Located in Cabarete, Dominican Republic, IKO is a small company operating on a global scale. One of our biggest challenges is to maintain the quality of our brand worldwide although not having the resources to hold a physical presence in every kite spots.

To ensure a consistent level of quality, we created the IKO Standards, a set of guidelines and requirements based on years of feedback from the kite community. The Standards need to be followed, otherwise, the trust in the brand is weakened in the eye of the public, which then affects negatively the entire organization and all its members.

Indeed, when a customer sees the IKO logo, brand name or initials, they have expectations and assume that the service they will receive is on par with the IKO Standards.

For an “IKO certified kiteboarding lesson” to meet those Standards, it requires both an IKO Instructor with a valid membership and an affiliated IKO Center. On one hand, the Instructor has learned the IKO teaching methodology and on the other hand, the Center has proven through the IKO affiliation process that they offer a structured teaching environment.

For that reason, the commercial use of the IKO brand name, logo or any material related, for courses and business promotion, is exclusively reserved to IKO Centers. This means that a non-affiliated school even with IKO instructors cannot promote themselves with the IKO brand name of the logo, neither can independent IKO Instructors promote themselves without affiliating as an IKO Center, as this could be misleading for students.

Since it is part of our mission to make kiteboarding safer and foster sustainable growth of our sport, we offer a FREE affiliation plan to anyone wishing to use the logo and brand name. We invite you to contact our School Affiliation department and our team will assist you in the process.