Yacht Chartering Takes The Public By Storm

Along with the yearly expansion in scale of recreation activities associated with the sea, surfing, sailing boards and Yatch Charter are gaining popularity among the young people in Japan.

Surfing enjoyed a boom last year, and surfboards recorded good sales. Makers and dealers of surfboards and Yatch Charter are hoping that their sales further will increase this summer. A study is made here of the tendencies and sales campaign this year for sea leisure products.

The surfboard makers and dealers were favored with advantageous conditions last year. Some American surfing films proved a hit in Japan, and they were taken up widely by information magazines for the young people and other mass media. Also, four international surfing competitions were staged in Japan between end of April and late in June, last year, and top surfers of the world came to Japan to participate in them.

The surfing fans increased to include high school students and junior high school pupils also. Surfboard makers and dealers estimate that some 30,000 boards were sold last year.

That last year was a boom year for surfboards is borne out in making a comparison of the past. The number of surfboards sold in the period from the late 1950s to 1978 totaled only between 60,000 and 70,000.

Although some 30,000 boards were sold in 1979 alone, the makers and dealers believe that sales passed the peak last year. They feel that sales of surfboards have entered into a period of stable growth.

Due to the surfing boom last year, speculative demand was much in evidence. A dealer in surfboards in Tokyo thus believes that demand will fall by that much this year, A major retailer in Osaka believes that sales this year will fall some 30 per cent in quantity from that of last year.

Most of the distributors and retailers thus have made conservative projections on sales this year. Even Marui Co., a Tokyobased chain store which boasts the largest surfboard sales in Japan, is hoping that sales this year will be about the same level as in 1979.

On the one hand, the makers have increased their production of surfboards, thus the supply is expected to rise considerably. Of the 50 to 60 makers in Japan, only three or four large firms each produce around 3,000 boards annually. Most of the other makers are small enterprises having three or five workers, hand-making boards.

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