Hi Kendall,
I really appreciate your input. I need a fair bit of criticism to think this through.
As a snowboarder I see your point about off-the-racks being suitable for most riders. With thousands of brands, each with their models, each model in different length and width, etc. there should be something to suit everyone. However in my part of the world with only a few surfshops with limited stock, if you are looking for a minigun you might be lucky to find one in these shops. Most likely you won’t (nor do you need one much) and if you find one, you can bet it’s not the size you wanted. At least it used to be like that, it’s been a while since I’ve been to a shop (yes, I’ll visit every shop a few times to see what they have in shop before I start up business). Forget about finding something ‘out of the ordinary’ like a noserider, a single fin, or a twin or a hull. Forget about getting something made by Merrick, Rusty, Lost, etc. unless you consider Surftechs. As Nels pointed out, a lot of the surfboards here are brought in by traveling surfers from Bali, South Africa, France, the Canaries, etc. A lot of those boards are totally wrong for the conditions we have here most of the time (Some of us tend to laugh a bit at the guys that ‘learned to surf in Bali’ but can barely catch a wave here, surfing pintail shortboards in kneeslop, you get the idea). Last time I was at the major shop, they had two longboards, one made in China sticker, Hawaiian brand, the other one was twisted like crazy but still had a $800 + taxes price tag. I only make boards for myself and friends, but I would have been ashamed to charge materials cost for a board like that.
I won’t use a lot of different shapers, it will be a selected few (a handful tops). While there are certainly much higher margins by importing a large number of popouts or Chinese/South African boards (ridiculous margins as a matter of fact), even using US shop prices + shipping I can be relatively competitive price wise. Secondly, as I’ve pointed out a few times I want this to be a side show. I’m not expecting to make a lot of money. The risk is next to nothing, there really is not stock I can loose on, I’ll make sure boards are shipping insured and insured against theft from my property. The cost for setting this up is next to nothing, I can set up a server in my basement($0) or use small business on yahoo($5 a month or so). I’d say I’d be successful if I sell two boards a month on average, if it gets close to ten it’s getting out of hand.
It will be hard for a shaper to pinpoint customs from thousands of miles away, however I can be of some assistance. I might know my customers quite well or by name only, seen them surf or know someone who has. I know the conditions the boards will be used in well, if someone want a board for spot X or Y (that’s real spots bdw.) I know what those spots are like. I can give the shapers some ideas what kind of boards work well here and what doesn’t. And while a custom isn’t necessarily better than an off-the-rack, it’s not necessarily worse either. Cost wise the customs are going to cost the same as an off-the-rack in the shops, so you might just as well get ‘model’ shaped as a custom order.
The gap in the market in Norway is the limited models available. You could fill this gap by more on the racks or by customs, which would you choose?
regards,
Håvard