Smith Aerospace To Begin Retail Sales of DOL-Fins in 2010
Smith Aerospace is on track and we intend to begin offering the DOL-Fin through retail sales in November 2010. 2009 was a busy year, and it has been a lot of work getting the new facilities ready, getting people trained and getting the workshop supplied with the tools needed to do our work.
2009 saw the kick-off of the DOL-Fin Beta Test Program. The Beta Test program will continue to run through 2012 and gives us a fielded sample of products with about a 1 year head start on any retail products we will sell. We will continue to track metrics of the beta test engineering units, but in light of the positive feedback received so far, and the additional testing done here at Smith Aerospace, we feel confident moving forward with plans to begin retail sales of the DOL-Fin in 2010.
Following 9 months of R&D in 2009 involving the construction and testing of over a dozen new DOL-Fin concepts and over a hundred hours of in water testing, we decided to move forward with plans to develop a new monofin specifically for freediving, which has been named DOL-Fin Orca. In addition, the research has also led to the development of a new model with improved performance for the existing DOL-Fin, which means that 2010 will see Smith Aerospace introducing three DOL-Fin models to retail sales.
We are very pleased to be able to offer this diversity in our initial product lineup. We want to put the diving community in monofins. Fish have known for eons that one fin works better than two for swimming. Freedivers have also been learning this in recent years. Now, we want to introduce the benefits of the monofin to divers across the spectrum from freediving to technical SCUBA. This diversified product lineup will go a long way toward achieving that goal.
We are eager to introduce this technology to the diving community. If this technology interests you, please check our calendar periodically to see if there are going to be any events near you where you can see the DOL-Fin in person or even receive a demo.