I am not sure the big boys will ever consider the F16's as their market place, they make robust beach cats not racing cats which the F16's are. There are just too few hard core racers willing to spend 10k on a boat and once those hard core have boats then you aren't going to sell many more without changing the design regularly.
Certainly from a previous business I learnt early on you have to look at the mass markets and not the niche market for big number sales. To the likes of the niche manufacturers like Stealth however there lies a small rich market of budding racers, a small enough market not to interest the big boys and yet big enough for small adaptable companies to make a good living.
The only time this situation will change is if one of the big boys decides to make a 16ft robust beach cat at about 125kgs to replace an existing out dated model, their brand name plus loyal customer base will buy in the knowledge there resale value will be high, initial cost not to much, longevity will be good, adaptable 1 up or two sailing and they will only be 30 seconds slower over 1 hours sailing in an emerging racing class <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />
There is another simpler way, hypothetically speaking.
An existing company, let's say Hobie, could simply contract with an existing builder, Vectorworks perhaps; for a number of boats each year and simply "rebadge" the boats. This would eliminate the R&D costs to said company, provide a test run to determine viability, and give the existing factory an outlet for unused capacity.
Everbody wins. Further, this hypothetical company might offer existing boat owners the opportunity to "rebadge". The company would gain instant exposure, the boat owner would gain access to a dealer network and class infrastructure.
