We seek good dealers (we tried, found virtually none, and switched from wholesaling to retailing)

Dealer requirements
What is a "good" dealer?
What types of dealers are we looking for?
WindDance & WindDancing selling points
Are WindDances ideal for outdoor-recreation and outdoor-gear retailers?
Are WindDances suitable for specialty kite retailers?
How specialty kite retailers let us down

Dealer requirements  

1. Agree to accurately and fully represent WindDances and WindDancing as what they are: as we advertise in our literature, video, and on this website including everything on our homepage.  Agree to never do any of this.  As part of this accurate and full representation, you must promote what WindDances and WindDancing are all about: "REAL kite flying" including the basics.  This to assure maximal WindDance sales, and very happy customers.

2. Agree to stock and strongly recommend 100%-spectra flying lines of the length and strength we recommend (dacron line, spectra-dacron-blend "sport" line, or lines too thick or long reduce a WindDance's speed & pull).  And to recommend ergonomic control handles of the type we recommend (other handles -- wrist-straps especially -- sabotage feel, control, basic skill, FLYING performance, exercise, comfort, and can cause injury).  This is to assure full WindDance performance, full WindDancing enjoyment, and very happy customers.

In other words, we merely ask you to have respect for our product, and have respect for your customers.

But as we explain below and elsewhere on this website, we discovered how most kite retailers are not willing to do that.  That's why we're seeking good dealers.

What is a "good" dealer?

One who lives up to our two sensible dealer requirements.

What types of dealers are we looking for?

"Good" dealers within the kite industry.  And "good" dealers outside of kiting.

You can be a store.  A mail order retailer.  An internet retailer.  Or a mobile retailer fully licensed in all localities you sell.

Interested?  Contact us!

WindDance & WindDancing selling points

• Distance WindDances from "kites," and from "parafoils."  Instead, sell them as what they are:  "exciting aerial Ferraris" and "aerobatic exercise machines."  As high-performance sports equipment.  As high-performance recreational gear.  As high-performance airgear.

• WindDances FLY well in the Three Essential Ways.  Other dual-line kites do not.  More.

  1. WindDances respond with fast, tight, powerful turning to basic turning skill (pull hard on one of your two control lines) because they have the minimum cross-bridle system required for dual-line flying.  With other dual-line kites, deltas and parafoils, half their bridles are missing (the lines needed to support the other side of the wing are missing) which causes them to lose shape & performance when you turn them.  All those kites are fundamentally defective for dual-line kiting with basic skill.

  2. WindDances keep their shape and performance like rigid aircraft as the forces-of-flight grow stronger.  Other kites, being bendy & billowy & fluttery like toy kites, lose their shape and performance as the wind grows stronger.  A WindDance's rigidity provides hot edge to power-zone acceleration and exciting high-speed response to the wind.

  3. WindDances have a natural steering-&-turning feel like all the other vehicles and gear in our lives -- the forces rise when you turn -- which enables fast learning, superb control, and good exercise.  Other kites have a vague, powerless, unnatural steering-&-turning feel -- the forces drop when you turn -- that makes learning and control more difficult and prevents good exercise.

• To WindDance, all you need is easy basic skill.  Other kites and forms of flying often require difficult advanced skills that provide less performance and less exercise.  More.

• WindDances are incredibly versatile.  They are a sensible alternative to purchasing a large kite bag full of narrowly-specialized beginner/intermediate/expert, fragile/bombproof, framed/soft, competitive/recreational, solo/pairs/team, performance/power/travel, relaxation/excitement/exercise, light-/medium-/strong-wind delta and parafoil kites -- all of which don't FLY well in the Three Essential Ways.

• WindDances provide hotter FLYING performance, more fun, better exercise, and with easier skill than a whole bunch of specialized kites.

• WindDances enable "WindDancing," a new form of dual-line kiting, a new form of recreation: easy, fun-recreational, healthful-exercise, high-performance sport-kite flying!

  • Hotter speed & turning, superior tracking, and far wider wind range than delta "performance" sport kites, trick & competition models especially. Easier to learn on and fly than beginner delta models. Superior exercise, too.

  • Higher-quality exercise -- and livelier speed, turning, & pull -- than power & traction flying.

  • If you're after hot speed & turning, WindDances replace delta kites.

  • If you're after lively acceleration & lively pull, WindDances replace delta kites & power kites.

  • If you're after good exercise, WindDances replace power kites.

  • The excitement of WindDancing (flying a WindDance) makes regular sport kiting and power flying seem boring.

  • WindDances open up a whole new world of fun: partners, family members, and friends WindDancing side-by-side together with two WindDances zipping around in the same airspace!

  • While WindDancing, you can have ALL those different kinds of fun at the same time!

• WindDancing is normal sport & recreation and good exercise.  Most other forms of flying are not.  More 1.  More 2.

Are WindDances ideal for outdoor-recreation and outdoor-gear retailers?

Very much so.  WindDances are "airgear" -- sports & recreation equipment or gear -- not kites.  We are "Seattle AirGear."

When naming our company, product, and user activity ("WindDancing"), we avoided the word "kite" to distance ourselves from the kites-are-toys image, and from the kite culture.

Compared to normal "kites," WindDance "airgear" is more solidly engineered and built, has higher performance, has a wider wind range, is easier to fly, requires only basic skill, has a natural steering-&-turning feel, provides higher-quality exercise, is ideal for beginners and experts, can be enjoyed in any way from lazy relaxation to intense speed-&-turning thrill with 3000+ reps of pumping-air per hour -- (can you begin to see the amazing versatility?) -- and they open up a whole new world of fun: partners and family members WindDancing side-by-side together with two WindDances zipping around in the same airspace!

All this is why WindDances and WindDancing have broad public appeal -- from kids to grandparents, from singles to families, from casual flyers to seekers of serious fun and exercise!

The specialized kites and specialized forms of flying provided by the kite culture -- with their lower performance, lower-quality exercise, greater difficulty, unnatural skills, unnatural feel, uncomfortable control handles that prevent the best control and exercise, and requiring a different specialized kite for each combination of skill level and wind strength and type of flying -- aren't nearly as appealing to the general public.

WindDances and WindDancing are suitable for the mass market.  Our manufacturer can produce in large volume.

You see, we had outdoor retailers in mind from the very beginning.

Are WindDances suitable for specialty kite retailers?

No and yes.

If your kite business offers only one choice -- kite-culture dogma and paraphernalia -- that you impose onto all your customers, and if your business functions as a portal for indoctrinating people into the kite culture, WindDances may not be suitable. Why? WindDancing -- easy, fun-recreational, healthy-exercise, high-performance sport-kite FLYING with incredibly-versatile nearly-indestructible parafoils -- conflicts head-on with the lesser-performance, greater-difficulty, more-expensive, less-body-friendly ways of the kite culture. The only way you can sell WindDances is to misrepresent them, to sell them as something less than what they are: as compact kites for travel or as something to crash or as power kites, with wrist-straps or the other handles that prevent hot performance, perhaps with low-performance "sport" line, perhaps telling customers if they want real performance they need a delta. Misrepresenting WindDances in any of those ways violates your Retailer Code of Ethics as well as our dealer requirements. Your best course may be to follow the lead of other specialty kite retailers and sell the new dual-line parafoils that exactly fulfill the specific needs of the kite culture: the new parafoils that pull well and fly poorly.

But if you have interest in serving all your customers and in making money, WindDances are a golden opportunity.  Sell the other kites, control handles, and forms of flying to the kite culture (a small market).  And with equal passion sell WindDances and WindDancing and Eclipse ergonomic handles to the general public (a huge market).  Retailers do this sort of thing all the time -- such as selling tobacco products and health foods in the same store -- without any conflicts whatsoever.  Kite retailers can do it, too.

How specialty kite retailers let us down

We thought kite people, and kite retailers, would like kites that FLY really well. They proved us wrong.

WindDance parafoils -- the exciting state-of-the-art aerial Ferraris and aerobatic exercise machines we so carefully developed -- have been pretty much rejected by specialty kite retailers on the grounds they perform considerably better than parafoils are supposed to perform.

The most soundly rejected was the most enjoyable form of WindDancing: partners, family members, and friends WindDancing side-by-side together with two WindDances zipping around in the same airspace just for the pure fun of it. In brisk wind it's the most spectacular sight in all of dual-line kiting, at least to the general public, far more so than elite and competitive sport kiting. The fun-inspired exercise, a nice side effect, can make your body ache for days. It's as if specialty kite retailers, under pressure from the rest of the kite culture, DON'T WANT people to have this much fun.

Within the kite culture -- which consists of organized kiting and its trade association, flying associations, clubs, flyers, festivals, competitions, magazines, websites, manufacturers, distributors, and specialty kite retailers -- kites are prejudged by appearance, by the type of kite they are. Deltas are prejudged to be "performance" kites. Parafoils are prejudged to be "power" kites, "exercise" kites. Parafoils can't possibly perform as well as deltas. There's little tolerance for kites that don't conform to this stereotype.

WindDance parafoils don't conform. WindDances have higher performance than "performance" deltas and provide better exercise than "power" kites.

When members of kite culture see WindDance parafoils in high-performance action -- out-flying deltas in speed, turning, tracking, and wind range often by huge margins -- they react exactly how the prejudiced always react: with denial and animosity. Examples abound on this website.

So how did other kite manufacturers respond to WindDances? With marketing brilliance. They introduced new dual-line parafoils that satisfy the kite culture far better than WindDances do: new parafoils that pull well and fly poorly. Being scaled-down versions of paragliders rather than engineered for dual-line FLYING, they are missing half their bridles which causes their wings to distort out of shape and lose performance whenever the kites are turned. Such parafoils are preferred by most serious flyers and specialty kite retailers because they perform like parafoils are supposed to perform: not nearly as well as deltas and safely within stereotype.

We now understand why our least expensive, easiest to fly, most versatile, and highest overall performance model -- the WindDance 1 -- has the poorest sales to specialty kite retailers:

Too much performance. The hot acceleration, the high speed, the incredibly quick & tight turning, the superb tracking & precision, and the ultra-wide wind range all put deltas to shame (see the "WindDance 1 at play" MPEG clip). Yet they're so easy & forgiving kids and grandparents can skillfully fly 'em with glee. One WindDance customer reports how a four-year-old child (with help from his dad) flew a WindDance 1 in winds so light no deltas could stay up. This wonderful performance is not appealing to kite people.

Pull is too lively & body-friendly, not steady & torturous enough. We aeronautically-engineered pull that's so lively you feel every turn and every bump in the wind. Pull that rises whenever you turn. Pull-and-arm-motion that feels like cross-country skiing. When you do swing-your-arm pull-turns to accelerate and maneuver, it feels like a progressive-resistance exercise machine set on low in light winds, set on high in strong winds. You don't just stand there like a post and hang on. You fly actively. In brisk wind you can do a few thousand reps of "pumping air" per hour. It can make your body burn. Although regular people like all that, kite people don't. Instead, they want strong & steady pull like when flying a power or traction parafoil, pull that relentlessly applies powerful traction to your straightened arms. Intense arm strain with no arm motion, however, is terrible exercise as when Mel Gibson's character underwent traction in the closing scenes of Braveheart. Kite people just love that kind of pull.

The kite culture also doesn't care for the "kite-FLYING" concept behind WindDances: hot speed & turning from easy basic skill and from the wind. How come? The kiting elite prefers the opposite: slow flying and un-flying/non-flying forms of flying as in trick & competition flying with delta kites, advanced skills that kill flight, and delta kites that don't respond to the wind in an exciting way. Low performance from difficult skill, low performance from the wind. Even a kite magazine made that preference clear. But it's what specialty kite retailers like to sell, as well as parafoils with lesser performance than deltas.

To regular people, that's low-performance flying. But kite retailers call it "performance" flying.

To regular people, the stretch-your-arms bulldoze-the-earth-with-your-heels type of flying is poor exercise: strong force with little arm & body motion is a poor workout, like continuously standing there in a gym hanging onto a set of weights that's too heavy to lift to waist level. But organized kiting promotes "power" flying as the good-exercise kind of flying.

As you can see, kite retailers have been misleading about "performance" flying and "power" flying for years . . . and they must keep on misleading or risk losing credibility and favor within the kite culture.

The public doesn't like to be misled. Nor does it care for their low-performance poor-exercise offerings. No wonder kite festival attendance is declining. No wonder trade show attendance is dropping. No wonder kite shops are going under.

WindDancing provides hotter performance than "performance" flying and better exercise than "power" flying. But most kite retailers will not sell WindDances. Most of our dealers withhold from their customers information about how well WindDances perform in comparison to other kites.

They also withhold from customers the three major WindDance selling points. They never tell how WindDances have the bridle system needed for basic skill and how well they respond to basic skill -- and how other kites, both deltas and parafoils, do not. They never tell how a WindDance is rigid like an airplane wing and that's why it accelerates so well and why the pull is so lively -- and how other kites bend & billow out of shape and lose performance when the pull and wind rise. They never tell about a WindDance's natural steering-&-turning feel and how it enables fast learning and superb control and good exercise -- and how other kites have a vague and powerless steering-&-turning feel that makes learning and control more difficult and prevents good exercise.

Specialty kite retailers won't even promote the benefits of basic skill. How basic skill -- when used with dual-line kites aeronautically and structurally engineered for sport-kite FLYING -- generates speed & turning that's vastly more spectacular than anything you ever see in competition flying or in the elite flying featured at kite festivals, and generates exercise of far higher quality than what you get when "performance" or "power" flying.

Instead, specialty kite retailers -- together with their preferred kites, their preferred control handles, their videos, their kite magazines, their employees, and their kiting peers -- all encourage customers to use advanced skills which do the opposite of making a kite FLY well, to use skills which do the opposite of providing good exercise.

Since excessive use of advanced skill purges basic skill, many kite shop owners and their employees have lost the ability to FLY a kite well with basic skill. A few of our dealers have told us how beginners can fly WindDances better than they can. Having had their basic skill damaged by advanced flying, they push on their kites lines or do nothing when they should pull instead (like taking your foot off the gas to make a sports car go fast) plus they pull weakly & briefly rather than harder & farther (like not stepping on the gas far enough and not turning the steering wheel fast enough or far enough) -- causing collapsing and low performance. For beginners, who have not been damaged by advanced flying, the necessary "pull-on-your-kite-lines-to-make-it-FLY" skill comes naturally. They simply pull on one or both kite lines when they should by swinging one or both arms back and maybe stepping back, too -- easily keeping it airborne and easily generating hot speed & turning. We sure have seen that contrast, novices piloting WindDances with hotter speed & turning than advanced flyers could. We've even had to teach basic skill to dealers, one a top competition flyer, who were really good at elite sport-kiting but poor at FLYING with hot speed & turning.

The sports-car culture sure hasn't evolved in that direction. Can you imagine any elite driver, upon commencing a test drive with a hot new Ferrari on an empty narrow winding road, not knowing what to do with the gas pedal or steering wheel -- and not feeling any urge to go for it?

Yes, in addition to doing it to themselves, specialty kite retailers are busily removing basic skill -- and the will to experience speed & turning sport-kiting excitement -- from their customers.

Those who have not been indoctrinated by the kite culture -- that is, those who have not had their natural basic skills and their natural interest in speed & turning fun purged by the kite culture -- have no difficulty whatsoever with WindDances or in enjoying the full WindDancing experience.

Kite-culture purging of natural skill, and purging of natural desire for excitement, is so widespread in organized kiting it prevents us from offering a satisfaction guarantee. The visual and physical excitement that WindDancing provides, and the high-quality exercise, is unsatisfying for many experienced flyers. Instead, they prefer types of flying that are more difficult, duller, and not as good for your body.

Specialty kite retailers gladly sell that kite-culture kind of fun. But hardly any will sell the WindDancing kind of fun.

Many specialty kite retailers will not order WindDances, or the ergo T-handles needed to have the most WindDancing fun -- even if their customers ask for them.

Some specialty kite retailers have told their customers, "WindDance? Seattle AirGear? Never heard of 'em. You don't want that anyway. You want a [different brand of parafoil], or better yet, a delta . . ." These were kite retailers who had received several mailings from us including the WindDance video showing how our parafoils out-fly deltas, kite retailers who couldn't have missed our continuous full-page WindDance ads in two kite magazines, kite retailers who couldn't have missed the favorable WindDance review in Kite Lines magazine, kite retailers who walked past our booth and saw WindDances in high-performance action on the demo beaches during two KTAI (Kite Trade Association International) trade shows.

Many of our dealers talk WindDances down and sell them as less than what they are in violation of their Retailer Code of Ethics. They recommend low-performance flying lines. They recommend handles that sabotage feel, control, basic skill, FLYING performance, exercise, comfort, and cause injury.

Their behavior is driven by the kite culture -- to drag WindDances down to their culturally-correct low-performance stereotype for parafoils, to make WindDance parafoils perform the way they should.

From the very start we intended to sell only to retailers. We bent over backwards to serve specialty kite retailers. We referred ALL people who wanted WindDances to kite retailers. Our terms and service were extremely retailer-friendly. But specialty kite retailers did not treat us in kind. Most were not telling their customers how good WindDances are. Most were selling WindDances as kite-culture stereotype parafoils, as something much less than what they are. In response to receiving our video in Jul-98 -- which shows WindDances performing as advertised in sharp contrast to what they were telling their customers -- we were boycotted by most kite retailers. Which forced us to start selling retail on the internet. Our patience wore thin as we still waited for kite retailers to see the light. Finally in late Oct-99, we removed our referral list of 300 North American kite retailers from this website because it was doing us more harm than good.

We quickly recovered from the boycott and are enjoying record sales. Not so much to specialty kite retailers and the kite culture, but to the general public. In late July 1999 we surpassed our total sales for 1998. On Dec-31 our 1999 sales were 72% higher than for 1998.

When we entered the kite business, all we saw was the sport's smiling surface. All we saw was the fun. "New products that offer more fun will sell really well!" we thought. But within a month after we received our first WindDance shipment from our manufacturer, on flying fields and at kite festivals we began discovering the nature of the kite culture. Then at trade shows, specialty kite retailers shunned WindDances. We had no idea the kite culture would be so stubbornly resistant to new gear and a new way of flying the public would take a liking to.

We came out with something new, something the public would really like. We discovered how the kite culture prefers the old -- and tries to crush the new.

Does the general public care for what specialty kite retailers offer? Not really. And the kite trade seems oblivious to the consequences.

Why do specialty kite retailers steer people away from hot parafoils, away from high performance from basic skill, away from sensible control handles that enhance your fun? Why do they steer themselves away from sales to the general public, away from growth and prosperity? As we explain throughout this website, "The kite culture makes 'em do it."

Pressured by the kite culture, specialty kite retailers are disserving their sport, their trade, their customers, and their own businesses.

Here is what flabbergasts us. We had no idea that organized kiting -- including specialty kite retailers -- would be so against the essence of sport-kite FLYING:

• Against dual-line kites aeronautically and structurally engineered for kite FLYING. That is, against versatile dual-line kites that yield hot speed & turning -- with perfect tracking and over a wide wind range -- from easy basic skill and from the wind.

• Against the basic skill required. That is, against something this easy and effective:  move your arms and body to pull on your kite lines as needed to make it FLY the way you want it to, while thinking pull to make it FLY  because pull = speed = FLYING.

• Against the sensible control handles that enhance performance and fun. That is, against a simple improvement to the old basic T-handle invented perhaps thousands of years ago, an ergonomically-correct design that functions in perfect harmony with the anatomy of the human hand.

During the 1999 KTAI Trade Show (Kite Trade Association International) held in Clearwater FL, a seasoned exhibitor of non-sport-kite products explained why it's happening:  "The kite culture is resisting WindDances like the horse culture resisted the automobile."

Around 1990 the kite culture took a wrong turn:  away from mainstream sport & recreation, away from "kite FLYING."

Soon after we introduced WindDances in early 1997, we began discovering the ever-widening gap between the kite culture and mainstream sport & recreation. We chose to go with mainstream sport & recreation (a huge number of people) rather than with the insular kite culture (a small number of people).

Here is what happens at every kite festival we attend. The picture: A pair of WindDances zip all over the same flight envelope with astounding speed & agility. Their flyers, a married couple casually WindDancing side-by-side, are having huge amounts of fun and receiving healthy workouts. The reaction: Regular people like what they see (the mainstream's reaction). Serious kite people, including most specialty kite retailers, don't like what they see (the kite-culture's reaction).

The same thing happens with our WindDance video. When regular people view the clips, they order WindDances from us. When specialty kite retailers saw our video, most stopped ordering WindDances from us.

Of our three models the WindDance 1 has the most spectacular performance as shown in our WindDance 1 at play clip (you can clearly see how the WD1 out-flies all the deltas out there). Because of that hot performance, the WindDance 1 has our least spectacular sales to kite shops and serious flyers.

Is organized kiting doing anything about the gap between the kite culture and the mainstream? Yes. The trade association, flying associations, clubs, flyers, festivals, competitions, magazines, websites, manufacturers, distributors, and specialty kite retailers are all going full speed ahead to make organized kiting even less appealing to the public, to make the gap even wider. And they are heading towards a public-relations disappointment. We have tried to prevent that from happening, and so have others.

We write all this with hope that others will read it, and help persuade the kite culture to return to the mainstream and to its "kite FLYING" roots.

Most specialty kite retailers seem afraid to let WindDances and WindDancing get out into the public.

We are seeking dealers who will sell WindDances and WindDancing to the public -- and make good money in the process.

WindDance dual-line parafoil stunt kites/sport kites are developed, sold, and backed by Seattle AirGear.
WindDance, WindDancing, Seattle AirGear, and AirGear are trademarks of Seattle AirGear.
Copyright © 1995-2017 Seattle AirGear.
This page last revised Dec-22-1999