Kite Trade Association International Show

by Mike Gillard

The KTAI held their 12th annual trade show and convention January 24 through 29 in New Orleans, LA. This annual gathering sees the leading manufacturers and retailers get together for roundtables, meetings, and the trade show to showcase product offerings for the coming season.

Kitelife's "Best Of Show"

The most noteworthy product unveiled at this year's KTA was not a kite or windtoy. It was a product and presentation that will change the way forward-thinking kitestores will merchandise sportkites to customers who enter their stores.

Once again, Prism Design has proven their superlative ability to not only spot trends, but start them.  The Prism CD-ROM is a wonderful piece, featuring many of the great assets from their website. It will be available for purchase, and will be supplied along with their kites.

What really makes the CD a winner is the rest of the package, a kiosk that is available to retailers, designed to hold a computer monitor and mouse, inviting store browsers to see the magic of kiting for themselves. At rest, the monitor displays "Touch Me", with a stir of the mouse the great multimedia content of the CD appears.

Kite store owners who prominently place this kiosk in their stores will sell more kites. The entire industry should appreciate Prism's efforts, as a rising tide raises all boats. This is a product that will turn browsers into buyers, and create a new legion of kiters.

My hat is off to Ron Kramer, Mark Reed, and the rest of the Prism crew for a job well done.

New And Noteworthy

Flying Wings is striving hard to build on the success of last year's smash, the "Beetle" (How big a smash? There is a US store that sold almost 2,000 Beetles last year!). 

Unveiled at the show were some sharp new color patterns for the Beetle, and a "Wind-Booster" kit to enable the kite to fly in higher winds. The kit consists of a top spreader, and a simple snap-on extra bottom spreader. We didn't get a chance to test the kit, but it certainly made the display kite feel significantly stiffer.

Also new at the show was the "Alpha+", sort of a grown-up Beetle. It is a 7' sportkite, with 10 panels of nylon framed with 4mm carbon. The Alpha will retail for around $85, complete with decent flying lines.