Published on December 14th, 2023
Bristol, RI (December 12, 2023) – Starting Line Sailing (SLS) and Hobie Cat Company II (Hob. ie) mutually agreed to the termination of the collaboration and license agreement entered into in November 2022.
That didn't last long. Any idea what happened?
IMHO, SLS was in over their head and couldn't keep up to the demand for product and parts. This is just my opinion from what I have heard and observed.
I hope Hobie can put it back together - I thought I read that they moved all of the production away from California up to somewhere in the north, like Michigan or somewhere??? Which means they have to retrieve everything and move production again, further delaying parts and products. Maybe not - maybe they'll produce where they're at, but that could be an unusual arrangement. Guessing they third party the roto-molding, but lay up the 16's themselves. In that case, the dies stay where they're at for the Getaways and Waves, etc.
Here's hoping they can pull it back together.
As near as I can tell, everything was shipped to SLS in Rhode Island. See https://hobieclass.com/starting-line-sailing-new-hobie-manufacturer-site-visit/
It's possible that they can get things moved back to California seamlessly, but more likely we're going to see some more delays. On a positive note, I'm guessing that a lot of organization went into setting up the shop at SLS and everything might be very organized.
Jim Clark-Dawe