Corran Addison and his Corran SUP brand have joined Kayak Distribution to create a company that will offer more than 200 kayak models and 15 SUPS.
Kayak Distribution already owns the Riot whitewater kayak brand Addison co-founded in 1997 as well as Boreal Design
and Beluga and is the U.S. distributor for the Tahe Marine paddling
brand.
Its been 10 years since Corran left Riot, said Marc Pelland, Kayak Distributions president, and everywhere I go people come up to me to reminisce about those golden years. The footprint Corran left on people minds during those key years is amazing.
Corran left Riot in 2004 to start his paddleboarding business Imagine Eco, which he in turn sold in 2012 to the Hong Kong based Pryde group. By the end of 2012 hed started his latest venture Corran paddleboards, which has grown in just a few short years into an industry leader, offering one of the most diverse and innovative lineups in the industry; take-apart boards, two-in-one boards, flip up skegs and more.
We were at a point with Corran SUP where we needed to make a significant business decision, Corran mused. Stay small and fiddle around with cool paddleboard projects, or take this to the next level. To do that we needed to partner up with someone who had the means to take our potential to its fulfillment.
That someone was Kayak Distribution. The deal was brokered by Kayak Distributions director of sales, Mark Hall, who worked with Corran at Riot in early 2000. Kayak Distribution was in need of a SUP offering for its diverse global customer network, and Corran SUP needed the kind of manufacturing and back end infrastructure that Kayak Distribution had.
I am excited as Corran brings years of experience and measurable achievements both on the water and in designing products, Marc Pelland continued, which will help us create more exiting products and brands.
With Kayak Distribution’s in-house manufacturing, the Corran SUP brand is entering 2015 with a revised lineup of boards which is simple, diverse, innovative and the most aggressively priced on the market.
If were not the most important SUP brand in the industry by the end of 2015, well be the biggest threat to the most important brands, Hall pledged. Weve created a line of boards and a dealer program which makes it impossible for any dealer who wants to really make some money to ignore us.
Hall will focus on dealer support, while the head office handles manufacturing and the back end and Corran heads up design and marketing.
While Corran will be focused on bringing the SUP line to the forefront in 2015, he said that he will be directly involved with the rejuvenation of the Riot whitewater kayak line once the immediate task is completed. Thats good news for a whole generation of whitewater paddlers who grew up paddling when Riot was an icon.
