Interested in the strategies behind why bigger brands release their new range at trade shows like AWSI while smaller brands do something closer to a continuous release
The other approach is to release in Spring when people are looking for new stuff for the Summer.
What is the thinking?
Small brands releasing when things are ready is great and has been the driver for innovation. I think the big brands have been on the defensive and way behind industry trends for the past two years. Seeing what brands like duotone and f-one are releasing for boards is a good example. Their first iteration downwind boards last year were outdated even before they got released. Duotone still releasing variations of their sky air desing from 2022. F-one design team didn’t even have time to work on wing boards this year, they just shaved off an inch or two of width on the rocket s and called it the “revolutionary” new 2024 board. Foils is a similar story.
There’s also probably an element of Big Brands (capitalizing intentionally 
) simply letting the smaller brands doing the bulk of innovation/experimentation, waiting to see customer reactions, then just making their own version. They can probably afford to wait, because there will always be a bulk of the customer base who are either a) Brand loyalists, or b) consumers who aren’t as “on the pulse” as others and might not know that these innovations or designs have been around in smaller companies prior.
Yeah you’re definitely right about that. The big companies also likely order large production runs way ahead of time so it makes sense that they’re not taking any chances on cutting edge developments. I do find the culture of making small tweaks, slapping a new color on and calling it a breakthrough innovation every year very disingenuous though