TALE FIN
FORECAST: MAINLY SUNNY. PHOTO: SCOTT MACGREGOR
LONG RANGE ECONOMIC
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
All 94,250 square miles of the Great Lakes were flat like a gigantic bathroom mirror tipped on its side. The slightest rise and fall beneath us was the lazy leftover wake of a far off powerboat quietly traversing the hazy summer horizon line. “Is this what surfers do?” Kate asked. “Sometimes,” I said. My eight-year-old daughter and I were floating 50 yards off
shore in two feet of limestone blue water. We were sitting cross- legged into our third speed round of Patty Cake, Patty Cake. On a chairlift six months before, I’d asked Kate what she’d like
to do this summer. It’s a tradition for us to escape each summer for a few days together. No mother. No brother. Just the two of us. It’s a special time that fathers cherish and hope daughters will remember.
Bundled in goose down and GoreTex, Kate suggested we go on a surf vacation. “Like on Barbie in a Mermaid Tale,” she said. Malibu is a 38-hour drive from our home. We don’t own surf-
boards. So we packed an inflatable standup paddleboard and booked a campsite on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Which to Kate is pretty much the same thing. I’d just returned from Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, the
biggest outdoor industry tradeshow. In the Paddle Lounge I had organized and moderated the standup paddleboard industry panel discussion. Wired up with mics and in front of the cameras and a live
studio audience, I’d rounded up directors of sales and market- ing, a president of a SUP industry association, successful retail shop owners, media experts and top national instructors. These are people very heavily invested. Standup is who they are and how they make their money.
32 PADDLEBOARDING || Annual 2015 Standup paddleboarding is the fastest growing watersport
worldwide. The panelists were old enough to remember the ‘80s, when the darling of the board sport world was windsurf- ing; in the ‘90s, it was snowboarding. Instead of celebrating our current success, the panel focused instead on the future of standup paddling. In 1936, during the Great Depression, British economist John
Maynard Keynes published radical new ideas that flew in the face of the then accepted economic theory. It was believed the needs of consumers would always be greater than the capacity of the producers to satisfy those needs. Keynes, on the other hand, believed that in the short run economic output is strongly influenced by demand. The SUP panel agreed. They believe that if we can increase
market demand for paddleboards, the industry will continue to thrive, hopefully for the long term. The multi-million dollar question is, how do we do that? At the end of 50 minutes we’d boiled the future demand of
standup paddleboarding down to two simple ideas: create SUP enthusiasts, not just board owners; and capture the passion of families, and specifically children, so they grow into the paddle- boarding enthusiasts of tomorrow. Over the course of our three days on the lake, an east wind
kicked up enough for Kate and I to surf. We explored a pro- tected marsh for migratory birds. We challenged other boarders to sprint races. And we upped the ante in Patty Cake so that he who fumbled the actions was pushed into the water. Climbing back on the board Kate asked me, “Dad, next year
can you get your own board?” I said I would, and made a mental note to start shopping. Scott MacGregor is the publisher of Rapid Media.
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