Hi all,
Recently was surprised in really bad way. Was looking to get custom seat for my seda glider, they are not accepting orders, they are closing boat department by the end of 2024. Seward - closed, Necky - closed, CD - closed.
That is really really bad.
Sorry to see Seda go. Not much reach outside of their local SoCal region, and I suppose that makes survival even tougher. I had a fiberglass Viking for use on bigger water (Lake Champlain, mostly) and always felt secure.
Add to that QCC, Turning Point Boatworks, Hemisphere Design Works (Sun Dolphin), Valley Nordkapp, and a host of smaller manufacturers
Wow, I didn’t realize so many have closed down although some may be only temporarily. Valley Kayak too?
Hmmm…leaving me Rockpool, SKUK, TideRace, and Stellar to choose from now that my spinal fusion is healed.
Thankfully, the CD composite kayaks, particularly the Danish performance models (which I favor), have been acquired and will live on for now.
-sing
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Valley Sea Kayaks is still in business. A sea container full of Valley’s was delivered to Umingmaq Paddleshop in Wisconsin this fall. One of 'em is mine.
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Kayak/surfski vendors will not talk about this openly, but this has been an extraordinarily bad year for them/us.
I will talk about it because I’ve been a paddler/consumer for far longer than I’ve been a vendor, and I always think from the paddler’s perspective.
Everybody bought boats during COVID and surfskis have largely usurped the performance kayak market. Most surfskis found in the USA are built in China (overwhelmingly Epic and Stellar) who have a much lower labor cost structure, and there has been a glut in the market of those for a few years. Here’s why:
Many performance paddlers own at least several boats. They’ve been conditioned to buy the latest and greatest model each year in search of more speed/better performance, and now new designs are hitting the point of diminishing returns.
So the used market is thriving right now with people trading up/down with used boats since there is a glut of them, and many are discovering the designs of a few years ago are just as good as new ones or better than what they are paddling now.
After people pay for higher priced gas, groceries, eating out, and auto insurance without a remotely-corresponding increase in their paychecks, they realize there isn’t much left for anything that is a “nice to have” rather than a necessity.
Has anyone else noticed a lot of restaurants are closing, too? That is because eating out is a discretionary spend, and many of us can’t afford it anymore because restaurateur’s costs are also spiking. Costs they pass along to us, the consumers, in the form of higher prices and smaller portion size. So we stay home, cook more, but also complain about how much groceries cost to stay at home and cook more.
Americans are being squeezed financially right now. There is no discretionary cash for any of us right now.
The idea of “Buy American” sounds great to many of us, but we are so conditioned to shop on low price that not enough are willing to pay the premium for American-built goods anymore. Our labor is simply significantly more expensive.
Full stop.
That is the cold, hard reality.
“Good enough” designs with the lowest labor costs and lowest sticker price will always win the day. Not just in kayaks, but across all goods. We accept that we sacrifice quality for a lower price. We’ve also been conditioned to accept that most goods will last a few years and then will need to be replaced.
It is odd that intuitively we all know and understand that, but somehow we try to pretend it isn’t true.
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you are right in every single word. only one i’d question - in spite of low labor cost - goods are not cheap, retail chain is making huge markups on everything. stellar and epic - they in 5k range, like custom built in US/Canada/EU boat. quality of such product is ander some concerns.
Agreed. Over the course of my business life I’ve said countless times, “I’ve never seen middlemen introduced into a supply chain where it lowered the cost to the consumer.” Everyone needs to make a certain percent. And the more successful China becomes, the higher the standard of living their workers expect, and the more margin they will want, hence, the higher the end price over here to satisfy the middlemen wanting to maintain their margins. One day China will also lose their manufacturing to a lower cost labor force. But they have played the game very well up to this point.
China is now losing to cheaper and more stable manufacturing countries but they still rule the roost. I bought a few Amish made belts made in the USA. They were 80-110 each. Great products long out last me. Work belt I have now has been on me two decades nearly everyday of the week.
Saw an add on fb about a USA veteran making belts. So I bought another one for 50 bucks. Received the belt wrapped in plastic with Chinese writing all over it. Protested on PayPal so they told PayPal it was made in the USA shipped to China because of a lack of warehouse space in the USA. GMAFB now waiting for PayPal’s decision which takes 3-4 weeks. 
I avoid all Chinese products that I can. No sense me building up their military might we will confront one day. They steal IP costing the other countries billions a year. They have wiped out entire industries in the USA.
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@PaddleDog52 is right. Not only are the Chinese still suffering from a massive housing bubble failure, an aging population and negative birth rate, but the average Chinese citizen is noted for saving, not spending in the domestic market. The Chinese economy is very dependant on an export economy.
With increased competition from other countries as they modernize, production costs fall and Chinese wages rise, the Chinese GDP has been falling. The Chinese leaders are as yet unwilling to open up to a more free market economy and have not come up with another solution to improve their economic model.
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Although a different approach with stitch and glue, we also lost Pygmy Boats.
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Similar things are happening in all recreation industries who experienced a surge of demand during the pandemic and ramped up production thinking it would be permanent. Unfortunately, even the smaller manufacturers who couldn’t ramp up production to profit from the demand spike are being hurt now by over-production industry-wide during the resulting demand trough.
ugh I am sorry to hear that…
I’m still paddling a Seda Scout canoe from 1999, it’s fast and stable, a great boat…
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I’ve been connected in one way or another to the outdoor sports recreation community and businesses for over 50 years – there have always been cycles and “bulges moving through the anaconda” with certain sports becoming madly popular with high product demand for a while, then waning as the “next big thing” gains ground, with a following sell-off on the used market (and retail “fire sales”) of gear, and the closing or consolidation of many manufacturers. But there have been business resurgences as the more savvy older vendors adapt to the changing times and shifting markets in order to survive – examples are L.L. Bean, Patagonia, Danner boots. I have a habit of watching the used markets for kayaks and canoes, both locally and nationally, and (as expected), the used market has surged in quantity in the past year with prices dropping drastically. I believe that in the long run this could cause a rebound in paddling because quality boats are now more accessible to those entering the sport as well as those who may have started in it with cheaper boats that have proven to have some limitations.
I started attending the QajaqUSA sponsored Greenland paddling skills camps 7 years ago and just in that time I have seen a significant growth in the number of participants at events and an impressive jump in the quantity of higher end high-performance boats that people are showing up with – I’m talking various kinds of composite and folding kayaks that cost from $2500 to over $5000. And it has been gratifying to see more younger people gravitating to adventure type kayaking, beyond the fad of lily dipping in big box rec boats that appears to be waning (and often replaced by SUP use.)
Though I and my fellow folding kayak fans have rued the loss of Folbot and Feathercraft, there has been a gradual rise lately in new folding boat companies and in existing ones expanding their lines to appeal to paddlers looking for more portable, yet seaworthy, craft.
A market quirk like the pandemic surge in outdoor sports gear acquisition will take some time to sort out (my friends into serious cycling also report a recent glut of low prices on premium pedaling gear as well). The kayak and canoe market has also not yet fully adjusted to the growth of on-line shopping, but I think that is getting sorted out as well.
I have even detected the resurrection of some very ancient brands that went “dark” for a while after their dominance of wilderness sports during the 1970’s. I’ve picked up some very well-designed gear this year bearing the venerable “Gerry” label and even Woolrich and Columbia are offering better technical materials and construction of their garments and accessories than they had been in the previous decade, when they shifted to mass marketing some pretty lousy crap. Having access to the internet has made consumers a bit pickier and better informed about their options, and I think manufacturers in the outdoor sports biz are getting the message.