ILCA intends also to require steep fees from builders - US$100,000 annually, according to ILCA president Tracy Usher. This is down the US$200,000 that were initially considered.
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Note that one of the objectives was to “favor fewer larger builders over many smaller builders” to achieve economies of scale. Generally speaking (particularly excepting PSJ where Takao says building Lasers is more a labor of love than a money making adventure), experience has shown that builders producing fewer than around 200 boats per year have struggled to maintain viable operations. Further, World Sailing specifically mentioned concern about small “boutique builders” who exist regardless of cost solely to produce boats for a limited clientele (where one worries they may have incentive to try to focus on builder “better” boats). To address these issues the original proposal contained a minimum royalty payment (to go into the pool to be distributed to the builders) of $200,000 with specific provisions to allow a candidate builder to apply for an exception for valid reasons. Obviously, this can also be seen as a barrier to entry, the most recent document lowered this to $100,000. One could equally argue there should be no minimum and one should simply let the market forces do their work. Personally, I’m in agreement with the latter, I believe the Optimist model shows what will eventually happen - while they list over 30 builders on their website their report to World Sailing this past January showed only 3 active builders with one in China, one in South America and one in Europe, all producing about 2400 boats/year.
This is stupid. Europe doesn’t experience the supply problems that ILCA rule change might be able to solve.
Just for the record, non authentic lasers parts are not "useable for club racing" when racing a laser. The ILCA and the districts around the world run association events and can easily control the entries at those events by saying the must be laser compliant. But at club, clubs can permit any class to sail, they don't need to specify that the class is a laser. Some clubs specifically state they sail lasers, that the boats will be class legal, even saying those sailing them will be members of the ILCA. Basically If your boats that looks like a laser is not class legal, it is not a laser and you are not sailing a laser.It's interesting to see that Windesign (Laser aftermarket parts) and Optiparts (Optimist parts) are the same company. Optiparts is the world leader in class legal (non-OEM) optimist parts, where same company Windesign is considered to build non-class legal(...) parts 'only useable for club racing'... because ILCA will not allow Windesign's cheaper parts next to the more expensive, ILCA approved parts.
Just for the record, non authentic lasers parts are not "useable for club racing" when racing a laser. The ILCA and the districts around the world run association events and can easily control the entries at those events by saying the must be laser compliant. But at club, clubs can permit any class to sail, they don't need to specify that the class is a laser. Some clubs specifically state they sail lasers, that the boats will be class legal, even saying those sailing them will be members of the ILCA. Basically If your boats that looks like a laser is not class legal, it is not a laser and you are not sailing a laser.