This year, we started an experiment with local dealers and international distributors who are basically W fans with neither storefront nor prior experience in the kayak business. This experiment proved to be a success, with all having sold W kayaks, and some even making multiple orders.
Our dealers in upstate NY and in the Midwest sold W kayaks not just locally, but also to clients from other states, as well as to clients from Canada. Our distributor in the Netherlands sold W kayaks in his country and in neighboring Belgium, and our distributor in Norway and Sweden was surprised to get a mail order from a duck hunter living hundreds of miles away, who didn’t even bother to come over and see the product before ordering it. Our dealer in Houston got orders for 5 W kayaks in one demo day he organized. One of the clients who picked up a boat from him that day drove 160 miles from San Antonio, and stayed in a motel the night before, to make sure he’d get the W kayak in the color he wanted…
Such stories are normal for us at Wavewalk, and we’re happy to see that our distributors, wherever they are located, are beginning to experience similar things.

Our dealers and international distributors proved to be both creative and productive – Our dealer in Wisconsin developed a way to camouflage the W500 kayak for duck hunting, and posted instructional videos on his website and on YouTube. Our distributor in New Zealand developed a new type of flotation. Our distributor in South Korea successfully rigged a W500 with a powerful outboard gas engine, and our dealer in Minnesota picked up the idea and improved the transom motor mount.
Their efforts resulted in Wavewalk developing two new products: The 502 series that can be outfitted with extra-large side flotation, and an off-the-shelf transom motor mount that fits electric tolling motors as well as outboard gas engines.
These new products are already selling, and our clients are both excited and satisfied with them.

During this year, we’ve learned to work closely with our dealers and distributors, and they’ve learned to provide various services to their clients, including live demos, outfitting, repair, and even finishing and assembly in the case of those who’ve made big orders.

We’re looking for new dealers and distributors in the US and overseas, but we’re also expanding our direct sales, such as in Australia, where we’ve started advertising and selling factory direct as a matter of routine.

This year, more than ever before, our clients proved to be a valuable source of information, ideas and support, both for us and for other W clients. They’ve provided interesting trip reports, pictures and movies, innovative rigging solutions, useful tips, product reviews, and some of them have even battled our competitors in online discussion forums that are not always friendly to us   Both our clients and distributors helped us choose the additional Sand color that we introduced this year, and it turned out to be popular among our new clients.

We’ve produced some amazing and cool videos this year, and a bunch of new technical articles, some of which have become quite popular. Our YouTube channel movies got over 280,000 views this year, a 50,000 increase compared to the year before, and in addition, videos posted by our dealers and clients got thousands of views.  The number of visits to our website was 10% higher in 2011 compared to 2010, and the average time spent per visit increased as well. We hope this means more visitors are finding our website more interesting

The only things that remained unchanged this year are our absolute commitment to our customers, and the fact that our W kayak has no match when stability, ergonomics, mobility, versatility and overall fishability are concerned. As Rox put it – “nothing like it, nothing better”.

THANK YOU ALL, AND HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012!

Yoav

We had a person from Japan embedded in our group at work. He wanted to go kayaking so I borrowed a common kayak for him and we went with another person and his kayak to the Quinebog River in Brimfield, off of Route 20. We did about 12 miles. Unfortunately I had to do about six of those miles in the common kayak I borrowed for our visitor. What a pain it is to adjust the back support and the foot rests to get a comfortable paddling position. Also the kayak zig-zagged with each stroke because it did not have a keel or natural tracking action (nor did I initially have the paddling expertise to correct this). Since I came to the W300 with only canoe experience, I did not realize what I was (fortunately) missing. I was never so happy to get back into my W300. Meanwhile, my friend with the other kayak took the W300 while our visitor took his. He was very happy with the W300 and understood immediately how this was absolutely superior for fishing. He was standing and looking around bends and over marsh grass in no time and he loved the space inside the kayak and the ability to have fishing gear on the flat saddle while changing up lures. I had to politely ask him not to lead the group because I could not keep up with him in the W300 while I was in the borrowed kayak.

I went out by myself for some 6, 7 and 8 hours at a time on the water days. I now have the tell tale W kayaker tan/burn on my upper knee.

Anyway, thought I would drop you a line – so to speak.

Chris

More kayak trip reports from Chris Ott >>



I’m feeling a little guilty that I didn’t have any exciting adventures to relate.
The first time out, I went to a lake with a shallow beach where I figured I could walk back to shore if I dumped the boat. I started out cautiously, right from shore, without getting my feet wet. I paddled in the shallow area for less than a minute, then headed down the lake (how’s that for quickly gaining confidence?), then all the way up to the other end (a mile?), then back down the . . . oh, oh! The breeze has kicked up. This could be trouble. A couple of mental adjustments and I was paddling into the wind and doing OK. Remember, I’m not a paddler, not ever a rowboat. I rested a bit in the lee of the eastern lakeshore then headed back to the beach 1/2-way down the lake where I dis-embarked, without getting my feet wet.
So far, nothing out of the ordinary. I initially found the boat to be tender, but that was me, not the boat. Anything that only weighs 59 pounds is bound to be tender when it’s reacting to a 235 pound novice, and the more I use it, the more compatible we become. It took a bit of adjustment to handle the paddle, which I imagine every new paddler experiences. And even though I got a couple of scares out there on the lake by digging in too hard, I didn’t dump the boat.
I haven’t been chasing fish. I realized I’m not going to be an avid fisherman but the lure is still there, and watching Fisheries pour three tanker trucks of keeper size trout into the lake whets the appetite.

I’ve constructed a rack for my car using the trailer hitch and a roof rack on the 2 door coupe. The T-bar trailer hitch rack is connect to the roof rack by two 2 X 6 spruce(strong and light) boards. Because the car is low, it is an easy chore for me to lift one end of the kayak onto the back rack and then lift and slide the boat into place on the racks. I have the kayak, strapped to the roof rack ,hanging above the car in the garage. Just lower the whole setup onto the car, screw it down and voila!

When I’ve put a few more miles on the boat and had some experience with the different situations that I’m sure will pop up, I’ll pass them on to you.

Jim



The river is swollen due weeks of rain. I caught a small sucker but who cares. I didn’t even plan on catching anything.

Today would of been the first annual Lunker Fest on the Lehigh River at this location at 9am but…high swift volume rates and cloudy waters made it postponed to June 4, 2011 instead. So I thought I would paddle around in the river for the 1st time to play around in the moving swift water. Very easy and a pleasure to be part of this type of boat. My expectations today were even higher than what I had expected with this boat purchase. I navigated on the Wavewalk site for over 1.5 years, and finally got some dough to spend, and make it a reality.

I was very miserable in my sit-in kayak and needed to change ASAP. The pain & being unhappy in the L position made me be ready to switch. 2011 is a different year now….it’s a new beginning for me and a lot of people ask me what it’s called. I like the personal craft experience and portability…maneuverability is what this boat is all about. When you point it in the direction you want to go…your there and on top of your game. Thanks to the W kayak…no numbing pain anymore when out for hours on end. Outstanding product!!! You got to experience it!!!

- Lou



According to the dictionary, we perceive something as being beautiful if it is attractive to us (e.g. a beautiful woman) or pleasant (e.g. a beautiful day), or pleasant to look at (e.g. a beautiful dress), or if it’s done or made very well (e.g. a beautiful goal in the second half), or with a lot of skill (e.g. a beautiful roast).
Beauty can be associated directly with sensory pleasure, or with indirect, social value related to monetary value, or prestige (e.g. a beautiful diamond), or with both.
In case of a product such as a kayak, the beauty we see in it is a measure of how much we appreciate its performance in terms of what’s important to us, subjectively, whether as something we’ve already experienced with this kayak, or something we believe we would experience, if we used it.

In this sense, the saying ‘beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’ is perfectly true.

What’s important?

What’s important in a product varies according to what different people are interested in. For example, if you’re into kayak racing, you’d be interested in kayaks that are as fast as possible, and very fast kayaks would seem beautiful to you, but if you’re into kayak fishing, you’d be interested a number of things, including stability, comfort, storage, etc. offered to you by that kayak. In other words, for a kayak angler, the beauty of a kayaks depends first and foremost on its fishability, which is a composite measure of a fishing kayak’s performance.

For example, if you’re into kayak fishing, and you saw a kayak that’s very fast but also very unstable, it would seem useless to you, and therefore unattractive.
Most anglers fish from motorboats and not from kayaks, mainly because they perceive kayaks as being too unstable and too uncomfortable for fishing.  Therefore, for the majority of anglers, a fishing kayak is just a too small, too uncomfortable and therefore unpractical and consequently ugly fishing boat.

Beauty and love

The more satisfied a kayak angler is with the performance of their fishing kayak, the more they see beauty in it, and in fact, some kayak anglers get to love their kayak, following the good experience they’ve had with it, and the good time they anticipate having with it in the future.

False beauty

Anyone who’s interested in fishing kayaks can see that the common fishing kayak is essentially just a chubbier, more accessorized, and sometimes fancier version of its ancestor the recreational kayak.

The common fishing kayak is very wide because of the desperate need to increase its stability, even at the cost of sacrificing both speed and tracking capability, and most importantly – taking away the pleasure of paddling from the person who paddles it. This is what kayak anglers refer to as ‘a barge to paddle’, and the reason why some touring and sea kayakers still won’t consider fishing kayaks as kayaks at all…

Too much is too little

The multitude of accessories is sometimes required to compensate for a fishing kayak’s deficient functionality. The perfect example is the rudder that most fishing kayaks are equipped with, and most kayak anglers hate, but they have to use it simply because without it their kayak wouldn’t go straight, due to its poor tracking capability. Another good example are the hatches – an uncomfortable, often dysfunctional solution to the critical problem of storage, or lack thereof…

In this context, it is easy to see why manufacturers who offer pedal driven kayaks are more successful in the market for fishing kayaks than in any other kayak market: Common fishing kayaks are so hard and unpleasant to paddle that a hyped, ill conceived solution is seen by some as better than nothing, at least until they realize they’re not necessarily better off pedaling…

When fancy becomes ridiculous

A product that is essentially lacking in performance, and therefore not  attractive enough, is a problem for its manufacturer, and they would attempt to increase its attractiveness by whatever means they have, even if such means present no advantage at all to the client. The typical example for this in fishing kayaks is increasing the amount of foam in the kayak’s seat, which cannot really solve the basic problem of the passenger pushing their lower back against the backrest with all the power their legs have. But extra foam may look more ‘ergonomic’ to some people, and if it’s promoted as being ergonomic, some people could get convinced to buy the kayak – until they realize that’s not what they had bargained for, and get tired of this game, go back to fishing from a motorboat, or switch to a W kayak.

Another common example of overdoing things is the form of the fishing kayaks themselves: Some kayaks feature very elaborate hulls, or decks, or both, as if the extra detail could improve anything as far as stability, speed and comfort are concerned. To the unprofessional or inexperienced viewer, such extra details could seem like an indicator that the kayak is more ‘advanced’, but the truth is that overdoing things can only diminish actual performance, by definition. In other words, nothing beats simple effectiveness in design.

Simple is beautiful

This is the simple truth in design, and it’s even more true in fishing kayaks, which are judged by their performance: A fishing kayak is a technical product that needs to deliver results in terms of what the angler can achieve with it, and how they feel while doing so, as well as after the fishing trip is over.

If a kayak allows you to launch or beach in a spot that another kayak doesn’t, it performs better, and therefore it’s more beautiful. If a kayak allows you to stay inside it for long hours, while no other kayak allows you to do that without inflicting discomfort and pain on you, that kayak performs better, and you’re going to like it more, and therefore see more beauty in it.

These examples come to show that it’s not the amount of time invested in designing or manufacturing a product that appeals to our sense of beauty, but it’s the real life performance of that product, and our own experience with it.  When we realize that in order to get a certain level of performance, the product needed to be made in a certain way, we appreciate the way it was done. And if the result was achieved by simple means, we tend to appreciate it even more.

Once people realize the advantage for themselves in a certain design, form, or feature, they see the beauty in it, and sometime even develop a warm feeling for it, a feeling called love.

Beauty and marketing

Being a technical product, the way to judge and evaluate a fishing kayak is by doing a feature by feature comparison, and preferably by validating the results of such comparison in a live test.

There is no fishing kayak, fishing kayak design, or concept that rivals the W kayak in any of the important requirements from a fishing kayak, which are Stability, Comfort, Ease of Paddling, Passenger Room, Storage Space, Versatility, Tracking, Handling, Mobility, and dollar for dollar Value. Value is not a technical feature, but in this case we’ve included it in the list because it represents certain technical attributes of W kayaks that reduce their cost of purchase and ownership, compared to other kayaks.

Years ago, Wavewalk’s competitors used to criticize its product by raising doubts about its actual performance, such as speed, comfort, tracking under wind, etc.  These doubts were based solely on imagination, and had no basis in anyone’s real life experience, and over the years,  as the evidence presented by Wavewalk improved, and more of its customers contributed positive reviews, this type of critic has subsided.

However, some competitors still say, occasionally, that W kayaks are ‘ugly’, and when such comments are made on online discussion forums, they are intended to create some kind of negative ‘peer pressure’ on kayak anglers who are interested in the W kayak. The problem with such tactic is that if a general and broad argument such as ‘ugly’ is brought forward without any substantial, technical evidence to back it, it sounds hollow, and basically meaningless. But if the ‘ugly’ argument is backed by a specific, technical argument, the reader could go and check its validity on Wavewalk’s website, through the demo movies, technical articles, and customer reviews, and they could then see for themselves that it’s a moot argument.

The challenge that Wavewalk is facing is to convince thousands of anglers who fish from kayaks that W kayaks are better, and worth switching to. We also need to convince millions of anglers who fish from motorboats that they need to give kayak fishing a second thought, and that fishing kayaks are not necessarily ugly, if they can provide a higher level of fishability that’s comparable to what these anglers are used to get in fishing boats, as W kayaks have proved they could.

In sum, the W kayak holds the key to making more people see the beauty in kayak fishing.

Read more about motorizing your fishing kayak >>