Stand up paddle and Covid ?
Stand up paddle and Covid ?
How is our daily life affected?
And how is our positive naturalness going to come out great stuff!
What a special time we are living!!!
Since January 2020, COVID is everywhere... First in China, just in the news for us. Then in record time, every continent has been affected. The whole world was suddenly paralysed, at a standstill, each one at home, posted behind screens trying to understand the ununderstandable. One year later, our daily life is still compartmentalized.
There is the world before. There will certainly be the world after. And there we are in a in-between where we never know on what foot to dance. The slightest decision is difficult to take because we don't know what tomorrow holds. In one's own personal life, booking a week's holiday, blocking a weekend in the diary to go and see the grandparents, planning a dinner with friends on a Friday... You do it but you don't know if it will be possible. And this is the personal circle... What about the professional circle?
The road is winding!How is our daily life affected?
A professional daily life with its ups and downs... even a rollercoaster ride! In February 2020, all our orders from China were stopped dead in their tracks, they were confined. And when they started up again... On March 17, 2020, overnight, it was our president who pressed the Off switch! It was us who stopped dead in our turn, confined for 2 months. The whole world finally reopened in mid-May. Waow ! What a joy...
So, yes, let's underline it, we are lucky to be passionate about an outdoor leisure activity. The whole world has woken up thirsty for nature, wide open spaces, the need for sporting effort, the joy in this effort! Stand up paddle has won over many people. The stand up paddle has answered the call for freedom of the population. The stand up paddle offered the possibility of a great breath of fresh air, nature and escape to many people. No, we are not a sector to be pitied.
But in order to face this growing demand, life in our society, for the past year, has been complicated, very complicated!
Our production lead times have gone from 3 months to 9 months. There are many reasons for this, but they are all due to the successive confinements of all the continents. Delays have lengthened for the extraction of raw materials undeniably leading to delays in product assembly. The production factories all find themselves with an extended order book, thus stretching the deadlines without necessarily being able to give us dates, or changing them as time goes by!
And when production is finally finished, we face crazy traffic jams on the transport side. Worse than the Parisian periphery at rush hour! First of all, you have to manage to load the goods on containers. Then there are 5 weeks of navigation. At that point, you are given a delivery date at home. In 20 years of experience, delivery delays have already occurred, but never more than a few days. That was the world before, the world we knew. Today, we are facing delays that can be several weeks because boats get stuck at the entrance to ports and cannot disembark. We have this information from day to day. We give it to you day by day...
So, thank you! Thank you for understanding and accepting all these hazards. Thank you for keeping the smile we hear in your voices on the phone or that we perceive behind the words in your emails. Thank you for your loyalty to our brands, and for your patience through all this :)
But then, what are the positive things we get out of it?
On the team side...
First of all, great creativity... well yes, we have to reinvent ourselves every day by playing with the constraints!
Each of us has developed incredible adaptability: we do, we undo, we redo, we re-undo, we re-redo and re-reundo again...
Anticipation has become the Team's watchword. If it's customary to have a plan B... because yes, you never know what can happen !!!... Here we have plans for all the letters of the alphabet !!!
Humour!!! an indispensable quality to avoid sinking when the blunders arrive every day and from all sides...
On the product side...
The sweet wish to start a Green approach (already present for a few years now!) is starting to see the light :) A first long confinement has certainly brought up some certainties which suddenly appeared as emergencies!
* Solar energy has become our watchword: our new buildings - under construction – will be powered by solar panels. Our efoil batteries will also soon have the possibility to be recharged by solar energy.
* Our wetsuits are made of calcareous neoprene and we offer to recycle them so that they can be given a second life.
* We have chosen Paulownia as the species for our SUP & surfboards because it is an incredibly ecological tree. Read more in a previous article.
* We created Green Week in November, then extended it to Green Christmas and maintained a Green day every 21st of each month: one board bought, one tree planted. Read more in a previous article.
* Eco-packaging on all our rigid SUP and surfboards which are slid for transport in a biodegradable and recyclable cardboard "sock". No more bubble-pack
* We will soon be offering our t-shirts in organic or local cotton or both!
But also and above all, our aim is to refocus our production in the closest area... this is also a sweet dream in our sector!!!! But we are working on it and the results are there ;)
* On the stand up paddle side at Redwoodpaddle, nothing is "revealable" at this stage, but we are working hard on it! The transfer of know-how and skills to factories much closer to home is in its way.
* In the meantime, rail transport which drastically reduces the carbon footprint, is underway for many of our products.
* On the efoil side, engineering is 100% French. Design, innovation, all Research & Development is already done in our workshops. The electronics are made 25km away from our workshops, the batteries are made 200km away.
* The manufacture of aluminium and carbon parts in our country is in the process of seeing the light, what a joy... Here too we will tell you more very, very soon.
* Our future premises! These 1500m² will house a production site for efoil boards… to start with...
These small victories should see the light within the year, or even a few months, or even a few weeks... Keep in touch ! We'll keep you informed!
Getting closer to 100% Made in France is a great challenge that is close to our hearts!
That's it! If 2020 has often left us a little perplexed... Let's take 2021 in hand!
Xa**** ********on 2021-06-25
Bonjour et Bravo à toute l'équipe, et plus particulièrement à mon interlocuteur "Julie" qui a su me renseigner pour choisir au mieux mon sup, j'en ai eu deux avant de concurrent, votre materiel n'a rien à voir, c'est du sérieux, et en plus, avec un désign original et un super logo Bravo, Ref. Pro 12'6 x 31'5 ExplorerJa**** ***is 2021-02-08
Aucun regret de vous avoir fait confiance pour mon nouveau paddle.Vous etes la meilleur équipe et vos planches sont super efficaces et magnifiques.
J'ai deja en mire la prochaine
Continuez comme ça. Vous êtes au top.
Et 100 % français j'adore
Pa** ** *******nt 2021-02-08
Et bien un grand bravo?? !!!! Une équipe qui prend les devants, toujours à la recherche du meilleur tout en étant professionnelle et écologiquement au top ?De vous lire redonne de l’espoir et de la force !!!
Alors MERCI et continuez de surfer sur cette vague !!!??
Th***** ******et 2021-02-08
La conjoncture n'est facile pour personne en effet.Le coté positif est qu'elle nous force à nous remettre en cause à bien des niveaux.
Merci au Team Redwood de nous faire partager tous ses efforts pour réduire son emprunte carbone tout en améliorant la qualité de ses produits, pour que nous puissions profiter pleinement de notre espace de liberté.
Thierry
Th***** ****om 2021-02-08
Bravo à toute l’équipe pour ce qui a été et ce qui va être ???.Bonne continuation pour ces merveilleux projets . Thierry