Duotone’s Till Eberle TRADE SECRETS

INTERVIEW BY ARNE SCHUBER

In 2018 Boards & More boss Till Eberle decided to stop licencing the North name and launched Duotone; it was a high-risk move. Despite doubters, the German-Austrian company now sells more kites and boards than ever before. Duotone was able to expand its position as market leader right off the bat. We met Till Eberle in Tarifa to sum up what the past year has been like, how Duotone succeeded in their launch, and what he thinks of the new North Kiteboarding.

When your Duotone bomb exploded in spring 2018, there were many doubters; in particular on social media. What do you want to tell the critics today?

Till Eberle: Maybe time is winning? No, to be honest, I have nothing to say to them.

Can you briefly explain what this litigation is about?

Till Eberle: Put simply, they do not agree with us that we have launched a new brand with Duotone. They are of the opinion that we could not have done that. Our legal advisory board, in turn, sees things differently and says we can do that. There is no infinite contract and every relationship is terminable. That’s what it’s all about.

Why did the launch of Duotone exceed the expectations of many industry experts, maybe even your own?

Till Eberle: There are, I think, several reasons. We already had a good run before. We have retained the product names and the products themselves. One has to say: kiting is a crazy little sport, there are maybe 300,000 active kiters worldwide. And apparently for many people, the product and the experience of our company were more important than the brand name stamped on it. We have always said, “if you marry and accept a new name, you are still the same person.” And many customers have joined us. The second topic, which plays in there, is that maybe one of the other competitors has weakened a bit. Be it financial difficulties that I believe are now resolved, or other reasons. That played a bit in the cards and was not to be expected. I suppose, and that was our secret hope that a new brand could be very attractive and attract customers. We have a big overlap among our customers, many customers have joined Duotone and a few new ones have been added. The whole brand has also become a bit younger and more emotional. That was also our goal: we did not want to do the same thing again, but we knew that we wanted to position ourselves differently for the future. And that seems to have worked relatively well.

Not a lot of brand CEO's rip this hard!

ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE PROGRESS OF THE PAST YEAR?

Till Eberle: I am absolutely stoked. It went better than expected. It could have been really bad, but at the same time I had the small hope it could run really well. All in all, I am really satisfied. The only pity is that we are in a lawsuit with the guys (Oakley Capital, license holder of the North Kiteboarding brand), which is probably annoying for both sides.

Will Duotone be well received in all markets around the world, or will individual countries have problems?

Till Eberle: The first half of the year went equally well globally, around December or January. At first these were the early adopters. They found the new brand sexy, that’s why we worked hard with marketing. By March it was a bit quieter. As far as I know, however, that was not only the case with us, but similar in the overall market. For example, in Europe we had a lot of snow. In Germany, we are almost 15 per cent above the previous year. France is also very strong. Overall in Europe, where we have our roots, things went really well. At the moment we are slightly behind in America and have lost some points. That is normal. Precisely because we are a European company, we can play better here than in other regions. Besides, the American customer is more conservative.

If you had to make such a decision again, would you do it again?

Till Eberle: I would do it again. During the first two months when I made this decision, although I have discussed it with many people, in the end I am the boss of our company and must answer for it, both to the shareholder and to my employees. There are many people involved and of course I did not want to risk the company. But nobody could predict what would happen. The risk was definitely there. Once you’re inside the tunnel and you’re running, it’s just going to be more forward anyway. It was so much work and so much stuff to move; to be honest, it was a great time! It was tough for the whole team, but they all worked really well together. Maybe one can compare this to sailing: you are sitting in a boat together, you are in a stormy sea and very close out of control. But if everyone sticks together and you end up seeing what comes out, it’s really fun.

You told me last year you would have taken the step, to be able to operate more freely in the brand design and possibly to revive new, or even old business areas. I’ve recently seen somewhere that you want to release snowboards?

Till Eberle: No, that was a joke. It was not from us. But the joke has succeeded. After all, you are not the only one who has gone to pieces.

How do you perceive the activities of North Kiteboarding? Is it strange for you to observe what others are doing with your old brand? In your presentations, I felt that you avoided the name North wherever possible.

Till Eberle: Sure, at the very beginning, you’re thinking it feels like someone else is sleeping with your wife. But at some point you get over it. It takes a little getting used to, so they are now committed to being market leaders and leading all innovations as theirs. That may be true for the brand name, but not for the specific products, for the team behind them, or for the team riders or any other content that ultimately makes up a brand. But of course I can understand their play as well, I probably would have done the same in their shoes. I do not take that too personally. We are a small industry and the guys like Klaus Warkentin or Mike Raper mostly come from Cabrinha, are okay, have experience and are sure to do well. Whether a copy-andpaste strategy is effective, I cannot judge. But sure, they have the brand name right now and somehow have to pretend they did what we used to do. So we decided that we should do our own thing. Duotone should not be a copy of North from the start, but we want to go our own ways and evolve. We try to re-position the brand on the emotional side, both in terms of brand values and content. And if you look at our language, be it what we communicate about graphics or content or which team riders are with us, then that is quite successful.

Last question about a current trend: surf wings; will that be the big new thing or is it a nice gimmick you like to sell?

Till Eberle: I cannot tell you.

But you’ve produced a bunch of wings?

Till Eberle: You might have to go back there. It’s a bit of a hassle to say who really got that topic moving, and it’s fair to say that Slingshot worked in that direction a few years ago. I like to give them the credit, but they shot down the project then. Before that, we had even played around with the topic for the SUP area, but that did not work. Then at some point we saw the Slingshot guys play around with it and Ken Winner (Duotone’s kite designer) has put a lot of energy into the project in the last two years. At first, this was a small, illegitimate child. Eventually, however, the thing was leaked and created an insane virality. That was about the end of January. Then we thought, “there’s no such thing as interest in it!” Suddenly, others approached us, such as Raphael Salles from F-One and asked us how we would assess the potential. What’s interesting? Its got huge hype! We presented the Wing at the dealer meeting in Tenerife in April to see how exciting it was. From then on it went around. It developed a competition of the brands to claim who had the wing surfer first. Naish took it in incredibly fast. You also have to be grateful to Robby, because he has a huge reach, and if he does something, that brings a lot of momentum throughout the story. He releases a video and the whole world talks about it. That was already the case with standup paddling, just as with kiting. To set trends, Robby is a power. Anyway, we currently have a lot of demand with our wings and lots of orders. Whether it will be the next big thing on which the wind sports community really jumps up, you have to see. Interestingly, we also have demand from the foil surf community. This is quite a big topic in Australia and America. It’s not a huge sport, it’s too technical for that, but I can imagine that in three-to-four years, around 50,000 foil wings will be sold each year.