A little bird tells me, Windsurf are about to launch a massive web presence to complement their print offering, there may even be forum content or at the very least blogportunities which I believe they already have in a small way. This season has been good for windsurf interest, windy weather, Olympics, nothing major feeding through to retail recovery just yet, but it could be things have bottomed out.

So next month it should all happen..

Another nail in the Boards coffin I fear, even we have noticed a loss of sales due to the lack of a Boards print edition (we used to advertise that easy uphaul device) and the market generally are moving toward higher quality less frequent bookazines, I'm not sure exactly what's going on with Windsurf all I know is expect noise and more... They are without doubt the number one mag now, so they need to be the no 1 online resource for the UK..

Only way to punish bongo is to do what I'm doing and stay away, sadly, it's not that difficult nowadays and if they get it half right, Windsurf could totally crush them as far as windsurfing is concerned, all that has been missing has been online presence, a facebook page with less than a fifth of the likes our kite board shop facebook page has is going nowhere fast.. Why would you waste your ad spend, these days a fiver spent on adwords gets more targeted response than £500 spent on limited edition niche print.

I can't believe the windsurfing mag market is that small. You stand in WH Smiffs and look at all the magazines on every damn subject under the sun from bikes to knitting to bloody great yachts. I'm sure there's an option to go for a bit more glam in windsurfing literature - fitting roof rails on your Aston Martin for example, as well as how long your harness lines should be. Boards' strength was the technical stuff and reviews which eventually got lost and is now a bit limited.
There's a lot of people who buy mags for the fantasy stuff you can't afford as well as the day to day stuff. Boards was a good, worthy publication - family friendly etc. Maybe a racier style might work. A windsurfing sister magazine to Biker perhaps.

Nah, maybe not.

There's a bike magazine, called Privateer, it's a book, sells for £9.00 very nice coffee table read, even the Breadknife reads it, it spawned the new mag genre, 'bookazine' that is the future, no idea if that's what Windsurf are planning, but Future Publications have more coming out on all manner of niche activities.

But, these mags need quality content, not just the same ole same ole, written by proper journo's with a bit of serious research, in depth articles, people are very discerning now, with so much free content, paying money for 'interviews and quips by riders' aint going to cut it. They want what's going on, what's going on behind what's going on and more about human interest within what's going on.

That video always makes me chuckle. At least he can laugh at the loss of a £100k car.