I was privileged today to take a group of young watersports students and some international visitors from the Young Professionals Club on a presentation and guided tour of the DAME Awards.
By Kim Hollamby: METSTRADE Online Community reporter
We commenced by visiting Torqeedo’s booth in Hall 1 to look at this year’s winning entry and to meet CEO Christoph Ballin, who enthusiastically explained how his innovative company has grown from concept to a 90m Euro business in 11 years.
Many of the students were really engaged with the technology of the electric drive and batteries and fascinated to learn about their capabilities. But I also noticed that some at the back were not so tuned in.
We then moved on to the main DAME Awards exhibition with all 67 nominated products on display. The teachers in the group suggested their students should pair up and find a product that fascinated them the most to research and report back to their classmates.
Given such a broad spectrum of products on display it was an interesting test – but hands down the product that drew most questions from the previously disengaged students was Fusion Entertainment’s StereoActive, which the New Zealand company says is the world’s first portable waterproof stereo music player.
These students quickly confessed to having a very high fatality count among their collective fleet of mobile phones –inevitable I guess when you spend most days out on the water in or on small watercraft. It was at that point I declined to try and tell them about my excitement regarding some of the more technically advanced products in the exhibition – the point was they had found a product that perfectly met their interests.
A couple of years back I became acutely aware just how important craft like paddleboards and kayaks could be in generating opportunity to draw future generations into watersports participation.
I was attending an outdoor show to promote boating and we had a couple of colourful kayaks on display. I lost count of the number of people who had attended to buy a bicycle, but came over to ask about these simple, fun and accessible boats.
The marine equipment sector can play a significant part too by accessorising such boats and making them even more fun to play with. Bravo Fusion and all others here at METSTRADE that are bringing exciting new products into that sector of the market.
