Date: 9/18/03
Author: David Williams
Photos: David Williams

Related Items:
2003 Wakeboard Expo Photo Gallery
2002 Wakeboard Expo

Welcome to the show!

Every year toward the end of summer there is one big trade show for the wakeboarding industry. Oddly enough, this show is called Surf Expo. However, there is always a corner of the room dedicated to wakeboarding and waterskiing so that we may have our own sub-expo dubbed the Wakeboard and Water Ski Expo.

The purpose of the Expo is for all the manufacturers to gather in one place and show off all the goodies they're going to be selling for the next model year. Retailers from all over the world come to Expo and roam the aisles looking for products and ideas that will bring customers into their stores.

Expo is not open to the public, so you probably can't get in if you're not in the biz. That's why we go in with our camera and take all kinds of pictures of this and that and bring it to you here. Hopefully, we captured everything that's noteworthy and the article below will help explain some of the stuff you'll be seeing on store shelves over the next year.

The Winch

I'm going to start with what I thought was one of the most intriguing item at the show. It's called The Winch and is a pretty simple piece of machinery. It's tough to see the inner workings from the pics, but Jim Leatherman of team Cassette explained exactly what it does. Beneath the diamond plate is an eight-horsepower engine that turns a reel. Attached to the reel is up to 1,000 feet of rope and a wakeboard handle.

To use The Winch, you simply slide it into your trailer hitch receiver, walk (or swim) the rope out to your desired starting point and, when you're ready to go, have your buddy crank up the throttle to the desired speed. According to Jim, The Winch can pull a rider at up to 30 mph and will retail for around $850. I don't know about you, but I've already been on the look out for drainage ditches in my neighborhood so that I can use to make use of something like this.

2004 Joyride wakeboards

Probably the most popular items at Expo are, of course, the new wakeboards, skates, wakesurf boards and bindings. Be sure to check out our photo gallery for some snaps of many of the boards and bindings. Items that stood out were the new line of Butter wakeskates and wakesurf boards from Triton Sports, the same company that owns Double Up and Blindside. The new bindings from Liquid Force, the shapes of the Byerly and The Gate from Hyperlite, O'Brien's Shapiro, Jobe's Keith Lyman pro model, a new line of boards and bindings from World Ski Lines called Metamar (I'm not sure what that means), very innovative skates from Mutiny with edges that you can actually customize, an asymmetrical wakeboard from a new company called Liberation and wood wakeskates from Gator Boards (made by the same company that makes 484 wakeskates).

Malibu Wakesetter VLX

In the boat category, there were quite a few companies represented. The MasterCraft X-Star appeared to be an old 2003 model. I was looking forward to checking out the new 2004 board racks, but that was not to be. The best looking boats for 2004, in my opinion, have to be those in the Malibu line. I love the way they added some personality to their boats by having the graphics sweep back and then forward again. I'm sure they don't want to hear this, but the graphics remind me a bit of the Glastron that I grew up with. The new tattoo graphic and heavy use of dark colors on the hulls makes them look even better.

The Session

You may remember the boat that Regal came out with last year, the Session. Well, Regal sold that division to a couple guys that have come up with a 2004 version of the boat simply called the Session. It looks like they made improvements in all the right places, including the replacement of that frail looking tower design, and have a great product on their hands. The new tower also includes a bimini/storage/board rack that is pretty cool. You can strap on boards like a surfboard rack or button the bimini onto the frame and you've got a roof rack hanging from your tower. See the pic for a better explanation.

Tige Switch

Tige rolled out their new line of affordable Switch boats, which was pretty impressive. I really liked the dash with the aluminum racecar look. Although we had a contest here on WakeWorld to design the graphic for this line of boats, Tige ended up going in a different direction and using their own graphic. It's a nice graphic, but I think I liked our contest winner's graphic better.

The video of the weekend was Jason Buffalow's Delta Sessions. I think I may have watched the entire DVD in pieces simply because it was playing in every other booth at the show. This is a collection of some great riding from the California Delta area. Check out www.westsideconnection.net for more info or to pick up a copy.

Fluid Concepts quick-release

Towers and accessories are always fun to check out at the show because there is no greater opportunity for a company to show off a bunch of shiny stuff. I took some pics of some of the stuff that jumped out at me. The coolest little innovation was Fluid Concepts new quick-release speakers and lights. It uses an attachment similar to that used for an air compressor hose and allows the speaker or light to be swiveled around before getting tightened down into position.

Roswell Wake-Air probably had the most imposing booth at the entire show. Constructed by Robert Oswell himself, it was basically a big wood

Roswell Dream Rider tower

building with a door on it and you had to make an appointment to get in to check out their goodies. They definitely had an impressive bunch of stuff on the "inside," which made me glad that I made the appointment. Their Dream Rider tower includes a TV screen, dome light with customizable light covers, rope hangers and some nice swivel racks. They also had killer displays for their stereos, lights and other tower options.

Wake Designs was showing off an even larger TV screen hanging from their tower. I also liked their embedded tower lights. Everything looked super cool on one of their towers that was powder coated blue along with every little accessory on it.

Titan tower speakers

Titan has some new tower speakers that have a nice line to them. There was also a tower called the Spider by Fly High that looks pretty crazy. It's looks like the Titan x 2. You could put a cover over it and have a pretty cool dome tent.

There are always a lot of cool little items that come out of nowhere and impress everybody at the show. Dry Pak camera bags was one of those. They had several different waterproof bags so that you can take your camera or camcorder to the water for better wakeboarding pics. They are a very simple design and I think the most expensive model, the camcorder version, retails for only $35. That's something that I think many of our readers would love to jump on.

While throwing a few back at the hotel bar, we came up with an idea for a really cool contest to run on WakeWorld. I can't go into the details of the contest until we actually get them all solidified, but we did need a sponsor to come up with a good chunk of cash for the contest winner.

Execute Pro Stickers - Cobe Mikacich

We weren't ten steps into the show the next day when 1080 clothing jumped in headfirst and offered to put up the prize money. Keep an eye out for both the contest and this company.

Cobe Mikacich was representing at the Execute floatation and wetsuit booth. Cobe came up with a clever idea that you should see at your local shop within the next month or so. It's a set of stickers that includes all the sponsors from your favorite pro riders as well as a poster of that pro rider. Cobe hopes to have 16 of today's top riders putting together their stickers sets.

BoatPipes.com exhaust tips

BoatPipes.com is a company that has come up with tips you can add to your boat's exhaust, which cause the exhaust to get churned up into the water so that it stays under for much longer. This will help wakesurfers to breath cleaner air when they're behind the boat.

Kampus has come up with a pretty solid looking line of wakeskate shoes. They come in four different colors and they actually look like relatively normal shoes that you could wear anywhere.

All of the print magazines showed up with fresh new issues. This issue of Alliance has to be my favorite because it gives some great coverage of the Wakesports/WakeWorld Golf Classic including several pics.

Daniel Watkins

Wake Boarding magazine is chock full of pics since it's their annual photo issue. Level X is no longer covering wakeboarding and has shifted its focus to wakesurfing instead promising to produce eight issues per year of Wakesurfer magazine.

Unfortunately, there were a few things missing from Expo this year. The event is usually crawling with pro riders, but many of the top names were in Cleveland for the Gravity Games that ended on Saturday. We still got a glimpse of some of the riders that didn't make it to the Gravity Games such as Byerly, Horrell, Leatherman, Reed, Hampson, Williams, Weatherall, Schwenk, Scheffler, Mikacich, Patterson and a few others I'm sure I've forgotten. A few the Gravity competitors were real troopers and made an appearance on Sunday, such as Parks, Murray and Watkins.

Also missing from the show was a planned preview of Byerly's new wakeboarding game. Apparently the higher-ups at Microsoft have decided to scrap the game. So the Microsoft game booth in the middle of the wakeboarding section was playing some snowboarding games all weekend.

Well, that's about it. I hope I didn't leave anything out. Don't forget to check out our Expo photo gallery to see pics of all the goods.

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