WAVEWALK KAYAKS

The notion that kayak fishing is booming has been repeated for years by various interested parties, but a search in Google News archives revealed these intriguing facts:

1. From 1990, the number of news articles about kayak fishing kept increasing, and it peaked in 2007.

2. Since 2007, the number of published news articles about kayak fishing has kept decreasing. In fact, the number of news articles about kayak fishing in 2009 was lower than its level in 2004.

This chart was taken from a screen shot of the Google page above:

Interestingly, the number of websites and blogs related to kayak fishing has visibly gone up in the past decade, as part of the media explosion brought by the Internet. In addition, big and small kayak manufacturers have focused on the kayak fishing market in every way they could, and tried to bring the public’s attention to their products by all means.

So what’s the reason for this decrease in media coverage of kayak fishing in the past two years?

The first explanation that comes to mind is that it could be related to the economic recession, but does it make sense? The recreational fishing boat market has been severely hit, but what kayak manufacturers and other vendors and affiliated professionals have been saying is that now, more then ever, a kayak offers a the cheap way to go fishing, and consequently, they expected sales of fishing kayaks and to go through the roof, and interest in kayak fishing to explode. They even promoted the idea of stand-up kayak fishing from their obviously inadequate kayaks, thinking the public would go for it.

However, we think, as we’ve stated in the past, that many kayak anglers quit practicing kayak fishing after some time, as they find it to be less rewarding than they had initially hoped it would be. Usually, the kayak angler’s expectation is to be able to spend a few hours on the water, having fun catching fish, while the reality in many cases is that doing so results in a sore back, an aching butt, and numb legs – on top of being wet, especially if you fish from a SOT kayak.

In other words, a significant proportion of kayak anglers drops from the sport, and it could be that their numbers are now equal to, or exceed the number of new kayak anglers who enter the sport. Consequently, the public’s level of interest in kayak fishing has begun to decline, and the lower level of media exposure reflects this trend.

At Wavewalk, we’ve experienced a totally different reality, with sales increasing year after year at a faster pace, and 2009 being a boom year. Read more >>

This success has to do with the fact that our W kayaks offer a truly good user experience, less fatigue, no back pain or any other physical pain and discomfort, plus they’re stable enough to offer stand-up kayak fishing in confidence and safety.

Related article: Read more about web search trends for kayak fishing >>

Early this we published a blog asking whether the sport of kayak was actually growing as fast as interested parties were saying it was.

Since there are no official data to analyze, we keep tracking the search activity on Google, through Google Trends. Here is their latest report on USA searches for ‘kayak fishing’: USA Kayak Fishing Report 2004-2009

With kayak fishing continuously being referred to as the fastest growing paddle sport, one can only wonder why such strong growth isn’t reflected in Internet searches on the most popular search engine, although Internet search itself is an activity that’s grown very rapidly in recent years.

The simplest answer we can think of is that kayak fishing has become more institutionalized in recent years with more websites and tournaments dedicated to kayak fishing, and a couple of kayak fishing magazines, but the real increase in the volume of kayak anglers has been more moderate than what fishing kayak vendors and kayak fishing media would like the public to believe.

Like every social phenomenon, kayak fishing has had its period of initial, fast growth, followed by a period of moderate growth, and now possibly a very moderate growth – if any.

It’s likely to assume that the main reason for the decrease in growth rate is the fact that many anglers who try kayak fishing end up quitting this sport because they find kayaks to be inadequate for fishing, obviously because fishing kayaks offer neither sufficient stability nor elementary comfort.

One would have assumed that in times of economic crisis, millions of motorized anglers would flock to kayak fishing as a cheap substitute, but it seems like such shift hasn’t occurred in reality.

As for Wavewalk, we’ve experienced a major growth in sales of fishing kayak models this year, and nearly all our clients have been using traditional sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks before they decided to switch to ours.

2009 numbers for the kayak industry keep declining because of the recession.
In contrast, in the third quarter of the year (Q3: July, August and September) Wavewalk sold as many kayaks as it did in Q3-2008 and Q3-2007 combined, and we’re very grateful for that.

We’d like to thank all our clients and supporters, and we’ll keep doing the best we can to provide people with the world’s best kayaks, and support them with the best service we can.

Yoav

Previous blogs on similar subjects:
June
March
February
January
2008

August marks the beginning of the new fiscal year Wavewalk, and it’s a good time to compare y-o-y performance.
As it stands now, we sold 42% more kayaks in the 2008-9 year (August 1st to July 31st) compared to our previous fiscal year 2007-8, which in itself was pretty good.
The W500 is a big success, and it contributed significantly to this increase.
Overall, the pace of increased sales has been accelerating since 2006, in both our touring and fishing kayak models.

As for our website, another record was broken in July, with 18,638 unique visitors (real, individual people, that is). So far, our website attracted more than 100,000 unique visitors since the beginning of 2009.

Yesterday, July 6th, 754 people visited our website. Most of them arrived from search engines – mainly Google.

Wow!

June was soggy here in Massachusetts – It just kept raining and raining, and sometimes it felt like the monsoon season… -It was also another spectacular month for us, as we sold in it more than twice as many boats as we sold in June of last year.

The second quarter of 2009 (April-June) was fabulous too – we sold more W kayaks in it than in the first half of 2008.

As for the first half of 2009 (January-June), we sold as many boats in this period as we did in the entire year 2008.

It’s hard to tell what’s been causing this continuous increase, but we think it’s basically because more people realize that our W kayaks offer real advantages over ordinary kayaks, for which there is a growing sense of disillusionment. It’s also possible that more people feel comfortable with buying online, especially from a company like Wavewalk that’s been around long enough, and can show a high level of customer satisfaction.

The W500 kayak series we launched two months ago is a best seller, with a high level of customer satisfaction.

Traffic to our website was another record broken this month, with 16,835 unique visitors.

Note that our W kayaks sell in the upper tier of the price range for kayaks, which should have really hurt our sales, as normally high-priced products and services suffer more in times of economic recession.

And just for comparison, here are US Canoe and Kayak Market Statistics for 2006-2008:

Source: National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA)

We didn’t find data that suggest an improvement in this market during the first half of 2009, and we did find information pointing to further deterioration.




Google offers an online, free service that shows trends in searches for key words.

For example, this is the link for a report on searches for the key phrase fishing kayak:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=fishing+kayak&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Interestingly, this report shows that Jacksonville, Florida is the world capital of kayak fishing:

The report also shows that the number of Google searches for this phrase is seasonal, and has remained steady since 2005:

However, when it comes to states, Hawaii leads, and Florida comes second:

The (U.S.) National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) is offering to download a preview of the abstract of its 2006 statistical report for download free of charge on this page: http://nmma.org/facts/boatingstats/2006/files/orderform.asp

According to this report the 2006 US market for canoes was a little over 100,000 units sold, at an average price of nearly $550 per unit.
The market for kayaks was over 350,000 units sold at an average price lower than $500.
The total 2006 market for canoes and kayaks was $233,000,000.

If I understand this report correctly the data take into account neither inflatable nor used canoes and kayaks, and they reflect a relatively stable market both in price and number of units sold in recent years.
A rigid entry level kayak costs between $300 and $500 while a touring, whitewater or fishing kayak can cost over $1,000.
It becomes clear from this report that entry level (a.k.a. ‘recreational’) kayaks constitute the bulk of the market in terms of units sold, since the average kayak price is within the price range of this category.

What else is it possible to deduct from this report?
Obviously, entry level kayaks differ from traditional designs mainly by their length to width ratio (L/W, or L/B). They are shorter and wider than traditional kayaks, namely slower and stabler.
This means that the overwhelming majority of U.S. paddlers are willing to sacrifice speed for stability, and that paddlers who practice the Eskimo Roll and put their trust in it as the main means of recovery are a rarity (by that I mean even less than a minority).
Entry level is in fact the norm, and contrarily to what touring manufacturers used to believe paddlers stay at that level and don’t ‘progress’ to the traditional, narrow designs. Progress is therefore represented by the stable designs, while tradition is represented by the (you’ve probably guessed it already) traditional designs…

And last but not least, it doesn’t take statistical reports to see that kayak fishing is the most active and fastest growing market in paddle sports and activities. Most kayak manufacturers have noticed this trend and offer a wide variety of extra wide kayaks (up to 42″, that’s over one meter), because fishing requires more stability than any other kayak related application.
In the same spirit, traditional paddling magazines and websites are increasingly preoccupied with kayak fishing and feature more advertisements for fishing kayaks than ever.

Yoav