Ozone

Ozone kiteboarding development

Ozone was founded by a number of paragliders named Rob, Mike and David as paraglide brand in 1999. The first kite design from Ozone was a fun 4-line foil stunt kite meant to paraglide quickly and with a lot of power, called the Ozone LD Stunt kite . At that time, one of the Ozone founders, Rob, was already interested in kitesurfing and saw the potential growth opportunities of the sport. Before Ozone really focused on the kitesurfing sport, they decided to win the snow kitesurf market with the high-end foil kites. That went like crazy and soon Ozone came to the conclusion that they needed their own factory to produce all the Ozone kites in the high quality that Ozone sets for its products. In 2001 Ozone opens its own factory in Vietnam where they still produce their kites, including paragliders and kitesurf kites, to this day. An additional advantage of producing in your own factory that is completely under your own control is that you are not tied to production cycles of 4 to 6 months but that Ozone own improved kite only needs to produce when Ozone is completely satisfied. Over time, Ozone also started producing kites with an inflatable Leading Edg, some examples of which are the Ozone Egde, Catalyst, C4 and Reo. All for a specific kitesurf target.

One of the components of the Ozone brand that they are most proud of is the R & D department. All kites but also paragliders, in short, everything Ozone makes, is designed by highly experienced riders and instructors. And that has not been without result. Take for example Andy Yates, who became world champion kitesurfing in 2010 at the Ozone C4 and is still involved in the development of kites and boards. Besides the profit of the freestyle world championship, Ozone is actually the biggest in the racing branch of kitesurfing. This is because Ozone manages to develop kites that are extremely effective and stable. Within this race segment Ozone is always visible in the line-up for the race with various inflatable kites such as the Ozone Egde but also with foil kites including the Ozone Chrono and R1. And this is certainly not without merit after several victories in the race segment in both twintip and hydrfoil with Ozone kites.