Inside Brainchild Production: Ralf Groesel on the Three Pillars

The Brazilian Brothers recently checked out what Brainchild Production has to offer and what's actually necessary to make kite design ideas come true. Ralf Groesel's main goal was to try to make something better. He showcases a 10-meter laser cutter that perfectly highlights what the facility needs: absolute precision. From the start point to the end point, the 10-meter laser has a variance of just 0.05 millimeters. This level of precision is the exact base they're aiming for, and that right base translates into everything Ralf has been doing.

Ralf Groesel's Background and Leaving Boards & More

Ralf always had the idea of creating a product, but he was ultimately able to transform that into production — changing, guiding, and leading productions. He has spent more time in a production environment than sitting in front of a computer at home designing. Knowing how to design is one thing, but putting that design into reality brings a whole other wealth of knowledge.

Before Brainchild, Ralf was at Boards & More (Duotone) for a very long time. He was at the pinnacle of designing in a very comfortable position, creating some of the most sold kites in the industry. The Evo D/Lab is definitely still a benchmark in the sport. Over the years, he also worked for Flysurfer, Naish, and created his own entrepreneurship designing sails for Oxley and Isteq. He was always involved in different fields and aspects of the industry, often working for more than one company at a time.

Ultimately, he left a very comfortable, well-paid infrastructure to create something different. He wanted to be in the position to make his own decisions because his dream was always to put a smile on the face of the end consumer. It was a tough call to leave that secure environment and start Brainchild with just three employees and a huge ambition to change the look and feel of kitesurfing forever.

The Two Entities: The Lab and Manufacturing

The vision for Brainchild was to question every component of what they'd been doing. When flying to traditional production facilities in Asia, the environment is naturally different, and ideas are grown there. Ralf's dream was to start with a blank white sheet of paper and draw what a production facility and a laboratory should look like.

The initial idea was to have two entities connected to each other:

• The Lab: This is where the innovation takes place. Ideas are brought here to create a mockup.
• The Manufacturing Facility: Once the mockup is ready, it's sent to a completely separate building where the actual product duplication happens.

No one else in the kiteboarding industry has this setup. Having two different companies gives them all the freedom to explore left, right, up, and down in the lab to figure out what's needed. The manufacturing side, meanwhile, is dedicated to sheer duplication on a level the kitesurfing industry hasn't seen before. Today, Brainchild has evolved from those initial three employees into a full-fledged operation across two companies with 235 employees.

The Three Pillars of Brainchild

Brainchild is built on three massive pillars that are changing how kites are made.

Digital Printing on Canopy Ripstop

Starting out, they wanted to bring more life and color to kitesurfing. They questioned why it wasn't possible to change the look and feel of the kites to offer unlimited possibilities. They began working on digital printing, and it took them eight months to even come close to understanding how to treat and print on extremely thin canopy ripstop materials. Digital printing has existed for many years, but no one had ever figured out how to do it on a production scale for kites until Brainchild.

PROWELD Technology

Parallel to the digital printing, they introduced PROWELD technology. This is another world first, combining face-to-face ripstop polyester-based materials together.

Custom Materials and Sustainability

The third pillar is materials. Brainchild does things very differently by starting with only plain white material. They color the material through the digital printing process, which saves a lot of water. To build their base, they've been "stealing" materials from other industries, taking darker materials from the sail industry and ripstop material from paragliding.

Moving forward, Brainchild will become a source of material itself. For the very first time, they're developing customized materials not just for the leading edge or the struts, but for the entire kite. They've invested massively — over a million euros in the last year and a half — into understanding exactly what's required to create their own materials across the entire chain.

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