Kitesoul Magazine #13 English Edition

ITW ROBERTO RICCI
KS_Hi Roberto, what can you tell us
about the 2017 meeting? What are the
overall considerations for the event?
RR_Ciao Roberta, the distributor meeting
was a great success! We had around 110
people attending the meeting. These were
distributors from more than 45 different
countries, team riders, media and product
designers.
We presented the upcoming Kite, Windsurf,
Surf, SUP, wetsuits, harnesses and apparel
collection which included 300 boards,
90 kites, 70 windsurfing sails and the full
wetsuit and harness line plus clothing. I am
pretty sure that RRD is the most complete
brand out there at the moment. I am very
excited to release this collection to the
public.
KS_RRD chose to present the products at
different times of the year, how come
such strategy?
RR_We choose to only deliver what’s truly
new and improved.
We are always moving forward with full
power in all of our departments and are
non-stop when it comes to developing
products which is a continuous flow of
research and development for us. It’s only
when we have a design that’s working
significantly better than its predecessor,
that our production department chooses to
bring it to the market.
This unique approach does away with the
‘here today, gone tomorrow’ culture. We
are proud to see the average product life
in our catalogue range from two to four
years, ensuring that your hard earned purchase
of today is still the product of your
dreams tomorrow.
KS_What can you already tell us about
the 2017 products? Great news or small
improvements to the already excellent
products of this great Italian brand?
RR_This is the first completely new release
after nine years. Because we decided to
change the logo along with the corporate
outlook, we had to stop the time table and
change all of the graphics throughout the
entire collection. The new cohesive look
was presented at the distributor meeting
in May. It was on that day we combined all
the new releases along with the new graphic
outlook and presented them as one complete
collection. Normally, products are
released periodically during the year with
continuous updates only when the product
is ready for the market and has been properly
tested. This is our company philoso-