Fliteboard joins Brunswick, eyes global eFoil expansion

Fliteboard moved under Brunswick Corporation on June 26, and the deal put one of eFoiling’s best-known brands inside a marine giant with more than 60 brands and more than 18,500 employees across 29 countries. For a category built on premium hardware, that matters because the next battleground is no longer just who can make the flashiest board, but who can scale development, distribution, and service fastest.

David Trewern said Fliteboard would work within Mercury Marine and tap Brunswick’s electrification strategy along with resources for product development, manufacturing, sales, distribution, financing, and supply chain. Byron Bay stayed the company’s global headquarters, and Trewern remained in place as founder, CEO, and product architect. That keeps Fliteboard’s identity intact while plugging it into a far larger industrial system with the kind of reach most eFoil brands can only chase.

The move also fits neatly into Brunswick’s own playbook. The company first announced the acquisition of Fliteboard on September 5, 2023, saying the deal would advance its electrification and shared-access strategies. Brunswick said then that Fliteboard would operate as a business within Mercury Marine, and that its technology could help the company enter the emerging electric-foiling surfboard market while eventually aligning subsystems with the Avator electric outboard line. Brunswick’s ACES strategy, autonomy/assistance, connectivity, electrification and shared access, gives the acquisition a clear corporate lane rather than a one-off trophy buy.

Fliteboard’s own history explains why Brunswick wanted it. David Trewern developed the original idea in 2016, the company launched in 2017 as a premium mass-manufactured e-foil product, and by 2020 it had added the Flite App with ride tracking, GPS replay, and performance data. Fliteboard says it now has more than 330 dealers and Fliteschools worldwide, head offices in Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States, and more than 50 patents. Earlier company and trade materials also put its customer base in more than 90 countries and credited it with more than a dozen major awards, including a Red Dot Best of the Best and a Good Design Gold Award.

That scale changes the competition. Fliteboard is no longer just a standout niche brand in foil surfing; it is part of a larger marine platform with the infrastructure to push faster iteration, broader dealer coverage, and stronger after-sales support. In a market where credibility matters as much as speed, Brunswick just gave eFoiling a much bigger stage.