Hello, my name is Isabelle Adam, I'm 54 years old, I'm the manager of Matos Surf & Kite shop in Brussels, located on the Ninove road (the surf store in Belgium). The history of Matos is very simple: we were passionate about windsurfing at the time, which was windsurfing. I was practicing, I had started at 14, so I was at the university to study dentistry, so absolutely nothing to do with kite. And then, Olivier was already working a little in a store in the area of La Louvière.

Then, we met on vacation. And our story started and it's true that at that time, the store in La Louvière had said that we were going to open a branch in Brussels. He suggested it to us and we thought why not? So, we started the adventure and arrived in Brussels in 1987 and started the Matos store, which was just 100 meters above. Our boss, Eddy, had decided at that time to hand over the business to us.

So everything was done in one go: the work, the installation, it was great. We moved with all our friends and customers, doing the caterpillar because it was really just 50 meters higher. It's true that the evolution that we met at Matos and that we didn't expect at all, is that we started with windsurfing, which was the main discipline in 1987 and which was the only discipline that we sold. We even started snowboarding but we quickly stopped because we understood that it was not possible to do both.

And then, in fact, the other disciplines were added as we went along. Kitesurfing arrived in 1999 and it's true that if we hadn't started kitesurfing, we might not be here today because windsurfing has lost a lot because of kitesurfing. Windsurfing still exists, but despite everything, kitesurfing has taken a lot of market share. And then the wake arrived and then in fact the wake before was behind a boat.

But then, we opened cable parks in Belgium. There are six or seven of them. Now, when we launched this in the store, it was, I think, in 2010 the wake. And then, just recently, came the wing surf. And that was a nice surprise because we didn't really believe in it because it's an expensive sport. Then, with the covid, we don't know what happened.

People wanted to wing and now everyone wants to wing surf. It's actually a board that's smaller than a surfboard, with a foil underneath and in your hands. You have a kite that is not a kite with lines like kite surfing, which is just a kind of two half-sails that you hold at the end of your arms. And actually, this discipline has just started. It's pretty amazing. We really have all types of clients: men, women, of all ages.

It can be very young customers, like 10 years old, who come with their parents, of course, but it can also be people of seventy two years old who still windsurf, from all over Belgium, and even from abroad sometimes. So yes, it's really a varied clientele: the self-employed, the health professions too. I don't know, maybe they do more sports than the others, but we have a lot of customers in these areas.

I think now we're the oldest ones left in the market, but I think we're different because we've always been the same bosses. We don't have any staff except for a student, the right season and we try to give maximum service and sometimes even a lot of service. That's what made our reputation, it's a lot of after-sales service in fact: in terms of guarantees, customer advice too, as we are often in the water and we know well what we sell.

It's true that we try to be really good at advising our customers. What is not available on the Internet, for example, is our strength. I think that's our strength as a store.