Philosophy

Thoughts on design

We are a bit paranoid about words like "innovation", "thinking out of the box", etc. In this modern age these have become buzz words, used by everyone and anyone who do something slightly different. Two questions need to be asked when anybody make such a claim. The first being: "is it really different from what has been done before?" The second: "does it work?"

At Fluid we look at things differently. Everything that needs to be designed on our boats are designed from basic principles. This includes hull design, deck design and outfitting. Sometimes we arrive at something completely different, sometimes the differences are more subtle. We don't tire ourselves too much about the first question on innovation. Being different is not the sole purpose of what we do. We care more about the second question: "does it work?"

We consider being based in Africa a blessing, where we are a bit isolated from the other manufacturers. This makes it easier for us to work from first principles, instead of adapting someone else's ideas. We set certain parameters for every boat we design, and the boat won't go in production until we are sure that we've achieved the optimum for every parameter. Sometimes it takes a bit longer than we promised, but the wait is always worth it.

We also don't believe in gimmicks. Pure functional design is all that counts, blended with pleasing aesthetics. We believe that you deserve the best when you buy one of our boats, and it is our aim to deliver the best.

Thoughts on boat sizes

It is quite obvious nowadays that whitewater kayak models need to be available in different sizes. We decided on three sizes for most of our model ranges, which seems to be the best compromise between paddler sizes and economics. What we do differently, however, is to stretch the limits of our sizes a bit. In a nutshell, it means that the smallest of the three sizes in one of our ranges will typically be a bit smaller than our competitors' smallest sizes, and the biggest of the three sizes will typically be a bit bigger than our competitors’ biggest sizes. This means that the really small and large paddlers, who have not been catered for historically, will now have a boat that actually float them. We also design every boat to work for a wide weight range, so that the combined effect means that we can cater for a large range of paddlers with three sizes of boats.

We believe that codes indicating volume or length (inaccurately), are quite meaningless to identify a boat's size as part of a range, unless you know the full range well. So we are using the letters S, M and L, to identify the Small, Medium and Large version of our ranges of boats.

Fluid Kayaks | Tel: +27 (0)56-817-2951 | Fax: +27 (0)86 550-3018 | office@fluidkayaks.co.za