Totsuka’s Yonex connect set to build brand in Beijing

Japanese sporting tools maker Yonex has staked substantially on men’s snowboard halfpipe environment winner Yuto Totsuka, and one particular of the firm’s product or service developers is hoping the board that bears his identify will build the brand’s bona fides around the world.

Hirokazu Yaegashi performs for Yonex, a firm improved acknowledged for its considerable traces of tennis and badminton rackets than for their snowboards, a marketplace they entered in 1995.

Yaegashi sees the Beijing Online games as a fantastic possibility for the manufacturer to remake its impression with the assistance of snowboarders it equips.

Japanese snowboarder Yuto Totsuka wins the Dew Tour men’s halfpipe occasion at Copper Mountain, Colorado, on his Yonex board on Dec. 19, 2021. (Getty/Kyodo)

“It will make me extremely delighted to see a Japanese get a gold medal using equipment made by a Japanese company,” Yaegashi reported in a the latest interview with Kyodo News.

“That would inspire the whole place and it would make us happy of our attempts.”

Yaegashi helped Yonex make a snowboard he thinks will additional than stand the Olympic exam and can enable riders like Totsuka obstacle for the podium.

In March 2021, the 20-calendar year-previous Japanese won his to start with halfpipe earth title in Aspen, Colorado, conquering Aussie snowboarding superstar Scotty James who experienced dominated each individual of the three editions held given that 2015.

Yonex is eager to make the most of the showcase the Olympics provide to bring in new consumers to its boards even though encouraging people who presently experience them to continue to be faithful when upgrading.

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Early in Yonex’s foray into the snowboard marketplace, it identified itself trailing in the wake of sector heavyweights like Burton, Lib Tech and Trip, but the Japanese firm has shown continuous expansion in the earlier handful of a long time with a purchaser-targeted tactic and stringent investigation expectations that served refine its supplying.

Totsuka’s signature model, also recognized as the Rev Yts, attributes the lightest swing pounds of any board at any time manufactured.

Swing weight is the term utilised to describe the rotational forces that exist at the suggestion and tail of the board. The weight distribution impacts each the way the board turns and the management that the rider has in the air.

At the Feb. 4-20 Beijing Games, there will be 11 gold medals up for grabs, 5 for male and woman athletes competing in the massive air, halfpipe, slopestyle, parallel large slalom and snowboard cross occasions as properly as yet another the new mixed workforce snowboard cross party.

Totsuka will make his next Olympic look in Beijing just after a horrific crash in the halfpipe final ended his at Pyeongchang Online games, and will compete with a board developed just for him, the “Totsuka Special Design.”

Reigning men’s snowboard halfpipe earth champion Yuto Totsuka unveils the Totsuka signature product produced by sporting activities equipment maker Yonex on Aug. 3, 2020, in Yokohama. (Kyodo)

Totsuka’s board brings together environment-class performance with an infusion of freeriding design to in good shape his needs.

“They know what I search for (in a board). I’m contented simply because they’ve managed to make a board that is both equally rigid and mild,” Totsuka reported.

The stiffness of a snowboard has a massive impact on its features under the feet of the rider, and as such all brand names will give a flex ranking, generally amongst just one and 10.

“A whole lot of thinking has long gone into our merchandise growth, as we wished to help the athletes teach in any compact way. Now we wait around to see the fruits of our labor,” Yaegashi said.

“Of course, it really is the athletes who do the function and we are just powering-the-scenes building the tools, but we consider pleasure in staying in a position to aid those striving for good results,” he reported.

Those people searching to emulate their preferred snowboarding star can commence by paying for the Totsuka Rev Yts signature board for 98,000 yen ($850).

Ruka Hirano, a men’s halfpipe gold medalist at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Game titles in Lausanne, and Sena Tomita, who skilled for the women’s snowboarding team along with her more youthful sister Ruki, are also Yonex riders.

The two Hirano and Tomita, and of course Totsuka, have the probability to make the podium in Beijing, and their Olympic achievements will not only be a turning position for Yonex but a golden option to market the sport, Yaegashi says.

“It would be fantastic if all those who’ve hardly ever ridden a snowboard ahead of start off following the Beijing Olympics. I want them to truly feel influenced to do so and it generates a excitement about the Japanese snowboard market.”