in turn received rent. Neil Pryde Limited had two partners in the venture. The first was the company with whom they had set up a pilot operation in 1987 and who helped them with their documentation and export quotas. The other partner was the owner of the building. (To this day, Neil Pryde Limited only manufactures products for export under a processing contract approved by the Shenzhen Industrial and Commerce Administrative Bureau.) The building they moved into had been owned by an American company but, following the June 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, that organisation had decided to move out, allowing Neil Pryde Limited to move into a largely ready-to-go space. After a suitable revamp to make it ready for sail production, the factory was open for business. To get things up and going quickly, staff from Hong Kong were brought across to the factory in China along with all the machinery needed. Over time, these people were able to train local Chinese and then move back to Hong Kong. Once again, BK Poon was a key figure – travelling, building relationships and getting everything that needed to be in China across the border. One of BK’s great challenges, according to Reed Lockhart, was bringing the workforce in China up to the standards of production expected by Neil Pryde Limited’s customers. “Remember, this is more than 20 years ago,” says Reed, “and the quality standards in China at the time

were much lower than they are today. The huge benefit of having someone like BK Poon involved was that not only did he have this extraordinary understanding of what was required to turn designs into sails, he was also able to bridge the cultural gap; to get the local workforce to understand what was expected of them. That was no small feat.” Nothing was straight-forward; even the money to pay for everything had to be brought in and then converted. When they first started working in China, there was just a single road between Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and there were massive amounts of traffic – and danger everywhere. To get to the factory, Neil and the others who went across had to take a train to the border, then walk across the actual border itself and then get a taxi to take them to the factory. If there was an accident or a flood, there would be huge delays. It was like this for the first two or three years. Lockhart tells the story of travelling to the factory one day in a boxy, loud ‘car’ when they came across a truck overloaded with huge concrete blocks coming the other way. Suddenly a huge slab of concrete fell from the truck, bounced on the road near them and cleared the roof of their taxi by inches. As the block crashed into the road, the taxi driver looked over at Reed, gave him a huge smile and a thumbs up, and then continued on as if nothing had happened. There were no phones to speak of, so everyone had to use mobiles to communicate – and if you think back to what mobiles were like in the late 1980s, they weren’t exactly the slim, sleek machines they are now. To try and get round not just the inconvenience but also the sizeable phone bills, Neil Pryde Limited put a transmitter on the roof of their factory in China to allow them to connect into the Hong Kong network, but the Chinese authorities were having none of it. The connection was promptly shut down and the transmitter confiscated. “It wasn’t just the lack of phones,” says Neil. “Road transport was very difficult and electricity supply unreliable. Every investor knew that when you set up in China, the factory needed a back-up diesel generator.”

Because everything they made had to be exported, every shipment had to be accompanied by export documentation. Getting this could take days. It wasn’t just a case of sending someone down the road to get something ticked off. With only one road, an accident or bad weather could mean huge hold-ups. Even if the pieces of paper did get through into the inboxes of officials, those administrators didn’t always seem to have a particularly strong sense of urgency. Eventually, the company was able to install their own fax machine in the China Foreign Trade Department in Guang Xao, and communications improved. Talk to Nils Rosenblad about the move into China and he’ll tell you that while Neil utterly believed the move to China represented the future for the company, there was no part of the move to the “Wild East” as Nils calls the China of the time that wasn’t hard. The lack of logistics and infrastructure made for some surreal situations. “I really couldn’t see how it was ever going to work,” he recalls, “and I still can’t believe it did.” In fact, the Neil Pryde Limited crew were so out of place that BK Poon issued all the non-Chinese with a card that had written on it, “If someone gives you this card, ring me” and the factory’s phone number. Back in Hong Kong, with the factory set up in China, Neil Pryde Limited downsized its presence in the Tins building from four floors to two, and then, two years later, to an office and warehouse on a single floor when the yacht sail-making operation moved to China. Things stayed like that until 2004 when Neil Pryde Limited moved into their current building in Tuen Mun. Today, the Neil Pryde Limited factory in China is in Fu Rong, close to Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport.

Aside

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TORBEN KORNUM SAILING

VINCE GURLEY WITH NEIL PRYDE

busiNess iN ameriCa NeilPryde USA had actually been set up right back in the early days when Hans Dreifaldt was still involved in the business. Dreifaldt’s idea was that the business would sell not just NeilPryde yacht sails but also marine hardware from Holland and Sweden. The arrangement didn’t work out and the business ended up only stocking and selling NeilPryde yacht and windsurfing sails. In 1972, after a parting of the ways between Neil Pryde Limited and Art Thompson, the dealer in Chicago who had been part of the equation from the days of the partnership with Dreifaldt, Vince Gurley took over managing NeilPryde USA. Vince, a sailor himself with a background in the aerospace industry, had his own company, Surfline Products, which was selling US-made hardware. He had approached Neil to become an agent for Neil Pryde Limited in the US. After some discussion it was decided that NeilPryde USA would be managed by Gurley and that it would represent Neil Pryde Limited in the American market and handle all the company’s yachting clients.

make the business more efficient so that it could return to profitability. They took over the yacht sailmaking side of the business, aiming to establish a worldwide agent network to sell custom sails, leaving Gurley as the distributor for NeilPryde windsurfing.

Shortly after this, the yacht sail-making business started to decline, and windsurfing came to life. NeilPryde USA adjusted, moving to selling custom yacht sails and windsurfing sails and later, as the company fought to keep its interests in the custom yachtsail business alive, setting up a sail loft in Southern California in 1981.

When the business closed, one of the people who came back to work for Neil Pryde Limited in Hong Kong was Reed Lockhart. Reed had actually started out in the musical instrument business but deciding at some point that he didn’t want to do that for the rest of his life, and with a keen interest in sailing and surfing, he went to work for North Sails.

In 1985, as the volume business for windsurfing sails ran out of puff, and Neil Pryde Limited found itself in a financial black hole, Tim Parsons and Tim Yourieff, who had both been with the company since the start and had played a key role in growing the yacht sail-making business, moved to the US as part of the restructuring taking place across Neil Pryde Limited to lower costs and

AAGE LYNGS

EARLY DAYS IN FRANCE WITH JEAN-PAUL RIOU

But there were problems getting the windsurfing business to thrive, and this, combined with the company’s financial problems, led to NeilPryde USA being shuttered in 1986, shortly after the change in partners. The company contracted FunSports, based in Boston, to distribute its windsurfing products.

There he learnt to become a yachting sailmaker – an interesting parallel to how Neil had started in the business – but saw opportunities in the sport of windsurfing and left North to start making his own custom sails in Santa Barbara, California. Later he moved to Southern California and by the mid-1980s had a thriving business, Reed Lockhart

Sails. That’s how he caught the attention of Vince Gurley who enlisted him to start doing warranty work on NeilPryde sails. One night, Reed was working late in his workshop, when Geoff Cornish and Neil Pryde walked past his place on their way to dinner. They were in Newport, where Reed was now based, because Neil Pryde Limited was exhibiting at a show in Longbeach. The two men invited Lockhart to join them for dinner … and Reed ended up joining the company, working at NeilPryde USA for some time and then moving to Hong Kong in 1987, where he would stay for almost ten years. As for the arrangement in the US with FunSports, that worked well for a couple of years but as windsurfing volumes continued to implode and FunSports itself ran into difficulties, Neil Pryde Limited came to realise that they needed to control their own distribution in the American markets – North and South – if they were going to continue to grow. Finishing up with FunSports, they set up Adventure Sports Inc in 1993, managed by Alex Caviglia. Alex had his own business, Bluewater Marine, in Miami and was a large dealer servicing not just the South Florida market but also sailors in South America and the Caribbean. He became President of the company and played a key role in the growth of Adventure Sports Inc. Tragically, Alex would later die from injuries sustained in a kitesurfing accident.

Neil Pryde limiTed iN euroPe Neil Pryde Limited has been doing business in Europe since the very early days of the company. In fact, Neil’s own relationship with companies like Hobiecat went all the way back to the Rolly Tasker days, and Hans Dreifaldt, Neil’s first business partner, had gained some of the company’s earliest work out of Scandinavia. So it’s not surprising that the company’s history has a strong gravitation to that part of the world. Neil Pryde Limited was already well known in France as yacht sailmakers when Neil first met Jean-Paul Riou, who owned Mengam Marine, in 1978. In September of that year, Jeanneau, one of the big yacht builders in France, placed an order for 700 mainsails and genoas, and Jean-Paul became an agent for Neil Pryde Limited. By this time, windsurfing was really starting to make its presence felt in Europe and 1979 saw talks with Bic about an OEM windsurfing sail contract. Discussions centred on making 50,000 units. The final deal would be double that – over 100,000 sails a year – in addition to the yacht sails that Neil Pryde Limited was making for companies like Beneteau and Jeanneau. Neil Pryde Limited had also been doing some OEM work in Germany since the earliest days of the company but around 1982, they set up distribution with Carl Kohl GmbH & Co, a well established Hamburg-based trading company that specialised in marine products and that had its own marine hardware and sail-making businesses. The company was owned and managed by Joachim Pfahl and his son Enno supported by Sales Manager Bernd Jarstorf. They were all, according to Neil, “real characters”.

Carl Kohl did a great job of breaking down the barriers and helping German dealers to believe in the quality of goods being sourced out of Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Neil and Aage Lyngs fostered key OEM relationships with German windsurfing companies like HiFly, Windglider and Sailboard. The many, many meetings that Neil and Aage had across Europe, and the twice-yearly appearances at the major trade shows that Neil Pryde Limited organised with Carl Kohl in Germany, eventually paid dividends. German companies and dealers stopped seeing Neil Pryde Limited as just another low-cost manufacturer from Asia, which had been their initial and deeply-held perception, and started to see real value in the NeilPryde brand. Despite the crash of the high volume business in 1985, by the end of the decade, Neil Pryde Limited was the number one windsurfing brand in Europe, with a well developed distribution presence across the Continent. Mengam Marine alone was selling 13,000 NeilPryde branded sails a year in France, while Carl Kohl was selling about the same number in Germany. In 1981, the decision by two executives to leave Bic Sport after a fall-out with the owners had kicked off a change in the relationship between Bic and Neil Pryde Limited in 1982. Despite Bic’s

disapproval, Neil Pryde Limited had maintained working relationships with the men after they set up SR Industries and created the Tiga brand. Tiga went on to become a strong brand in its own right and one of Neil Pryde Limited’s largest customers. But as the mass volume market declined, Tiga too fell on hard times and began looking for an investor. Since the two companies were already co-operating in their marketing because they shared a number of riders, and Tiga needed help with distribution, Neil Pryde Limited bought in, becoming a minority shareholder in 1989. A year and a half later, in February 1990, Tiga was forced into liquidation and Neil Pryde Limited partnered with F2 to buy the assets from the receivers including the name, the plant, the lease on the factory and taking on most of the employees. Suddenly, Neil Pryde Limited had a substantial stake in a windsurfing board manufacturer making 30,000 - 35,000 boards a year from a factory in Bethune, France. That was around 10% of the world market at the time. The move further consolidated Neil Pryde Limited’s presence in Germany: they now had a partnership with F2, a well established distribution arrangement, and the added capacity of the Tiga business. All this, as the German business

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GERMAN DEALER MEETINGS.

continued to grow. By bringing F2 in as an equity partner, Neil Pryde Limited hoped they would be able to get access to both ends of the market, with Tiga boards for the recreational customers and F2 manufactured boards for the high end of the market. Owning a sizeable chunk of the world’s board manufacturing seemed like a great idea at the time, and there was no doubt that Tiga’s blow moulding machinery was unique technology. The problem, as it turned out, was that whilst it was excellent for producing high volumes of a single model of board at low cost over a long lifecycle, that was all it could do. This was a one trick, mass production pony. Once that opportunity disappeared, because the market wanted new models every year, not the same model year after year, so did any reason to keep the business. When Neil Pryde Limited had bought Tiga, the global market was around 330,000 boards every year. Tiga continued to hold 10% of the market share, but the market itself declined to less than 200,000 boards as the whole sport became more customised. That made Tiga’s mass production model increasingly inefficient and called into question the viability of the business. Tiga did gain market share for a time, but after that the numbers started to decline and that trend became more and more entrenched. There are a number of occasions in the history of Neil Pryde Limited when the company finds itself on the too-early side of innovation – and Tiga’s another example of this. Neil Pryde Limited

saw that manufacturing boards in Thailand had real potential, and contacted the Cobra factory to make the boards for them. At that stage however, the factory just didn’t have the systems and management required for the job and the arrangement was canned. Later, of course, Cobra would go on to become the biggest board manufacturer in the world … but not yet. The partnership with F2 didn’t last. The way Neil sees it, the cultural differences between the French and the Austrians were just too great at the time. It became clear, within about three months, that the arrangement wasn’t going to work, as the Tiga and F2 teams argued over technical details and design. The final straw was a directors’ meeting in Paris that Neil attended with David Wilson, where the teams from Tiga and F2 went head to head on which design for a finbox should be used. The vehemence of the argument over a minor design issue convinced both Neil and David they had to get out and without the technology Neil Pryde Limited thought they were getting, there was no feasible entry into the high-end board market. In summer 1991, Neil Pryde Limited bought out F2’s shares. With most of the Tiga workers based in Bethune, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that if this was going to work, the company needed French management. So, some months later, working alongside David Wilson, Shriro Group bought Mengam Marine. Michel Quistinic, who had joined the company in 1983, then took over running that

company, which retained its own name, while Riou, already a director of Tiga, moved from Brest to Bethune and became Managing Director of the renamed NeilPryde Europe on 1 September 1990. Meantime, in Germany, the rise of the NeilPryde brand, the partnership with F2 and the need to establish distribution for Tiga had led to a reexamination of the relationship with independent distributors Carl Kohl. Carl Kohl’s strength as a distributor lay in their ability to shift high volumes of goods. That was perfect while Neil Pryde Limited was still a young brand, but with the shift to a value-added brand looking for higher margins, the two parties gradually found themselves out of sync. Around this time, Shriro set up a distribution business in Germany, naming it Shriro Sportsvettrieb GMBH, to take over the distribution of Tiga in Germany. In 1991, they hired Manfred Rassweiler who had been working for F2, and a year or so later Shriro Sportsvettrieb took over the distribution of Neil Pryde Limited products in Germany. The reason Shriro Group bought Mengam Marine and set up the German distribution business was because Neil Pryde Limited simply didn’t have the cash after the purchase of Tiga. Later Shriro would sell the French and German businesses to Neil Pryde Limited, meaning Neil Pryde Limited now had three businesses in Europe – the Tiga business and Mengam Marine in France, which together formed NeilPryde Europe, and a separate distribution business in Germany.

By 1994, the Tiga business was unsustainable from Neil Pryde Limited’s point of view, and the following year, they sold it to Bic Sport. Jean-Paul Riou resigned just after the Bic deal and Michel Quistinic took over as manager of NeilPryde Europe on 1 July 1994. “The key thing is that we did everything we could to make it work, but we also bailed out when the things we did try didn’t work,” says Neil. “Those were good decisions. There have been a few times in the life of this business when we haven’t done that, and we’ve lived to regret it.” With the centrepiece of its French operation now sold, Neil Pryde Limited changed course. They kept the distribution network and the real estate they owned in Bethune became the European warehouse for Neil Pryde Limited windsurfing products, sending branded products to the other European agents. Jacques Freydrich took over Mengam Marine and ran that from Brest, while Quistinic moved to Bethune. In Germany, Manfred Rassweiler and his team worked to build a deeper understanding of the value of the NeilPryde brand. Up until the time Rassweiler took charge of distribution, most of the NeilPryde products had been sold at the lower end of the market and there had been a tendency to focus on volume sales through the large dealers. “We recognised that we needed to build a consistent, broad-based dealer network,” says Rassweiler, “and that meant winning the support of dealers of all sizes. Bringing more dealers

onboard effectively increased our presence in the market.

and was handled by Simon Narramore and his team.

“We also needed to convince dealers that the NeilPryde brand was a high-end brand, so we invested in building relationships via on-the-water product demonstrations and dealer meetings to talk about the investment that Neil Pryde Limited made in innovation and to let them try out the new products. We also took the dealers to Hong Kong and China so that they could meet the people behind the brand and get a better sense of the company.

Unfortunately, in the longer run, it just didn’t work having Quistinic running windsurfing in Europe because although that put him at the heart of the market, it also meant there was a disconnect between the windsurfing operation in Europe and the way it was organised, marketed and distributed across the rest of the world. In 2004, the NeilPryde Europe management changed again, and this time Jacques Freydrich took over and Michel Quistinic left the company and moved to Bic Sport. At this point, the rest of the windsurfing business was moved back to Hong Kong.

“The third thing we did was to educate dealer sales staff on the products because we could see that if the salespeople were more comfortable with our products, they would recommend our brand to their customers. “We are still using these techniques today – and in Germany they have been very successful. We have continued to grow because windsurfers know that even though there are cheaper options available, other products simply don’t match the quality of the NeilPryde brand.” In 2002, there was a management reshuffle of the windsurfing business in France. Quistinic became the manager of the NeilPryde Windsurfing brand, so that he could manage Neil Pryde Limited’s largest market from within Europe itself. Mengam Marine was closed and the entire French operation, now all under the label of NeilPryde Europe, was consolidated in Bethune. Marketing of the windsurfing brand remained in Hong Kong

The story of Neil Pryde Limited in Europe is complicated. In the early years, it involved finding the best way through in what felt like an everchanging market. France led the way in Europe as the yachting business in Scandinavia declined, but then Germany became more and more important with the rise of windsurfing. “Shifting markets, changing volumes … sometimes, you think you see things happening in a market and what you’re looking at doing makes sense on paper – like buying Tiga – but for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out. “A key lesson as you globalise,” says Neil “is never under-estimate the differences, particularly the cultural differences, between your reality and those of the market you are expanding into. It’s a complicating factor that many companies do not factor highly enough. In general our strategy in Europe, and particularly in Germany, has worked

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“Never under-estimate the differences, particularly the cultural differences, between your reality and those of the market you are expanding into … you can’t just transpose your business model from one country to another.” very well not just for our windsurfing business but also for kitesurfing and snowboarding. We have worked hard to get the equations right. However, I think Hong Kong and France are the antithesis of one another culturally and politically. Hong Kong is the epitome of capitalism with minimal government interference in business and a relatively unrestricted labour market. France is quite the opposite – unionised and much more State influenced. “You have to get your head around that in order to make a worldwide model work, because you can’t just transpose your business model from one country to another. There are changes needed, even within Europe, and your ability to make those changes will determine how well you succeed. As an Asian-based company, we’ve really struggled with some of that because we’ve brought a view of how things should be that is alien to the French view of the world, and at times perhaps we’ve under-estimated how deeply some of those views are embedded. In Germany, by contrast, things have been much smoother.” Neil Pryde Limited has experimented with a range of distribution arrangements in France. They attempted at one point, for example, to run the distribution for Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg from France, then went back to an independent distributor. As part of the Pryde Group restructure, NeilPryde Europe became Pryde Group France and Shriro Sportsvettrieb GMBH became Pryde Group Germany. Today, the French business runs Benelux and Switzerland, while Germany looks after Austria and parts of Eastern Europe. The French and German companies are also responsible for distributing Flow. Italy, Spain, Poland, Turkey and Greece are run by independent distributors. England is

distributed through Pryde UK (in partnership with Peter Bibby). Torben Kornum operates as NeilPryde Scandinavia. “Our business in Europe needed an efficient crossborder approach in order for us to gain efficiencies in distribution,” says Neil. “In the early days of the Common Market, things in common weren’t actually common enough. The borders were open in theory but not everything was fully co-ordinated and goods did not flow freely – another example of what looks good on paper versus the reality – but today, doing business in the EU is much easier. Once again, we thought we could do things before the market was ready …” There is no doubt that building the distribution network throughout Europe has consumed a great deal of Neil’s own time. To put some perspective on this, in March 2010, he received a letter from Cathay Pacific acknowledging that he had now travelled three million miles with that airline alone. “Travelling to Europe and to Ireland accounts for the majority of that distance,” he says, “but when a market is as important to you as Europe is to us, you have to do it. With no home market, and our major markets 13 hours away by plane, you have no option. The Internet and so on may have changed how we communicate but what hasn’t changed is people’s need to communicate. Some things can be told by phone and email these days. Some still have to be done face to face.” This preparedness to travel has given the whole company a very clear view of what is happening in its markets. It has also played a huge role in helping the brand to overcome its Hong Kong origin in customers’ minds. How can you argue about Asian supply when you meet the owner of your Hong Kong supplier more often than any of your local suppliers?

On top of that, Neil Pryde Limited had personalities like Aage Lyngs on the ground in Europe, who played a huge role in getting the company accepted and relationships cemented. Aage was a master at dealing with difficult situations such as cross-cultural differences. He was the perfect ambassador. Jean-Paul Riou says they used to call Aage the man of special missions. “If everything was going well, you wouldn’t see Aage. The moment there was a problem, or something wasn’t working, he would be there to iron out the difficulties.”

Aside

PHOTO: Christian Chardon

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diversifiCaTioN

liCeNCe To sail As the company’s mass production yacht sail-making business declined, Neil Pryde Limited began to get involved in making custom racing sails. Gold medal winning Olympic sailor Helmer Pedersen was brought in as a consultant and over time, this area grew into an important and visible part of the yachting side of Neil Pryde Limited, with the company supplying Hong Kong teams racing in the Admiral’s Cup and other high profile events. With companies struggling to stay afloat in tough economic times, Neil was determined to stick in there, not least because yachting was his personal passion and he wanted to see the company give it everything possible before walking away. Tim Parsons and Tim Yourieff worked tirelessly to build a network of agents for one-off custom yacht sails globally, breaking with the tradition of an industry that had always been based locally. By 1981, their hard work was paying off, with a growing network of agents and a centralised manufacturing plant in Hong Kong. The company opened two offices in the States selling and designing sails, which were fed through to Hong Kong for manufacturing. Then, in 1988, after Tim Parsons left, NeilPryde Sails Inc was incorporated in Connecticut and management of the business moved to the one office. Bob Pattison was hired in 1991 as design manager. In 1994, Tim Yourieff bought NeilPryde Sails Inc from Neil Pryde Limited and changed the name of the company to NeilPryde Sails International. Then three years later, in 1997, Neil Pryde Limited decided to exit most of its yacht sail business and NeilPryde Sails International took on the

worldwide licence to manufacture and sell under the NeilPryde Yachtsails brand. Bob Pattison became an equal partner with Tim in the NeilPryde Sails International business about this time. Today, that company continues to hold the licence and to design NeilPryde sails, with the manufacturing done in China and elsewhere. It’s a business model that has truly stood the test of time, with computerised design and laminated materials making it possible to run the manufacturing at much more distance than was feasible in the early 1990s. Franchised agents now sell the customised sails in their own sales areas, providing local contact and service support, allowing the business to keep that all-important personal touch. “The business idea we had was a good one but the timing was wrong,” observes Neil, “and as a result, we were never able to make the most of it. It works now, and it works well.” However, Neil Pryde Limited didn’t completely exit yachting. They kept the rights to mass produce Hobiecat sails for some years and moved that work to the windsurfing part of the business. They also partnered with Australian-based sail designer Ian

MacDiarmid to manufacture the sails for the 49’er class of high-performance dinghies, which have very similar speed and performance characteristics to windsurfing rigs. The partnership’s successful bid to make the sails for the Olympic Games took effect immediately after the Sydney Olympics and the partners were the sole suppliers of 49’er class sails for the Games in Athens and Beijing, and also for the 2012 London Games. They’re also working together to supply sails for the 29’er class, which is the junior version of the 49’er. The sails are actually dual branded, with Ian MacDiarmid’s brand on one side and Neil Pryde Limited on the other.

As the volume of windsurfing sails dropped, the company knew that it had to look beyond its traditional lines of business. The Integrated Rig was the first step in that direction, but it quickly became apparent that wasn’t going to be enough. Time to cast the net even wider … By the early 1990s, Neil Pryde Limited had made a conscious decision to diversify its product lines even further through brand extensions. There were two key reasons for this. Firstly, the NeilPryde brand was now well established, and the brand had a real reputation for quality and performance. That’s a versatile platform. Secondly, there were gaps in the market where needs were not being met, or at least not in the way that Neil Pryde Limited believed it could meet them. One was wetsuits – because anyone who’s out on the water needs protection from the elements. Thinking the name alone might be enough, the company initially licensed another company. Didn’t work. Too many quality and design issues. In 1991, a man named Frank Voit, a German who had been working for the licensee company, showed up and suggested a line of NeilPryde wetsuits. As it happened, Neil knew Frank’s father Reinhardt. He’d been the purchasing manager for Sailboard, one of Neil Pryde Limited’s OEM clients, and would go on, later, to become a distributor for Flow in Germany. So when Frank approached him, Neil was very happy to listen. The original plan was that Neil Pryde Limited would manufacture both OEM and NeilPryde-branded lines, but on further investigation, it was clear that to make the numbers work, they needed to really focus

on building the NeilPryde-branded lines. So they brought in a specialist designer, Ming Pang, to help with the wetsuits themselves. This had two benefits. First, the NeilPrydebranded suits incorporated great design ideas that gave them a competitive edge. Windsurfers love them because they’re specifically made to accommodate what happens in the course of a ride. So, for example, they allow for the fact that a rider’s arms and legs will expand. (Surfers by contrast don’t want loose areas in their suits.) Secondly, the company was also able to offer its OEM clients design features that added value to the products they received. In 1992 the company began marketing its own line of NeilPryde-branded wetsuits with perhaps the most famous Neil Pryde Limited ad ever – known simply as ‘the naked man ad’. It featured a naked man and copy that was as stark as it was direct – without protection, you die. The combination of a suit that was purpose-made for windsurfing and the controversial marketing campaign took the market by storm. The naked man ad was followed by a naked woman ad. And, almost overnight, the NeilPryde Waterwear brand was not just a cutting edge brand but had real creds in wetsuits. In fact, all the product lines got

a boost from the exposure. Offered through Neil Pryde Limited’s global distribution network, sales rocketed, helped in Germany – a natural market for the product because of its cold water – by the fact that a major competitor exited just as Neil Pryde Limited launched. The campaign got so much media coverage that Michael Plank, the manager for North Windsurfing in Germany at the time, even copied the pose from the ad when he appeared on the front cover of American Windsurfer. As for Frank Voit, the man who’d got the line underway – he stayed involved in the product side up until 2001, when he left to work for Billabong in France. For many years, Neil Pryde Limited sourced their neoprene from the company that Frank Voit had worked for. By 2003, though, they realised that they needed to manufacture their own material, so they set up Victory Element, a joint venture with a Taiwanese company who make the neoprene foam. In 2007, Neil Pryde Limited introduced NPX wetsuits to cater to the more extreme needs of a younger, more kitesurfing oriented audience.

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The Power of aNoTher Name JP ausTralia Jason Polakow is a professional Australian sailor, still one of the leading wavesailors in the world and an icon in the sport. He grew up near Geelong in Victoria, Australia and from an early age was involved in motocross. After becoming Australian Junior Champion in that sport, he switched to surfing and from there to windsurfing. Jason made a key breakthrough in terms of setting a new style for the sport when, influenced by his surfing experiences, he decided to move away from the traditional asymmetric windsurfing board designs to his own symmetrical ‘pintail’ shapes. This groundbreaking move changed the thinking about board design and is still a key element of the shapes that the brand produces today. Jason joined the PWA at age 20, and quickly made a name for himself. After a successful career with Gaastra, he moved to the Neil Pryde Limited stable of riders in 1996. “I was stoked to be asked to join the team,” says Jason today. “I’d always seen the NeilPryde brand as one associated with winners – and of course, I’m competitive, I wanted to be part of that. For me, it was a dream come true.” Jason went on to become PWA Wavesailing World Champion, not once, but twice. Jason and his father Nick had negotiated a licensing arrangement with F2 to use Jason’s name on a run of uniquely designed wave boards. “I could see that there was a gap in the market for a hard-core, underground-style board,” says Jason. “No-one at that point had looked across at the image that was so effective in snowboarding and applied it to watersports. We could see that a highperformance board with an edgy image had the potential to gain real cut-through.”

When it came time to renew the licence, Nick approached Neil saying they weren’t sure they wanted to renew the arrangement with F2, and would he be interested in a deal? Mr Polakow also recommended that they hire Martin Brandner who had been running the license at F2. After a fair amount of discussion, Neil Pryde Limited decided they were in. In 1999, Neil Pryde Limited bought the JP Australia brand rights and hired Martin and his team. That team included Werner Gnigler, one of the biggest names in the sport when it comes to board shaping, who still shapes the JP Australia boards today from South Africa. While Jason had been at F2, a lot of the marketing had been organised by the Polakows in conjunction with Martin Brandner. Now, they were able to expand their resources. Brandner established an office in Austria to head up design development, marketing and sales for the latest addition to the company stable, and they plugged the new highend offering into Neil Pryde Limited’s worldwide distribution network. Cobra, the people who’d been making the boards for F2, were onboard. And the whole thing was ready to go in just a few months. “It was a huge commitment,” says Nick. “A whole new infrastructure, and a leap of faith that a brand of board owned by a sailor would be successful. I think it showed real guts on the part of Neil too

that he was able to see past the experience that he’d had with Tiga – where a venture into boards had not gone well – and to commit to a new brand based in Austria with its own team.” Today, thanks in no small part to the marketing skills and efforts of Brandner’s team, JP Australia is one of the company’s real success stories – a powerful but very focused brand for the highperformance windsurfing market, associated with one of the industry’s biggest names. Brandner’s team have expanded the JP Australia range from a relatively narrow range of wave boards to a collection that now covers the full spectrum, except for One Design. And the boards themselves have become a truly global affair: manufactured in Thailand; designed in South Africa; managed from Austria; and sold across the world. “It’s worked because of what everyone brings to the brand,” says Jason. “You have Martin and his team working to secure the design style, profile and reputation of the brand, the NeilPryde association and the reach and strength of their global network, and I’m looking to do my part as a rider to keep the brand top of mind and to help people associate JP Australia with excitement and great riding.” These days, Jason himself has branched out into extreme freesports – things like tow surfing and heli-snowboarding. He may be a little older, and a little wiser, he says, but the hunt for adrenalin never fades. “I search the world for the biggest waves and the biggest storms and then I grab my film crew and we go shoot what we can find. I still love to compete, of course, but for me, there’s another challenge now as well – the search is on to get radical pics in radical locations.”

AN INSIDE LOOK AT SOME OF THE INJURIES JASON POLAKOW HAS SUSTAINED.

PHOTO: Jérôme Houyvet

PHOTO: Harry Nass Windsurf Center

PHOTO: Jérôme Houyvet

PHOTO: Erik Aeder

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JP AUSTRALIA BOARDS IN ACTION.

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iNTo The air One of the most significant developments in the Neil Pryde Limited story in recent years actually began with an entry into, and exit from, another business altogether. For some years, paragliding would be an area of focus but ironically it was only after getting out of that business that Neil Pryde Limited would come across another opportunity that would prove to be a huge success. In some ways, the beginnings of the paragliding business were a bit like the early days of windsurfing sails. People started asking Neil Pryde Limited to make the canopies, and the company spotted a manufacturing opportunity. The sport was growing, it required large quantities of material, this seemed like something that the factory in China could do well. Doug Pushong, a salesman in the windsurfing side of the business, took up investigating this as a business opportunity and the company made the decision to get involved at an OEM level. Doug had first joined the business at Fanling in the yachtsail factory. Space was so tight there, he says, that his ‘office’ was a corner of Geoff Cornish’s desk. From there, he had moved into windsurfing sales, helping to sell in orders to new countries as the company expanded internationally.

SEAMING OF RESCUE / RESERVE CANOPY - FLIGHT DESIGN

The hours were long. Often it would be just him and Neil left in the office. One day, Neil said to him, “Just imagine if you’re as good as your competitor but you work one hour more per day. Imagine the advantage you’d have.” To look after the paragliding orders, they set up a separate business, Laminated Products Limited, in 1987, which Doug managed. In fact, Pushong’s recall of the situation is that one day Neil simply handed him a cheque and said, “Make sure you give me my money back”.

EARLY DAYS OF MANUFACTURING – SEWING PARAGLIDER CANOPY - INFERNO

ISPO SHOW MUNICH - FAR OUT STUNT KITES

The processes were complex. Each paraglider had two skins and was made up of three pieces of fabric sewn together. It was also curved. So getting all the pieces to match was no easy task. Adding to the difficulties, there were some 230 metres of lines on every paraglider and these had to be cut exactly. It made for a lot of detail – records, checklists, model numbers. And some manufacturing headaches – similar in some ways to the issues that Willi faced with windsurfing – turning drawings and one-off handmade models into products capable of being produced efficiently in significant numbers. In just three years, the business grew from nothing to one of the largest OEM manufacturers in the sector, making equipment for major brands such as Paratech, FlightDesign, US Voiles and Inferno. At one point, they had about 20% of the global market. “We didn’t realise it at the time, but the skills we gained from being in paragliding, particularly the disciplines we gained around quality control and manufacturing, would prove hugely important for the whole company going forward,” says Neil. “This was a business you had to take seriously because of the potential hazards. We may have set it up as a separate company to keep it away from the Neil Pryde Limited brand, and Laminated

Products Limited may have kept a low profile, but the things we learnt about product databasing and liability awareness were tremendously important.” In time though, paragliding itself became too complex. Design styles started to fragment, making manufacturing runs smaller and less profitable, and there were real concerns over issues like liability. For all its success, the sport and therefore the business remained boutique, and set up times, volumes and liability exposures conspired to bury the business case. Pushong remembers the day he resigned with some fondness. He had just told Neil that he was leaving, when Neil said to him, “Right, well you’ll have to organise your own farewell party.” “Why’s that?,” queried Doug, “I’m the one who’s leaving.” “Yes but I’ve fired everyone else,” said Neil in a very matter-of-fact voice. By June 1998, Laminated Products and all the know-how that went with it had been sold to a company in China. As far as Neil Pryde Limited was concerned, they were out of paragliding. They sold the business to Michael Lam who was now running the original sail-making business of A Lam. Then a strange thing happened …

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“hi, i’m PeTe” The same year that Laminated Products Limited closed, Neil Pryde Limited was approached by Manu Bertin, a speed sailor who knew Bruno Legaignoux, one of two brothers who had invented a product for kitesurfing and were looking to get people interested in the potential of the sport. It wasn’t Neil’s first introduction. Barry Spanier too had been saying that this was a sport with potential. In fact, Manu had been talking to Barry about how to get a kite to work in the ocean because up until then, kites had only been used for sand cart racing on flat beaches, and the two men had begun to modify and reinforce the kite to figure out how to make it steer with the bridle system it came with. So Neil went to Hawaii to see for himself what the Legaignouxs were so passionate about. He returned home unconvinced. The concept was interesting but the problem was that the kites couldn’t fly upwind – so someone using the kite could only go one way, and then, after making their way down the length of a beach on a single run, they would have to walk back, kite in hand, to where they started, and, if they had time and the wind hadn’t changed, go again. The distance back could be miles. There’s no future in that, thought Neil, unless they can solve the upwind problem. And that might have been the end of that, were it not for the persistence of some passionate aficionados who made it their mission in life to get out there and promote the sport. The technology too, evolved, so that the kites were less dependent on the whims of the wind. By 1999, even Neil Pryde Limited’s own distributors, including people like Alex Caviglia at Adventure Sports Inc, were talking about and asking for kitesurfing products. He wasn’t the only one excited by the sport – so was a watersports legend by the name of Pete Cabrinha. Born and raised in Hawaii, Cabrinha had been a professional windsurfer before turning to tow surfing. But it would be an understatement to say it took him a while to get interested in kitesurfing. Here’s how it happened. One day, towards the end of his very successful professional windsurfing career, Pete and a bunch

of other riders were standing on a beach in France waiting for the wind to pick up so they could get out on the water, when a guy showed up, threw a kite in the air, stepped into a pair of waterskis, and took off across the bay, disappearing round the point. That guy, it turned out, was Bruno Legaignoux. Everyone was amazed. How could anyone get up that much speed with no wind? Fast forward eight years, in Hawaii this time, and Pete saw one of his friends doing coast runs from Ho’okipa down to Kanaha. Looked like he was having fun. Then, one evening, walking along the beach with his wife, Pete spotted a guy named Flash Austin riding on the outer reef. As he watched, Austin jumped a wave and just hung up there for what seemed like an eternity. OK, thought Pete, you have my attention. Don Montague, a windsurfing sail designer who worked for Robby Naish, was the person who got Pete started. Montague was a bit of an evangelist for the sport and he kept saying to Pete that he should come out and try it. One day, Cabrinha took him up on the invite, and pretty quickly, he says, he was hooked. Kitesurfing became part of the way Pete spent his day, along with windsurfing, working as a graphic designer and working parttime with Robby Naish. After a time, he and a friend started making kitesurfing boards under the Cabrinha label. It was a nice little custom business, but really, says Pete, it was a way to get his own equipment and perhaps make a bit of money on the side. It was becoming clear that this was a sport with a future – and much of the talk about kitesurfing and where it was going was happening online. Pete had been at the front of the queue for windsurfing and for tow surfing and looking around at the big names who were showing a real interest – people like Robbie and Laird Hamilton and Mike Waltze

– he knew this thing was going to boom. He quit his job with Naish and started focusing on his kitesurfing board business. It was at this point that one of Pete’s friends, Kevin Ozee, who manages the NeilPryde Maui operation, suggested that Pete meet Neil Pryde. That’s how the two men came face to face at the shop on Maui. Though they obviously knew of one another, Neil and Pete had never met before – mainly because Pete had being riding for Gaastra for a long time. But they got talking, and out of their discussions came the decision to establish a range of kites using the Cabrinha brand name. Of course, it was all very well agreeing on what had to happen. The fact was that Neil Pryde Limited retained no intellectual property around making kites. So to get things started, they had Bruno Legaignoux do the first designs to get them into the market, and they hired Bernd Joachim, a German studying at Bocconi University, one of Italy’s best business schools and about to write an MBA thesis. Neil Pryde Limited funded Joachim to focus his thesis on the kitesurfing market, and that document became the foundation for the business plan. Bernd was then hired to execute the plan, with Pete Cabrinha running design and marketing from Maui. They started hiring and by year two, the design programme had been pulled in-house and the factory in China was on a roll with production. Joachim himself didn’t stay – again, there was the problem of having a manager in Italy, a brand which was being creatively driven out of Hawaii and Neil Pryde Limited itself in Hong Kong. Mike Raper took over. Mike himself was raised in Hong Kong and had worked with Bernd. He brought the management of the brand back to Hong Kong. (Talk to Neil Pryde himself for any time and you soon notice just how aware Neil is of the importance of networks. He not only remembers people, he also builds new relationships based on people he knows and trusts. In the case of Mike, his father Tony Raper had raced with Neil, so Neil knew the family.)

PHOTO: Cindy Cambell

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Pete Cabrinha shatters the world record for the biggest wave ever ridden at the Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards. Pete rode a specially designed Cabrinha surfboard on a 70-foot wave and in the process picked up a matching cheque for US$70,000.

PHOTO: Tracy Kraft

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“it’s like there’s two sides to this business – the creative side and the commercial side – and Neil Pryde limited has always been very good at taking care of the business side of the sports it gets involved with.” Since then, Cabrinha has emerged as one of the real Pryde Group success stories. Not least, says Neil, because they went into it with their eyes open. While JP Australia was in a mature and proven market, kitesurfing was a new sport and therefore a new business model. There was always going to be a steep learning curve – and everyone involved knew that, and committed to it on that basis. With a successful windsurfing brand to their name, Pete believes that Neil Pryde Limited could probably have built a kitesurfing business under the Pryde brand but it’s Neil’s view that, even if they had done so, it would have been a longer and slower process and they would have needed to work much harder to get credibility. By linking up with Pete, they not only gained from his knowledge and insights, they were also able to put a brand to the activity that carried real credibility. Today, Cabrinha is the leading kitesurfing brand in a sport that is still increasing in popularity. It is also the most profitable part of the business, and a key reason for that is that Cabrinha is the only major kitesurfing brand that also makes its own products. Mike’s team in Hong Kong oversees the financial and logistical aspects of the brand, leaving Pete and his team to focus on creative development of the products themselves and also on the marketing. It’s interesting that whilst distance has sometimes worked against the business in the past, that doesn’t seem to be the case with Cabrinha. Neil sees the relationship as an evolution of the relationship between Spanier and Bourne and Neil Pryde Limited. “In both cases, we have enjoyed fruitful relationships with highly creative people on Maui, whilst we got on with making sure the numbers worked,” he says. “Pete too is very much an ideas man. He is a key creative force behind the brand that bears his name.” “It’s like there’s two sides to this business – the creative side and the commercial side – and Neil Pryde Limited has always been very good at taking care of the business side of the sports it gets involved with,” observes Pete. “We’ve actually used it to our advantage – used the business performance expectations to lift our own expectations and therefore what we design the products to achieve. That way, everyone gains.” Then there’s the advances of vertical integration. Making the product, owning the brand and hooking into the Neil Pryde Limited distribution system has allowed the Cabrinha brand to go global in

a relatively short timeframe, and the Cabrinha brand is now sold in 40 countries worldwide, and growing … The cultural and personal connections that people have with the brand through their knowledge of Pete and his achievements, both in kitesurfing and elsewhere, also make this a very powerful lifestyle brand.

“Bruno’s bow kite design changed the entire industry. The look is now the standard for the vast majority of kites that are sold. But choosing to focus on the Crossbow opportunity gave us many, many months of relatively low competition in a growing market and we gained the reputation as a leader in design which we still benefit from today.

“It’s not one thing over another. It’s the combination of all the factors that makes the Cabrinha brand work,” says Pete.

“Two things you need to do to be successful in this business,” says Pete Cabrinha. “The first is to seize opportunities like the Crossbow when they are presented to you, and really commit to them. The second is, if you do make mistakes, correct them quickly and correct them well. We’ve had some misses in the past but by keeping our word and doing right by our customers, we’ve actually built loyalty.”

Of course there have been challenges. This is a fast-moving sport that is very competitive – but as early as 2005, a little over five years after those first conversations, Neil Pryde Limited and the Cabrinha brand had already proven to be an astute combination. Another connection to Maui, and another example of how Neil Pryde Limited has leveraged the charisma of an individual to take the lead in a sport that caters for people transfixed by excitement. The brand’s also done well because it’s been willing to take risks. In late 2004, Bruno introduced the ‘bow kite’ concept to the kitesurfing community and invited manufacturers to take up the concept. Pete says he took one look at the concept, the precise control it delivered, and the performance opportunities that also came with better control, and they were in. “Before then, a kite’s power was either full-on or it was totally off. And to implement off, you hit a quick release that dropped the kite from the sky. In other words, there was no incremental power control. As soon as the kite was launched, it was at full throttle – which is how kiteboarding got its initial reputation for being such an extreme sport,” he explains. “Bruno’s new system added incremental control and that meant a different way of kitesurfing suddenly became possible.” Cabrinha took a licence on Legaignoux’s new design and branded it the Crossbow. “We saw the performance opportunities of this before others,” says Pete, “so while most people were thinking the bow kite was a technical change, we recognised that it was also a change in the riding experience people could have – and we highlighted that in our marketing.” While others hung back, Cabrinha actually stopped their other developments and went all-in on the Crossbow development. It was a massive gamble, but it turned into a huge success – one that Pete reckons gave them an 18-month lead on the competition.

As to the future, Cabrinha says the sport has already diversified in at least five different directions: kitesurfing, which involves a surfboard; kiteboarding, which is closer to wakeriding; kiteracing, which is much more technical and takes place on a course; snowkiting, which involves a completely different season; and kiteboating, where kites are actually attached to boats as their main power source and people use them for things like channel crossings. “This is a sport that I think is going to get faster, broader and more exciting. We’ve made huge advances but when you look at things like the materials we’re using – which haven’t changed that much since the very early days of the sport – you realise that there are so many more opportunities to tap,” says Pete.

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PHOTO: Dodds

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whaT abouT wiNTer? The impetus for the move into the snowboarding market came from the wish to continue to grow and the fact that the company’s whole orientation to date had been around water sports. Winter looked like an untapped market. It was also a season Neil Pryde Limited knew nothing about. But then, as people in Neil Pryde Limited liked to say at the time, “Snow is nothing more than frozen water.” So they commissioned market research from SYN, a company in Austria – the centre of the winter sports market – to tell them where things were heading. Neil knew SYN through the windsurfing business, and had used them before to research projects. The findings that came back revealed snowboarding was projected to keep growing. In fact, if it carried on the way it had, it would soon overtake skiing. It didn’t stop there. People who were into windsurfing, according to the research, were also into snowboarding and skiing, and this synergy between windsurfing and snowboarding offered a significant counter-seasonal opportunity.

binding. The two offerings were marketed together as a way for boarders to gain direct control.

Neil Pryde Limited was interested. So was Mark Shriro and also his son Charles, who is an avid snowboarder.

Reinhard Hoffbauer, the man who had written the business plan and got the company off the ground, was later joined by Mark Elkington, who worked from Hong Kong and did a great deal to sort out the engineering issues. Over the next few years, the Flow binding would steadily grow in popularity until, by around 2003, it was well on the way to becoming one of the leading snowboard binding brands in the world.

Around this time, Neil met Werner Jetmar, an Austrian colleague of the people who’d done the market research. He had developed a concept for a snowboard binding that had never been seen before. Until now, snowboarding usually required sitting down on the snow to put on your bindings, which meant of course a wet bum and a delayed start. There had been alternatives – notably the ‘K2 Clicker’ style which allowed boarders to step into their bindings. The problem was these didn’t generally give the performance riders were looking for because the ‘Clicker’ bindings were only attached to the sole of the boot, which meant they did not provide good edge control. Many of them were also heavy and had proprietary boot/binding interfaces. The emergence of these ‘step-in’ bindings quickly turned into a fight between those who favoured traditional two-strap bindings and those who wanted step-in bindings for quick entry and convenience. Jetmar’s invention actually drew its inspiration from both camps. It allowed boarders to step into their bindings while standing. They could also use any boot they wanted because the bindings, while designed to work best with Flow boots, were also compatible with nearly every other brand. The bindings were unique in other ways. They came with a single fixed ‘3D PowerStrap’ very much like that used in windsurfing for extra support and comfort. The goal was to recreate the ‘barefoot surfing’ feel in snowboarding. The boots had an integrated liner design, intended to provide more support than traditional liner boots, reduce the silhouette profile and work perfectly with a Flow

In 1996, Flow made its debut at the ISPO trade show in Munich Germany. The multi-million dollar launch included building a half pipe inside the show itself, complete with real snow. Initial sales were encouraging. At first, Flow had no engineering resourcing and as a result the first bindings were relatively primitive. But in Europe people liked the ideas and, sometimes despite the product, they stuck with it.

In 2002 Flow also added a complementary line of 14 boards, all manufactured in Austria and featuring full wood-core, sandwich construction boards. The boots were still plagued by technical difficulties: the shop fit was not as good as liner boots and they took longer to break in. The road to acceptance was a continuous up-hill battle against the marketing efforts of all the other major brands promoting their lightweight performance liner technology. Enough was enough. Rather than continue to fight consumer demand, Flow made the move to linered boots beginning in 2004. Hoffbauer worked hard to build the business in Europe. The snowboard bindings were doing particularly well, but breaking into the heartland of snowboarding and getting a foothold in the crucial US market, so to speak, was much tougher than everyone expected. Nevertheless, it was vital for Flow to do so and also to penetrate other markets trending towards a more freestyle image, in Asia and Scandinavia for example. Central European markets were holding true to their free-riding roots. Without some traction in the States, Flow risked being typecast by boarders as a ‘Euro-brand’, which threatened to confine the brand’s growth potential. In snowboarding terms, that would have meant it was shut out from its biggest and most important market.

218 | Will to Win Earth & Sky.

TIM HUMPHREYS

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QUANTUM, INFINITE & QUANTUM BASE

ALL PHOTOS (EXCEPT SPECIFIED) SP : Ryan Hughes

PHOTO: Dodds

220 | WILL TO WIN earth & sky.

ANTTI AUTTI

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To help gain that foothold in the US market by ‘Americanising’ the brand, Anthony Scaturro, a long time snowboarder and successful snow sports retailer in the US market, joined in July 2003. Later that year, Scaturro moved to California to set up the Flow-branded operations within Flow Sports Inc. Flow Sports itself was the US distribution division for Flow, part of Adventure Sports Inc, which was also wholly owned by Neil Pryde Limited. Until this point, the sales and marketing side of the business had been run out of Austria. Elkington continued to work on engineering and product quality improvements. Since 1998, he’d been looking to bring as much of the snowboard binding manufacturing in-house as possible. As part of this, he’d established what was known as the Hard Goods Manufacturing Division, so named to distinguish it from the ’Soft Goods’ division which was involved with manufacturing products like windsurf sails, kiteboarding canopies and wetsuits. 2006 was a great year for snowboarding and Flow was no exception. In fact, it was Flow’s best year of sales since its inception, with the company selling more than 200,000 snowboard bindings, board sales up by nearly 300% since the change in management and boots back on track with yearover-year, double digit growth. Anthony Scaturro

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RIVAL QUICKFIT

says some of the key reasons for this success were refocused marketing efforts, a revitalised team of young freestyle riders, and a complete retooling of every snowboard binding, boot and board design.

windsurfing and Flow and Neil Pryde Limited went their separate ways in 2009 when Shriro bought Flow Sports Inc from Neil Pryde Limited, although Flow itself had been operating from the brand’s HQ in California since 2004.

Sell-in might have been great but that year there was precious little snow worldwide leaving retailers and brands with substantial stock on their shelves going into 2007. Flow saw its first decline since its market debut in 1996. There was poor snowfall again in 2007, and 2008 - 2009 the global financial crisis hit and sales generally stalled.

Neil says ultimately his views on where Flow could go and those of Shriro had grown apart. Shriro’s intention was that the Flow brand would underpin the Flow Sports portfolio and additional complementary and counter-seasonal brands would be brought in or created to round out the portfolio. But that’s also one of the things about being in a strong partnership – you can disagree. Neil fully understands Shriro’s passion for the sport – it’s like his own personal passion for yachting and his commercial belief in windsports – but it’s a sport he thinks Neil Pryde Limited is better off being out of.

Ironically, skiing, the very industry that had provided much of the technology and infrastructure allowing snowboarding to evolve from an idea into an industry, also began to fight back, first with the introduction of carving skis, then with twin-tip skis which allowed skiers to drop into the half-pipe and emulate the stylish aerial manoeuvres created by snowboarding. Some snowboarders also returned to their skiing roots. Flow remains a strong brand and Neil Pryde Limited continues to distribute Flow in France, Spain, Portugal, Benelux, Germany, Austria and England but it’s no longer owned by Neil Pryde Limited. Ultimately, snowboarding was a culture and a style of business that was worlds away from

“I couldn’t see a future for us in snowboarding,” he says simply. “It’s probably the only real philosophical difference we’ve had as partners in all the time we’ve been together – but these things happen in business. “We were involved for 14 years and in that time we took the brand to the top of a very, very tough sector. Still, to me, we never achieved the scale needed across all three product lines. The

ANDREA SCHULER

snowboard binding was a great success but the board and boot volumes never equalled those of the bindings.” Neil’s view is that the way you start out as a brand, in many cases, is the way you continue to be remembered, and changing that is very difficult. “To this day, we still have people who think Neil Pryde Limited is just a yachting brand or just a windsurfing brand, because that’s how they know us. Flow’s initial reputation was built on it being a snowboard binding brand, and that’s what the market has remembered. We could never get the margin needed across all the products. My view was, and still is, that you have to be a leader in your chosen area. Flow was a leader in bindings but that in itself didn’t provide enough revenue to ensure a business based on a complete product line of bindings, boards and boots could be viable. “I felt that the only way forward was for Flow to be a specialist snowboard binding company and to focus just on that but to do so from a much lower cost structure. My partners didn’t agree.” Scaturro, who has remained with the brand as the CEO and President, has this take on the situation. “There are many forces that shape the market – pricing, technology, perception and participation. For the brand to survive in these times is, no

doubt, a challenge. The key for Flow will be to continue to innovate from a product point of view but also reinvent its selling and distribution strategies. The challenge will be to sustain profitability and to continue to reinvest in new product innovation. “But Flow must continue to fulfill its original goal of being a strong multi-category brand. To revert to a one category binding company would leave Flow a sitting duck.” Neil had other concerns. “Snowboarding’s a very weather dependent sport and the season window is very small. If there’s no snow or the snow is late, you start to run up against the psychological barrier of the Christmas deadline and then everything after that is on close-out. A later, longer season doesn’t mean catch-up. It just means you’re in close-out for longer, which is very hard on margins … and with global warming, there was every indication, as far as we were concerned, that the situation was going to get worse, not better. “The fight-back by skiing was also sobering, because it showed all the optimism of the numbers we’d seen when we started out wasn’t going to last. And so, we were investing to build the brand at the same time as a real exodus to skiing was taking place.

“If my partners had just wanted to be a snowboard binding business, I think we might have stayed involved but their goal of a global snowsports brand was one I didn’t agree with. We’re still involved in distribution. But ultimately I had to apply the same philosophy to Flow as I have tried to apply elsewhere – if you can’t see where it’s going, and you don’t believe you can fix it, then shake hands and bail ….” Ask Anthony Scaturro about what he thinks they gained from being part of the Pryde Group for 14 years and he says the appetite for innovation, strong financial discipline and principles were a few of the attributes that Flow adopted. He says they also looked at the way Neil Pryde Limited invests in its team of world-class athletes and have tried to emulate that approach with their own team. “Support of the athletes,” he says, “gives the brand core credibility, validates your technology, gives back to the sport and attempts to inspire young riders to become the next world champs – all of which are good for the sport’s image and its participation.”

PHOTO: Dodds

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hard lessoNs from helmeTs Not all Neil Pryde Limited’s initiatives to diversify have succeeded as well as its venture into kitesurfing, and there are certainly lessons to be drawn, in Neil’s view, from one particular project – the DXL protective products business. One of the most difficult ways to grow a business, he says, is organically. New businesses fighting against entrenched competitors are much more likely to make mistakes. To help deal with the consequences of that risk, and the accompanying costs, you need to constantly watch how the business is progressing and regularly review. You need to hold achievements accountable to milestones, fix problems and mistakes as soon as you’re aware of them, and if you can’t fix them, get out. Neil Pryde Limited didn’t do that with the DXL helmet, and it cost them significantly. Neil first met Pascal Joubert of Pulsium through windsurfing. The idea Pascal pitched of an adjustable, light helmet that looked great and offered extensive protection seemed, on the face of it, to make complete sense. After all, the move into wetsuits, another example of protection, had been successful. And as Neil looked across the various brands Neil Pryde Limited were involved with, he could see that the whole concept of protection was becoming important. It was certainly something he personally was acutely aware of following Alex Caviglia’s tragic accident. Ski resorts, worried about their liability exposure, were wanting people to have better protection, and being involved in the snowboarding industry had highlighted the risks around product liability and the sheer cost of insurance premiums. The business planning process confirmed that this project looked viable. It was 2005 and helmets were just starting to make an appearance in the market. Demand projections looked very healthy. The opportunity was there to catch a rising market. And with that confirmation in place, Neil Pryde Limited took a licence under the patent and set out to make a beautiful product that would take the business by storm. Award winning designer Yves Behar’s work had won awards and plaudits the world over. But ultimately, the product failed to fire. And Neil gives three reasons why. Firstly, he says, the company was confident it could manufacture the helmet itself. Ultimately, that didn’t work but the company persisted in trying to get it right. That was a mistake. Secondly, the design may have been beautiful and drawn design acclaim but it didn’t align with the snowboarding-based distribution channel that Neil Pryde Limited had through Flow. It failed to acknowledge one critical thing. The cultures of wintersports are very different. So while skiers loved the helmet, snowboarders hated it because they were into grunge and this product represented a complete mismatch with how they identified themselves. In other words, the

product’s aesthetics and cost were outside the market in which the company operated. That would prove a fatal flaw. Thirdly, the market changed and Neil says they got caught. Helmets, generally, took off and almost immediately commoditised, meaning the DXL was far too expensive. It may have been unique and beautiful, but people simply weren’t prepared to pay for it. The helmet might even have had a place in the high-fashion end of the skiing market, but that was a very small market and one that was not reachable, practically, through Flow’s distribution. Ultimately, he says, you have to believe in and back your people and trust their judgement, but you also need to realise that they can get it wrong, nobody’s perfect. When that happens, you need to know what went wrong and why (so that you don’t make the same mistakes again) and most importantly, you need to be able to recognise when things aren’t going to plan and take action – solve the issue or stop the investment immediately. “We waited a year longer than we should have,” says Neil, “and the fact is that decision did nothing but double our losses.” Neil says the company learnt the lesson. “Our latest venture into performance bikes includes the safeguards we should have had in place for this product,” he says.

a prOducT TaKes sHape at the start of every year, sail designer robert stroj and Jamie mclellan meet in maui to talk through the upgrades for the year ahead. it’s detailed work, designed to make the most of the latest innovations and ideas. The pair discuss the latest fashion trends, the extent of the changes they need to make and the ranges they will apply to. Ideas could start with a discovery, or a thought, maybe a question. Something the design team of David Starbuck (designs rigs parts - 3D), Robert (sails) and Pieter Bijl (testing parts) believe is worth exploring. From there, it goes to the appropriate brand manager and then to Neil himself for a decision. A green light means approval to spend time and resources on exploring the concept. The idea will then be prototyped: made at the NeilPryde Design Centre on Maui and with the manufacturing team in China. Production processes and costs will be examined. Intellectual property protection will be explored. Markets will

be researched. Adverse findings during any one of these processes can stop a project dead. If it does go ahead, the final designs will be tested. If and when they pass muster, they’ll be ready to begin production. Development can take as little as two months. Or it can continue for years. During that time, everything about the concept will be revalidated, and a huge amount of what is developed will never make it. The goal: incorporate all new functionality and then marry that with strong and effective design decisions. It’s tough and ruthless work, but

the results are amazing. The 2010 collection for example featured sails that were 20 - 25% lighter by weight than the previous year, thanks to decisions around materials, design and production. The 2011 collection takes the design aspect even further, using the company’s new laminating processes to achieve a whole new sense of hightech, high visual impact.

PHOTOS: Jérôme Houyvet

desIgNINg WITH pryde TOday Pat Goodman

Robert Stroj

Jamie McLellan

Pat first joined the company as a windsurfing designer in 1999 to support Nils Rosenblad, around the time that Barry Spanier left. Before that he’d worked at Gaastra. In 2001, he moved over to the kitesurfing design team at Cabrinha. As chief designer and kite product manager, Pat is responsible for the design of all five Cabrinha kite ranges and their related components: racing; performance freeride; wake style; wave; and school and entry level.

Robert Stroj, who had actually worked with Monty Spindler at ART, joined Neil Pryde Limited in 2000. He was specifically brought in to develop a new line of racing sails, known these days simply as the RS series. Setting out to design the RS racing sails, his goal could not have been more simply put: make it as fast as possible. In time of course, he would succeed in the most obvious way, when Antoine Albeau set a new outright general speed record in March 2008 of 49.09 knots. Neil Pryde Limited could again lay claim to the fastest sail in the world.

Jamie McLellan, a New Zealander, has continued to refine the new design language set by Thomas Meyerhoffer. Jamie was working in Milan, and being a keen windsurfer himself, wrote to Neil Pryde saying how interested he was in working on the Neil Pryde Limited product lines. The two New Zealanders first met at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris.

One of Pat’s achievements since working with Cabrinha has been the very popular ‘Switchblade’ high performance freeride kite which has, to date, perhaps sold the most units of any one kite model, while the Cabrinha ‘Crossbow’ is now the most sought-after kite for rapidly growing course racing and speed sailing events. The ‘Crossbow’ was also the first kite to officially hold a documented speed record for breaking the 50 knot barrier.

AWARDS: 1991 • DHL / SCMP Hong Kong Business Awards International Winner 1992 • Official Supplier of Sails & Rigs to Barcelona Olympic Games 1995 • The factory obtained ISO certification • Hong Kong Awards for Industry Trade Development Council Export Marketing Award 1996 • New York Mobius Awards Gold Award for Advertising • HK 4As Advertising Awards Awards in numerous categories for Advertising

Designing the RS:X rig to work with a board designed by Jean Bouldoires for the Olympics was a very different challenge. It was a tough brief says Stroj, because it demanded one sail size, no matter what the conditions – from 3 - 30 knots. It’s a sign though of how much and how quickly the sail scene changes that when it was first introduced, the RS:X rig was very close in its performance to Neil Pryde Limited’s inaugural, state-of-the-art RS series. Some years on, RS:X, being One Design, hasn’t changed – but Neil Pryde Limited’s own racing sails have evolved considerably.

1998

2001

2003

• Hong Kong Awards for Industry Trade Development Council Export Marketing Award

• Hong Kong Awards for Industry Federation of Hong Kong Industries Consumer Product Design Award / Flow Snowboard Bindings

• Gold Award in the Business Week Industrial Design Excellence Awards 2003 NeilPryde Windsurfing

• Hong Kong Awards for Industry Federation of HK Industies Consumer Product Design Award • Communication Arts Award of Excellence Design Annual Packaging Series 1999 • Hong Kong Awards for Industry Trade Development Council Certificate of Merit in Export Marketing Neil Pryde Limited

• Hong Kong Awards for Industry Trade Development Council Certificate of Merit in Export Marketing Neil Pryde Limited / Flow Division 2002 • The Chinese Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong Hong Kong Top Ten Brand Award 2002

• Hong Kong Awards for Industry Trade Development Council Certificate of Merit in Export Marketing • Red Dot Design Award Product Design / NeilPryde Windsurfing Collection 2002 • Red Dot Design Award Product Design / Flow Snowboard Bindings 2002 • International Forum Design Award Product Design / NeilPryde Windsurfing Collection 2002

After getting the call-up from Simon Narramore, Jamie moved to Hong Kong for a year, before going back to London in late 2003, and then shifting back to New Zealand from mid 2006 on. At first, Jamie focused on an accessories line that never got the green light. Then, around the time he left Hong Kong, he worked on the next collection of sails with Robert Stroj. While most of his work since then has been in windsurfing, this year Jamie worked on the NeilPryde-branded wetsuit line for the first time. The work will be released next year.

• International Forum Design Award Product Design / Flow Snowboard Bindings 2002

2008

2004

2009

• NeilPryde RS:X selected as Olympic Windsurfing Equipment for Beijing Olympic Games • Hong Kong Awards for Industry Consumer Product Design Certificate of Merit / Cabrinha Kites Recon Safety System 2006 • Gold Award in the Business Week Industrial Design Excellence Awards 2006 / DXL

• Red Dot Design Award Product Design 2008 / DXL Bodywear • Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award / NeilPryde Windsurfing 2010 Sail Collection 2010 • Red Dot Product Design Award (best of the best) NPX Lucifer Drysuit • Red Dot Product Design Award NeilPryde 2010 Windsurfing Sail Collection • Red Dot Product Design Award NeilPryde X3 Windsurfing Boom • Bronze IDEA Award from IDSA for The Lucifer drysuit

PHOTO: Jérôme Houyvet

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234 | WILL TO WIN a whole world of excitement.

fiNdiNG a New desiGN laNGuaGe Geoff Cornish was a big thinker, a larger than life character, who had played an important role in resetting the emphasis given to marketing at Neil Pryde Limited. After Geoff left, James Macaulay filled the marketing role for a couple of years, and through him, the company built some important agency relationships. Simon Narramore’s first contact with the NeilPryde company was working as an account manager for an agency that held the company’s advertising account. Having tried unsuccessfully to convince people at Neil Pryde Limited to accept the controversial ‘naked man’ ad, Simon appealed directly to Neil. The campaign went ahead and was a huge hit, boosting sales on all NeilPryde products and proving beyond doubt that the market would respond quickly and well to great ideas presented with high production values. Shortly after this, Simon stepped into the Marketing Manager role himself and set about implementing major changes. In particular, he built on the increased interest in, and respect for, creativity which his predecessors had fostered. If the era of Geoff Cornish was distinguished by audacious, instinctive and daring marketing, Simon Narramore’s time would be characterised by a thoughtful, intellectualised and methodical approach to the company’s actual structure, and a furthering of Neil Pryde Limited’s design direction. He would help change the company’s internal creative atmosphere in a number of important ways and in so doing take the emphasis on design to the next iteration. The first change came with the acknowledgement that the company needed to get a lot more disciplined about the way it thought about and expressed the NeilPryde brand. The product books were a living example of the problem. Up until now, all the product spreads for each book had been prepared separately and then pulled together. Result: product spreads with no common DNA. To change that, the company began building an in-house creative team. Neil Pryde Limited had worked with some of the top advertising agencies over the years, including household names such as Leo Burnett and Ted Bates, but the relationships didn’t tend to last because, as Neil points out, there was very little media placement. Most of the work that was required was creative and Neil Pryde Limited’s insistence on high production values meant margins were cut to the bone. Without the revenue from media placement, agencies tended to only stay for a short while. Bringing the creative design work in-house gave Neil Pryde Limited more control over the creative process. Next up, the company’s design language. Barry Spanier and Geoff Bourne, Willi Blaauw, Nils Rosenblad and Monty Spindler had made a massive contribution to Neil Pryde Limited’s sail design aesthetic. Spurred on by Cornish’s ‘Ultra Light Aerodynamic Performance’ marketing mantra, they had individually and collectively shifted the company from a pure manufacturer to a highly branded performer, changing expectations within the sport in the process.

After Nils left, around 2000, one of the greatest challenges the company faced, according to Bjorn Fjelddahl, was what to do next. Bjorn himself was a Swede who had lived in France for many years. He ended up working for the board brand Tiga, after booking a one way ticket to see his brother in Hong Kong, and then getting an interview with Neil. Spotting that he was into windsurfing and that he spoke fluent French, Neil offered him a job back in France working alongside Jean-Paul Riou at NeilPryde Europe. Bjorn stayed two years before Tiga was sold to Bic Sport, then left at the time of the sale to run Tiga under the new ownership. He was back two years later, after Reed Lockhart left the company in 1997, and Neil asked Bjorn to come back as the Windsurfing Division Product Manager, based in Hong Kong. In time, after working closely with the designers on upcoming products, Bjorn moved to Maui. Spanier’s departure had spelt the end of an era. No-one doubted for a moment that he left big shoes to fill – after all this was the man whose final design for Neil Pryde Limited was the hugely successful Z1 racing sail. Now, with both Barry and Nils gone, Neil Pryde Limited needed to quickly rethink their whole design strategy if they were to continue building on their successes. And to do that, they needed to get a new sense of structure around their creativity. The design language of the products was put under the microscope. It became clear that the gap between Neil Pryde Limited products and those of the company’s competitors had closed significantly in recent years, and there was a danger that the products could lapse into a generic look. The design style itself was not distinctive enough any more and too easily copied. Neil and Simon Narramore agreed that the company needed to look outside the industry and adopt a very clear and distinctive visual design language that would allow it to break the mould. “We needed to be able to make conscious decisions about our design direction – the way Apple and BMW make those kinds of decisions,” says Narramore. In other words, they needed to continue to lift their product design game, and to do that, they needed an outside perspective. To bring that discipline into play, Thomas Meyerhoffer, a highly respected designer and keen windsurfer who had worked on some of the early designs for the Flow bindings in 1999, was asked to formulate a disciplined product design language. Starting in September 2001, Meyerhoffer stripped back the diversified and increasingly busy design look that had evolved over time into a much more focused set of striking silhouettes that had a distinctive link with one another.

According to Bjorn Fjelddahl, Meyerhoffer’s significant contribution was that he helped set the future direction for Neil Pryde Limited. Introducing that level of discipline cut design time dramatically, in some cases from around a year to just three months, and the look that is Neil Pryde Limited today started to gel. The emphasis was on adding form and function, without adding weight. “Meyerhoffer is a product designer as opposed to a sail designer,” explains Bjorn. “We originally brought in Thomas to work on our rig products (mast bases and boom heads). The idea was to design distinctive and elegant products that matched functionality with aesthetics. Simon Narramore and Neil then took that further by applying the approach to sail design. “Up until that point, sails were designed entirely by a sail designer and the look of the product was completed by applying colours and graphic design to the sail. The new approach was to formulate a structured design language for the product form. To do that, we went back to basics by stripping back all the graphics and concentrating on silhouettes. The sail designers then started working within the parameters, focusing solely on function, performance and comfort and ease of use of the product.” As a result, NeilPryde-branded sails looked distinctly different, and that look grabbed attention. Narramore reckons it reset the design style for the industry. Since then, the design team has successfully carried on the direction set by Meyerhoffer, making improvements as they went, fostering a very strong culture of design across the company and continuing to win awards all over the world. “This was a watershed period,” says Neil, “because it led us into the era we’re in today. The intuitive and freewheeling way of doing things was replaced by a much more structured approach to managing our design and marketing.”

236 | WILL TO WIN a whole world of excitement.

PerformaNCe maNufaCTuriNG By 2004, approaching its 35th anniversary, Neil Pryde Limited was a much-changed company from the purely manufacturing organisation it had been at start-up. For ten years, until around 1980, the company had single-mindedly pursued OEM business, first in yachting and later in windsurfing as well. Around 1981, Neil Pryde Limited started to bring branded products to market, but these were, at least in the first few years, really an extension of the company’s manufacturing strengths. They were made in the company’s factories alongside the work that Neil Pryde Limited continued to do for other companies and brands. In other words, Neil Pryde Limited had, by the 1980s, evolved into a manufacturer with a brand of its own. By the 1990s, as the company diversified its offering into new areas such as rigs and then waterwear and kites, and introduced new brands of its own into those markets, the nature of the business changed again. Neil Pryde Limited was now a manufacturer and a marketer and manager of its own brands, and of course, by this time, it was continuing to develop a global distribution system to get those branded products to market. But even as it continued to develop brands and product lines and distribute them to dealers across the world, Neil Pryde Limited was still undertaking OEM manufacturing work to balance out the range of work passing through its factories and to ensure its manufacturing operations had the scale and volumes they needed to be profitable. And the brands who were clients for manufacturing sometimes competed against the Neil Pryde Limited brands in the marketplace. That is why Neil Pryde Limited ring-fenced its manufacturing and gave it its own brand: Performance Manufacturing. Then within the manufacturing company itself, ‘Chinese walls’ were established to ensure that each customer’s trade secrets were protected.

The Pryde GrouP 2004 saw the formation of the Pryde Group as a way of expressing what united the now diversified business and presenting what was in effect a complex business to the world in a simple and coherent way. The goal that Neil Pryde and David Wilson had agreed still held – to be the number one brand on the water – but the Group structure provided a simple way of integrating the various product lines and businesses that the company was now involved in. Tying up separate agendas, as Narramore puts it. The set-up gives a simple and clearly understood over-arching name to the three different types of businesses operating within the Pryde Group: Performance Manufacturing, which does the actual manufacturing; Brand Management – with each of the brands operating as a global business in its own right; and Distribution, which is responsible for seeing products through to market. Each of these different parts of the Pryde Group operates as an independent unit, complete with its own management structure, goals and defined responsibilities.

The shared name also ensures that clients and competitors alike understand that this is not three loosely connected companies, but three different functions within a Group that has shared values and operational disciplines across its different business activities. Talk to Neil about this and he’ll tell you manufacturing is a culture built around dealing with details. And it’s a very different culture from marketing and also distribution. “They share one key characteristic,” he adds. “No matter what you do in business, you have to be able to sell. If you’re making, you need to sell what you can do. If you’re in marketing, you need to make sure your brands

are valued. If you’re in distribution, you need to be able to get placement and preference. You won’t sell if you don’t believe in what you’re selling. And if you can’t sell, you don’t eat. Salespeople are born, so the ability to sell effectively comes more easily to some than to others, but no matter what you do, it’s a must-have.”

Inevitably, NeilPryde brands have become the biggest clients of the factories, which means in effect that each of the Pryde Group brands is a customer – but there are still plenty of other big names that trust Performance Manufacturing to get the work done. The way to make great products consistently, according to Neil, is plenty of discipline in what you do and documentation for everything. The factory itself has been certified under ISO9001 since 1995 and for SA8000, a global standard for responsible labour practices, since 2005. Computers of course mean every aspect of every sail and product is digital these days – from design right through to cutting. The business also works with a product lifecycle management software that documents every product from the initial idea through to prototyping. Everything is databased, including all specs and every decision. Every sample is kept and signed off as a reference. Every day, a certain percentage of the windsurfing sails are taken out of the line, fully rigged on a mast and boom and evaluated. Every single kite is inflated for several hours to make sure there are no leaks. It’s also photographed to ensure it’s inflated symmetrically. That’s 40,000 photos every year.

Another great advantage of having manufacturing as a core strength within the Group is that the company can invest in proprietary technology and processes in order to achieve competitive advantages. The recent acquisition of carbon fibre mast technology is a case in point. That capability, and the knowledge of the processes and materials associated with it, now resides within the Pryde Group walls. Similarly, with the new lamination process used in the production of the materials for windsurfing and kitesurfing products. Developing and owning that know-how has enabled Neil Pryde Limited to continue to lift the bar technically whilst keeping the costs to do so as lean as possible. The 2011 collection of windsurfing sails have used that new laminating skill to achieve incredible changes in the product. Robert Stroj says laminated X-ply materials have been used in windsurfing sails for a while, but with limited applications. The new technology allows the film to be printed before it’s laminated, meaning the designers can now incorporate multi-coloured patterns as well as logos, all laminated and therefore protected, inside the finished material. The factory at Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand came about through the growth of the wetsuit OEM business. One of Neil Pryde Limited’s OEM clients in that sector, another major wetsuit brand, Quiksilver, was sourcing their product from a licensee in Thailand. Things didn’t go to plan, however, and Quiksilver was forced to step in and take over the operations. The problem was Quiksilver was a marketing company, not a manufacturer. By their own admission, running factories and making the actual wetsuits was not their thing. Frank Voit, who worked for Neil Pryde Limited at the time and who had built up Neil Pryde Limited’s own waterwear manufacturing capabilities, met with them and suggested Neil Pryde Limited buy the factory and make Quiksilver’s wetsuits for them. A four-year deal was signed. In time, Quiksilver moved on and new business replaced the original deal. It was another development that added impetus to the formation of the Pryde Group, because when the deal was done originally the NeilPryde brands and the manufacturing business were not run separately. The decision to start marketing NeilPryde-branded waterwear meant the company had to put distance between its own branded products and the wetsuits it was making for Quiksilver and the other companies that, over time, became clients.

Today, the factory in Thailand works as an extension of, and a back up to, the Performance Manufacturing business based in China. It’s the only technical apparel business that Neil Pryde Limited has and it specialises in manufacturing spandex garments for surfing, triathlon and running brands as well as wetsuits. “Manufacturing for us is about balancing scale and specialisation. We’re looking for through-put, but we have no interest in being a mass producer” observes Neil. “We want to be a manufacturing partner, so we need to be able to use our knowhow well, which means focusing on particular areas and making a real go of them. The skill is recognising not just specialist sports, but profitable sports where our manufacturing volumes are small enough to be recognised as a specialist, but there’s enough business for us to be rewarded for what we’re doing.” Keeping the factory in Thailand reflects another concern of NeilPryde’s: manufacturing itself is diversifying because China itself is heading in the same direction as Hong Kong did 20 years ago. “Hong Kong thrived as a low cost manufacturing base for decades but in time a more affluent and educated workforce didn’t want to work in factories, and this created a serious labour shortage that led to our company and many others moving across the border to China where labour was plentiful. Now China, and indeed Asia, is changing, and as living standards improve and the aspirations of its people rise, there is less and less interest in manufacturing labour-intensive, low tech products. Increasingly, the Chinese economy is modelling itself on first-world economies and the Chinese Government is aggressively promoting the manufacture of high-tech, high value-added products. As a manufacturer, it’s important we recognise and respond to these trends. We need to produce products that rely more on technology, which in turn means we need to redesign what we make. That’s why we’ve continued to automate our factory to keep pace with what is going on around us. “Thailand though remains more focused on labourintensive work, so the factory at Chiang Mai gives us manufacturing options. It’s a balancing act – making sure you have enough work going through both factories, and that each factory is doing the best work for its cost structure.”

238 | Will to Win A Whole World of Excitement.

240 | WILL TO WIN a whole world of excitement.

GoiNG Global There’s only one way to build a successful global business: patiently, and with an acceptance that doing so represents significant commitment and risk. Fortunately, Neil Pryde Limited’s major shareholder, Shriro, and indeed Inchcape before them, have long traditions as traders. Both have understood the importance of getting the distribution model right.

There was no formula. Different things worked in different countries for different reasons. In fact, in many countries, Neil Pryde Limited had to work with others to create new structures to sell windsurfing gear.

Neil calls building the distribution system Neil Pryde Limited’s single biggest investment, but, as he also says, that investment didn’t reveal its true value on the balance sheet until many years later, when the company actually owned distribution businesses and tangible assets.

build with customers, either directly or through channels that those customers know and value. So those relationships are more widespread and directly nurtured by your distribution system. One way or another, you have to be in many places at once.”

Take a step back from this and something of a pattern starts to emerge. Establishing a network of agents got the NeilPryde brand out into key markets. Those agents carried the products and leveraged their relationships to build the brand’s presence. The company was blessed with some fantastic people prepared to put in the hard yards to make it happen.

“Starting out, we looked to keep our physical assets as lean as possible. We spent years establishing and building relationships but all the money we poured into doing that, in terms of things like travel, was intangible. There was literally very little you could actually see for all the work apart from the huge goodwill that manifested itself in sales.

The decision to develop a robust distribution system was never questioned because, frankly, there was no choice. Neil Pryde Limited had to be an export brand just to survive. As soon as the company moved from pure OEM to having a branded offering as well, going global was the only option.

When Torben Kornum first took over distributing in Denmark, there were no NeilPryde products. Just four years later, they were the market leader. He’s still distributing Neil Pryde Limited products in that part of the world to this day.

“However, as the businesses matured, we found that we needed to start managing relationships in our key markets in ways that were beyond what those working for us on a commission basis could be expected to do. And that’s when you start putting down roots in crucial markets: buying businesses, employing people, developing assets. At that point, all the investment you’ve made into that market starts to show itself, literally. You can finally see your footprint.” Neil says that what the investment in building a distribution system did do, even from early on, was to add significant value and presence to the Pryde Group portfolio of brands. “OEM manufacturers have relatively straight-forward relationships with their clients. It’s a supply-chain relationship built essentially on delivery and price. It’s much easier to run things point to point. Brands though live or die on the much more complex relationships they

Neil Pryde Limited started recruiting agents to sell its branded products not long after it first launched the NeilPryde brand. Many of the early distributors were yachting agents whose businesses had suffered with the decline in that sport during the 1970s, and who were looking for new opportunities. They jumped on windsurfing, giving the distribution network a shot in the arm. Mengam Marine, for example, came from selling to the yachting industry – but saw windsurfing growing all around them and quickly got onboard. Germany too did not have a big yachting market, but windsurfing took off. In the US, NeilPryde USA went from selling yacht sails to windsurfing equipment as the latter became more popular. Inevitably some distributorships fell away, particularly in places where windsurfing did not get that much traction. But there were also some yachting agents who simply found it hard to move with the times.

Aage Lyngs is legendary not just for his effortless charm and diplomacy but for the work he put in across Europe and for the doors he opened. Aage’s background was in textiles and he had run a company in Denmark distributing Finnish textiles. He was introduced to Neil Pryde Limited by Hans Dreifaldt, and took over as European agent when Dreifaldt exited. He was Neil’s right-hand man in Europe, and the two men would drive and fly across the Continent negotiating contracts and building relationships. Ask Michel Quistinic too about getting NeilPryde products established in France and he’ll tell you about driving from town to town in a tiny car packed with samples in the dead of winter. And Neil himself chewed through the air miles, tirelessly arranging and attending face to face meetings and organising events to cement relationships and build trust. After a time, the company took over ownership of its own distribution channels in France and

The company was blessed with some fantastic people prepared to put in the hard yards to make it happen …. michel Quistinic will tell you about driving from town to town in a tiny car packed with samples in the dead of winter. Germany. On the American mainland, too, after a number of distribution models had been tried and discarded, Neil Pryde Limited ultimately came to the conclusion that it needed to have its own distribution system in order to manage its stock risk, have better control over its cashflow and make a reasonable profit. The next step in the bid to get even closer to the end customer was to establish an actual retail presence. That happened first in Hawaii. In 1996, Geoff Bourne and Barry Spanier went from being consultants to employees and the company opened a boutique shop on Maui and set up a separate design centre for Barry Spanier and Nils Rosenblad to work from. In 1998, Kevin Ozee, who had been a professional windsurfer and later became Sales Manager, took over as VP for the renamed NeilPryde Maui. This was the company’s first concept store for windsurfing. Another retail store in Miami, Florida, has allowed the company to access both Americas – North and South. A third store has been opened in France. In Neil’s view, control is a key part of owning a successful brand, and although it is complex and requires major investment, ultimately having

a high level of control over how your products are presented and distributed is worth it. After all, even with the massive improvements in communications and air travel that we all enjoy today, many of the company’s most important markets are still a long way from Hong Kong. “There’s a lot of talk about direct models and whether companies still need a bricks and mortar presence but in my view there is still a real need to let customers touch and feel the products and to provide opportunities for people to talk about their sport. Retail stores and an online presence are parts of a continuum, rather than opposites. “A key reason is that multiple channels allow brands to pursue different objectives in-market. Outlets you don’t own, for example, might be working to shorter term objectives, and as a brand you have no control over that. You also have little or no say over their commitment to your products. For those reasons, having your own retail presence makes sense.” Today, the store in Maui is a complete Pryde Group flagship store, carrying not only a full range of NeilPryde-branded gear, but also the Cabrinha, JP Australia and NeilPryde Maui brands. In fact,

the Maui store takes the integration principle one stage further. Above the 7500 sq ft store is the design loft, where the sail and kite design work is done, and where Pete and his Cabrinha marketing team also work. “Distribution gives your brands immediacy. It literally puts them within reach of your customers. And so it is continually changing as customers are offered more and more ways to access products. Closing the gap between where you’re based and where and how your customers buy is critical. It’s something we were first recognised for in 1981 when we received the DHL/SCMP Hong Kong Business International Award. “I’m very much of the view that multiple markets require multiple distribution channels, and selling through other stores, your own retail stores and online are simply different ways to do what every brand needs to achieve: to interact with its customers. That’s why distribution can never be a static science.”

fasTer fOrWard PHOTO: Jérôme Houyvet

PHOTO: Julian Schlosser

244 | WILL TO WIN Faster Forward.

ChoseN for The olymPiCs Windsurfing first appeared at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984 as a Windglider class event for men. The women’s events were introduced eight years later at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, where New Zealander Barbara Kendall won gold.9 At those Games, the Windglider class was replaced by the new Lechner board, for which Neil Pryde Limited supplied a One Design rig – mast, boom and sail. The company also worked closely with the sport’s governing body the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) to make sure the sport took advantage of the visual opportunities that came with TV coverage and having the races close to shore. The rigs were designed to be as visually appealing as possible, with colour IDs to distinguish men’s and women’s events and the name of each competitor printed on each sail. After the 1992 Games, the Lechner board was replaced by the IMCO One Design class, which meant Neil Pryde Limited was out of the Games. This class was retained for Atlanta and for Sydney. Around 2003, ISAF invited manufacturers to put forward “One Design” options for the 2008 Olympics. Neil Pryde Limited’s name was on the list. At first, tenderers were asked to submit designs for a Formula class of board that required 8 - 9 knots of wind but ISAF quickly noticed that such a board would not work under the Olympic sailing framework where races can be started in much lighter wind conditions. So a second round of proposals was asked for – this time for boards that could function properly in 3 - 30 knots. After a prolonged and at times frustrating selection process, the company’s RS:X board and rig was chosen by ISAF for both the men’s and women’s events at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 – the same year that the RS:X was confirmed for the 2012 Games in London. But whilst it was great to win selection, the timing created significant problems. There was now less than four years to go before the next Games and not surprisingly all the competitors wanted boards and rigs as soon as possible to start their preparations. Rushing to get kit out by March 2005 in sufficient quantities, there were lots of problems. In fact, Neil Pryde Limited would spend the next year sorting out the issues. But by the World Championships in September, most had been resolved and the more than 200 participants had a great event.

The class continued to build over the next two years, with World Championships every year. At the build-up event in Auckland, just before the Games, New Zealander Tom Ashley won. It was a good omen. “The Olympic Games represents the pinnacle of every major sport,” says Neil. “Having represented Hong Kong myself, I understand the huge pride that comes with being able to represent a country at that event. I have to say though that while we went all out to make sure our involvement in the Games was a success, I wasn’t particularly popular in Hong Kong. Our RS:X class is probably better suited to larger framed people than the IMCO, which led some people to say I was letting the side down! “It’s their right to have an opinion but personally I believe that the work done by Robert Stroj and our design team is world class, and I’m very proud of our contribution.” The Games themselves brought a result that Neil Pryde himself describes as a win/win. New Zealander Tom Ashley, won the gold medal in the men’s and China won gold in the women’s. The two countries that have loomed largest in Neil’s life both tasted success on the company’s gear. The RS:X class isn’t Neil Pryde Limited’s only involvement with the Olympic Games. The company has also partnered with Australian-based sail designer Ian MacDiarmid to manufacture the sails for the 49’er class of high-performance dinghies at the Olympic Games in Athens and Beijing, and these will also be used at the 2012 Games in London.

246 | WILL TO WIN Faster Forward.

ONE-DESIGN RACING SERIES INTRODUCED IN 2010

The fuTure of wiNdsurfiNG or at the speed that the business has. The rise of the rental market, coupled with the fact that the quality of the gear means there is less need to change, has impacted more on sales than popularity. The rates of growth for kitesurfing will also slow, Neil reckons, as the sport matures. The good news is that growth has continued even through the recession, and the fact that kitesurfing is drawing people from a range of sports could mean the slow-down won’t be as dramatic as it has been for the windsurfing industry. It is a sport that is inherently exciting and easy to learn for both men and women, which makes it very attractive.

For years, windsurfing has been a male-dominated, individual sport with no wider social structure to speak of – unlike yachting, for example, where the social element is so important. The One Design racing scene is much more like yacht racing than traditional windsurfing. Because it falls under the auspices of the ISAF, there have also been opportunities to use some of yachting’s infrastructure. It’s growing because it encourages a community, and not just the competitors, to come together. That’s much closer to how the sport started. The original Windsurfer was a One Design class and it made for huge regattas. But all that went west with the rise of high performance.

Windsurfing requires water and wind, and in that sense, it is a destination sport like skiing and snowboarding. Getting to the best places to do the sport does involve travel but the good news is that windsurfing is global in that sense. You can visit resorts offering great windsurfing from Brazil to Egypt to Turkey. Huge advancements in boards and rigs mean the equipment now operates at lower wind speeds.

Neil reckons windsurfing is closing in on its physical limits in terms of speed. The next big milestone is the 50 knot barrier. But after that, he’s not expecting any huge leaps in the performance envelope. Style, fashion and innovation are all incremental now, he says. Contrast that with kites, which are still in their early days. Right now, kites are still being made from the materials that parachutes are made of. But once the sport moves into plastic laminated materials the way windsurfing did, he’s expecting incredible speeds – 70, maybe 80 knots. No wonder kites have grabbed the attention of speed junkies.

The other advantage of the One Design racing scene is that governments can include the sport in youth development programmes, and it has the Olympic element and therefore the potential for gaining national prestige. When China won an Olympic gold in the Women’s RS:X class at Beijing, it spurred countries like Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand to make funds available for youth windsurfing programmes. In Europe also, we see countries such as Poland, Denmark and the United Kingdom investing heavily in One Design windsurfing programmes.

The chance to use the latest equipment at your choice of resort has certainly seen the rental market grow … and in fact, it still seems to be growing. For the moment at least, rentals for windsurfing are higher than they are for kitesurfing, which is a much more of a ‘bring your own’ sport. The end result is that the practice of windsurfing has not declined to the extent

As the professional side of windsurfing struggles to maintain historic levels of support, the sport’s big hope might just be a return to its roots, and to redevelop from the ground up – what Neil calls “getting back to grassroots”. The Olympic One Design RS:X class has two advantages. First of all, it has the prestige of being an Olympic sport. And secondly, it’s a much more inclusive approach.

The sport may have its roots in the United States, where it was ‘invented’, but Europe remains the home of windsurfing. France, Holland, Italy and Germany have been the biggest markets for years – and still are. Japan is important – but nowhere near as big as it was. Business in the US is still relatively small given the size of the market, and that’s always been an issue because of course the US is the largest consumer market in the world, so not having significant traction there has always limited windsurfing to some extent. Even where there are strong windsurfing communities in the States, they tend to buy American and be loyal to American brands. In fact, South America is probably a bigger market than the North. Australasia’s not big, but it is important. But the hard truth of the industry is that volumes have declined globally – down by half in some markets over the last decade – and there’s no panacea in the wind, so to speak. This is a mature market, and like all mature markets, unless it finds a way to become more attractive, it’ll face decline. The upside is that windsports generally – windsurfing and kitesurfing – are doing well, and kitesurfing is doing particularly well in the States. It is a very exciting sport. In fact, windsports collectively may well be bigger than windsurfing alone used to be. They are also global. So perhaps it is useful to think of them as a category rather than as one sport or the other. To some extent, kitesurfing cannibalised windsurfing, particularly early on, in that a whole bunch of people switched to kitesurfing when it was first introduced and have never come back. But now kitesurfing is growing in its own right, as more and more people come to the sport directly, and that’s grown the category. Neil Pryde Limited was not the first into kitesurfing but they saw the change coming well ahead of many, and thanks to their diversification into the broader windsports market with brands like Cabrinha, they’ve done well out of the shift.

In some ways, the decline in windsurfing, whilst it may have surprised many in terms of its pace, is not actually that surprising. It is without doubt a visually exciting and at times spectacular sport, and even though the gear is much less complex than it used to be, and windsurfers need a lot less equipment today than they once did, windsurfing is still a gear-intensive sport, and that equipment is less portable than for a sport like kitesurfing. It takes discipline, training and a real understanding of the weather conditions to ride today’s equipment to its potential and that’s not something today’s generation, with its interest in instant fun and immediate gratification, seems quite as keen to invest in. It may be easier than it used to be but windsurfing isn’t a plug and play sport. There’s a catch-22 for windsurfing too because as other sports evolved and multiplied, windsurfing could not have remained the relatively simple sport it started out as. It needed to evolve away from its original concept in order to hold its own against all the new choices. If it hadn’t done that, it would never have lasted anyway, but, in changing to meet the demands for thrills and performance, it became less accessible.

As more and more new and exciting sports have appeared, people have tended to focus less on perfecting one sport and have instead taken a lot more interest in chasing excitement wherever it can be found. Outdoor adventure, mountain biking, snowboarding and many others have added an extreme element to marketing to entice people to hunt out fun times.

One Design classes are also much more genderbalanced so they’re bringing more women back to the sport, and because the equipment is the same this is a more affordable version of the sport. Of course the performance side is still there and still grabbing headlines but Neil believes it’s pretty much static. The hope for growth is to fill in the lower end of the sport: to get more young people taking up One Design competition and for there

to be a clear path all the way to participating in the Olympics. The performance addicts will still go out and hunt the big waves and winds, and they will continue to buy high-performance equipment from NeilPryde and JP Australia. But Neil Pryde Limited must also look at how it’s going to meet the needs of those who want to pursue the Olympic dream and enjoy One Design competition. “I got into Flying Dutchman class because of the chance to go to the Olympics. The chance to go for gold was a huge incentive for me. We need to use the fact that RS:X is part of the Olympic scene at Beijing and in London, to get people, particularly young people, back into the sport,” he says. “We need to work with governments who are busy putting money into youth sports to get windsurfing back on its feet, and we need to use the call of those five Olympic rings to do it. The Olympics have the potential to really take the sport global again. We need to adapt, get a social structure going, maybe even work with yachting, and this could be a big and very exciting turnaround. “As a company, we believe there needs to be a step between those starting out in the sport and those who are performing at the Olympic Games level, which is why we’re currently planning to introduce an intermediate class of RS:One boards: to help bridge that gap. We want to make the transition through the various levels of competition as seamless as it can be. The challenge will be to do that in a way that is commercially sustainable.”

248 | WILL TO WIN Faster Forward.

40 years youNG In 40 years, Neil Pryde Limited has transformed from an OEM sail maker to become a world leader in adventure sports. Today, the Pryde Group is home to some of the most respected brands in the world in its chosen sectors as well as a global distribution network that is the envy of many of its competitors, and a manufacturing business that is increasingly working in specialised sports such as triathlon, offshore swimming and cycling. By combining a passion for sport with the disciplines of business, the company has found a path through some pretty challenging times. Technology has revolutionised everything in the forty years since a small team started making sails in those two rented apartments in Kowloon. Windsurfing gear these days is a thing of beauty – super hi-tech but fragile and very expensive. It’s also a fashion business, with new iterations of sails, masts and rig components coming out every year. But with participation numbers down, the days of the easy money are long gone. There are just not the volumes anymore for the companies to quickly recoup what they now have to spend just to stay ahead in the innovation stakes. The success of kites is another example of how clever and timely diversification has kept the company ahead of dynamics that quickly overwhelmed those who didn’t adapt. This is not a company that is scared of shedding its skin in order to continue growing. Let’s not forget that Neil Pryde Limited was a yachting company in its start-up years that added windsurfing sails to its capabilities as yacht sail making stalled, then diversified into kites and wetsuits and is now changing again as windsurfing appears to have peaked.

Those changes in products and expertise have inevitably changed the nature of the Pryde Group – from a yacht sail manufacturer to an adventure sports company – but the drive is still the same. As Neil says, the skills are different, the technology’s unrecognisable, but the commitment to make beautifully designed products that allow adventurous people to get out there and have a great time is still there. And that’s as true for Neil Pryde Limited’s involvement in snowboard bindings, where they were for a time one of the biggest players in the world, as it is for their more traditional water-oriented sports. Neil Pryde Limited also has some distinct advantages. Many companies would see manufacturing as a specialist skill they’re better off outsourcing. Not Neil Pryde Limited. In fact, manufacturing lies at the heart of the Neil Pryde Limited ethos and the company is proud of how it’s taken control of its manufacturing by looking beyond traditional suppliers and developing specialist materials in-house that have given it a competitive advantage. The scale of the Neil Pryde Limited operation in its niche markets means the company can customise materials but then use them in sufficient volume to make them economically viable. They’ve done that in windsurfing and in kites: used material engineering

to gain both economic and performance advantages. And they’ve combined those advantages with design approaches that have been recognised around the world. All this from a company that, by its very nature and location, operates at a distance from those who are most loyal to its brands. And what about untapped markets? Neil says that they are open to entering new markets providing it also allows them to make best use of their skills in the supply chain, quality control, manufacturing, finance and distribution. The key, he says, would then be to find the right partner in the right markets. The discipline lies in recognising the limitations of the company and of the brand. The companies that diversify successfully, he says, do so with a clear eye on their history, their culture and their reputation. They need to move into areas that are far enough away from core business to be interesting to a new audience, and to keep them competitive, but not so far away that the new area doesn’t relate to what the company already knows and does and is accepted for. NeilPryde Waterwear is a textbook case of successful diversification. Fashion is another area that yachting and surfing brands have been able to move into easily, but, curiously, one that windsurfing brands have always struggled with. “Merchandising is one thing, and everyone has that – but actual fashion lines seem to be an extension too far … You can fight that, or accept it. Right now, we’ve accepted it.

250 | WILL TO WIN Faster Forward.

“We know where we do well,” says Neil. “We’re strong in sports that require a specialty focus and technology and that are not dominated by large competitors. We need to focus on the opportunities within those business streams. We also can’t, and we shouldn’t try, to go up against the really big companies. Because as we learnt in snowboarding and helmets, you may achieve product success but it’s much harder to find business success. Our best opportunities are where we can make the most of our vertical integrated skills, and where we can make the most of our relationships in manufacturing hubs like China.” As you can read ahead, performance bikes are an opportunity because they offer links to booming lifestyle areas like fitness and health. The Neil Pryde Limited spirit of performance fits well here. According to the research that Neil Pryde Limited has done, a sizeable percentage of the people who choose the company’s brands also have biking as one of their sports, and they’re looking for the kind of technically excellent, well designed product that Neil Pryde Limited is renowned for. According to Neil, by the time they make 50 years, he’d like Neil Pryde Limited to be a much bigger entity – double the size it is now. To do that, the company needs to invest in growth areas and to fund that growth either through acquisition or by going public. The challenge there is that either strategy will require a growth plan that investors have confidence in and that consistently delivers the levels of return that are expected. Windsurfing, as it stands currently, simply cannot deliver that. So the company will have to diversify its portfolio into activities that Neil calls ‘passion sports’ –

adventure sports, action sports, even semi-extreme sports. It will still be a niche sports company, but it will be a bigger player in those niches. The more immediate challenge Neil Pryde Limited faces is the pressure on its margins brought about by the boom of the Internet. Internet pricing from competitors and cross-border trading are forcing a significant rethink of how the business builds relationships with customers. And the biggest question being asked is how to realign the dealer model to make it more economically viable. There’s little doubt within Neil Pryde Limited that they want to establish more direct relationships with end consumers, and that the economic vulnerability of dealers, particularly when times get tough, has got people at the company thinking about other avenues. “Having your own brands and distribution model gives you control but often it doesn’t give you enough control, when you have to depend on a dealer who you can’t control,” explains Neil. “Right now, we have our own shops in Miami, Hawaii and the south of France. But that’s not enough to service our business globally. One of the challenges is working through how we grow a more selective dealership and at the same time meet the requirements of our factories which are based on volume. One of the vulnerabilities of a global business is that when the business shrinks, size can become a disadvantage because of the overheads. You start to lose the advantages that come with scale. We need to keep those advantages but we also need to have more control over how consumers access our products and the prices they pay.”

The difficulty of course is that you can’t just go straight to a direct model, because it would throw all the relationships that Neil Pryde Limited has spent many years building into jeopardy. But things can’t stay as they are either. The rules have changed and unless Neil Pryde Limited adapts, and quickly, it will find itself saddled with a legacy distribution system that could drag everyone down. Neil says he believes that the Internet will prove a much more significant catalyst for change in the years ahead than it has been to date. The way dealers do business needs to change, according to Neil, and the huge discounting that has ruined pricing credibility needs to end. The way forward, he says, may be advertised pricing where it’s allowed, more Neil Pryde Limited shops and perhaps some sort of partnership arrangement with some dealers. “The next management challenge,” he says, “is where we go, and who comes with us.” Lots to think through.

252 | WILL TO WIN Faster Forward.

Q&a WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF? I’m proud of building a company and a brand in my name. I’m proud that the Shriro family and the Pryde family have stayed in business so long together. And it’s great to see that both families have involved their next generation in the evolution of the businesses. My son Michael for example is part of the NeilPryde Bikes team, which I see as part of the future direction of Neil Pryde Limited.

WHAT WILL YOU DO OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS THAT PEOPLE WON’T BE SURPRISED BY? We’ll continue to grow and to change, to diversify, to keep moving. People know we’re that sort of company. No-one will be surprised by that. What is interesting is that we see bikes as part of our way forward. It’s a sector where some very big names – companies like Raleigh – have fallen away because they didn’t adapt. Now we’re looking to innovate into that same sector in order to continue to be relevant and exciting for our customers.

WHAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE? If windsurfing doesn’t grow, it might become unprofitable as a business, just like yachting. In which case we’d have to be prepared to cut free and move into other things. History is great and it’s important and it gives a company a real sense of who it has become, but you can never be married to what you have done. Every company needs to look and to move forward.

The PhilosoPhies of Neil Pryde 1.

Strike the right balance between measured risks and natural optimism.

If you look back at your career and you’ve made more good choices than bad, you’re ahead.

Love what you do – but not too much. Too many businesses are wrecked by emotional decisions.

Be paranoid. Recognise that nothing is static. React quickly.

Never forget that sport is the business, and the business is a sport – always, play to win.

Always be prepared to walk away. If you’re going to fail, make sure you fail fast and move on.

Document. Everything.

One of the great myths of delegation is that you give away control. Never give away control.

Don’t carry. Be profitable at every step in your business. It’s part of the discipline.

10. The best relationships happen face to face. Technology hasn’t changed that. 11. Costs are opportunities. In a manufacturing business, over half your product costs are in your materials. Every percentage point you can save on materials makes you more competitive. 12. Plan as much as you can. Even though most plans seldom survive their first contact with reality, that’s still a whole lot better than having no plan at all. 13. Don’t burn bridges. It’s amazing how people you think you’ve said goodbye to can come back into your life, sometimes in the most surprising ways. You need to be able to work with them the second or third time around as well as you did the first time.

THe NexT rIde

in 2010, Neil Pryde limited announced a move into highperformance bikes. it’s a definite signal that the company is diversifying again. but it’s an interesting move for a number of other reasons as well. NeilPryde Bikes is Neil Pryde Limited’s first road-based product. So clearly the company is no longer looking to be just the number one brand on the water. This is a play for involvement in the broader but fast-growing active sports market, where people are taking much more interest in their long-term health. With a business plan developed in-house, the target market is those fans of the brand who are also keen bikers and who are looking for a product that offers the same levels of quality and technical expertise that they expect from Neil Pryde Limited gear. These people also enjoy cycling for its recreational and social aspects, and they have a real focus on achieving their own personal goals, which is why many of them are also into triathlons.

engineering. The bike frame itself, for example, is a design collaboration between Neil Pryde Limited and BMW Group DesignworksUSA, with the carbon fibre frames manufactured in China.

Launch is scheduled for the second half of 2010 – around the same time as the company officially celebrates 40 years in business.

This is a bold move – no question – but facing a receding windsurfing market, that’s entirely apt. Only time will tell if it’s the right decision. One thing we do know from their history though. Neil Pryde Limited will give this product their all.

It’s a deliberately niche offering in a well established market. So again, it’s not about being number one across the cycling market, it’s about aiming to become a leader, one day, in a particular niche. And it is all about continuing Neil Pryde Limited’s reputation for design excellence, innovation and elegant

The new venture is headed up by Neil’s son Michael – a sign perhaps that the next generation of Neil Pryde Limited products will be developed by those coming through the ranks of the company. Finally, it’s a different distribution model – focused online – that should work seamlessly across boundaries in key territories like Europe.

They will play to win.

aCkNowledGemeNTs Thanks to all those who have contributed to this project: PRYDE GROUP: Neil Pryde Alex Zenovic Pete Cabrinha Martin Brandner Kevin Ozee Robert Stroj Jamie McLellan Michael Pryde David Mead Charming Ho Pat Goodman Manfred Rassweiler

OTHER INTERVIEWS: Nils Rosenblad Alex Aguera Torben Kornum Barry Spanier Geoff Cornish Willi Blaauw Monty Spindler Fred Haywood Robert Masters David Wilson Anthony Scaturro Michel Quistinic Philip Pryde Hugh Poole

Bjorn Fjelddahl Reed Lockhart Darrell Wong Jason Polakow Pam Chater Tim Yourieff Steve Wilkings Simon Narramore Kevin Costin Jean-Paul Riou Antoine Albeau Doug Pushong Nick Polakow Gordon Way

CREATIVE TEAM: Simon Cairns Ben Reid Tristan O’Shannessy Craig Kinney Mark Di Somma Belinda Stewart

EXTERNAL SOURCES:

International 3. Details about the case are at: http://rpc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/ content/short/102/4/59

Nation Builders) in Time Asia, Vol 168, No 21 November 13 2006 issue. Excerpt at: http://www. time.com/time/asia/2006/heroes/ nb_deng.html

7. Jonathan Spence, ibid

1. About.com: Inventors – History of Windsurfing: http:// inventors.about.com/od/ wstartinventions/a/windsurfing. htm

6. Sourced from Brainy Quote at http://www.brainyquote.com/ quotes/authors/d/deng_xiaoping. html

9. Find a list of New Zealand windsurfing successes at the Olympics at Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand.

2. Wikipedia: Windsurfing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Windsurfing#Windsurfing_

4. Details about Newman Darby can be found at: http://web.mit. edu/invent/iow/darby.html 5. Jonathan Spence, Article on Deng Xiaoping, (Asian Heroes,

PHOTOGRAPHERS:

Darrell Wong Steve Wilkings Jérôme Houyvet Arnaud de Rosnay Reinhard Müller Angus Chater Cindy Cambell Erik Aeder

Over the last 40 years, we’ve worked with some of the world’s great watersports photographers. As a result, we’ve built up a stunning bank of images, some of which we’re thrilled to be able to include in this book. Our deepest thanks to all those who’ve worked so hard to capture Neil Pryde Limited’s competitive spirit.

8. Sourced from the Inchcape website: http://www.inchcape. com/aboutus/lighthouse/early_ history/

Harold Kidd. ‘Sailing and windsurfing - Windsurfing’, Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 2-Mar-09. URL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ sailing-and-windsurfing/8