bastard aye
few of those emerging in nz
cheaper then us backyarders:)
This post is just about the biggest bunch of BS I’ver ever read on Sways. Everysurfer…if after surfing for 35 years you can’t find someone in California to make you a good custom board than that probably says more about you then the shapers of cali.
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Hey guys,
Looks like were really onto something.
Firstly, to those of you who offered to not screw me on my next board, I really appreciate it! Finally I have a line on the Pros of the industry. You guys obviously don’t know how hidden away you are. It’s like a big fog bank. So many half assed amatures getting in both our way! One reason that word of mouth doesn’t work is that most surfers wouldn’t know a good from a bad board. Complete and utter BS assumption. Most surfers know good boards and that is why good shapers are in demand and new tech is attracting a premium in the marketplace. Most surfers really aren’t atheletes, they’re just guys out on the weekend looking to unwind. (Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn longboarders sitting way outside getting all the set waves!) How are they going to pass the word on about who’s good? Word of mouth works fine and a lot of those longboarders are lifelong surfers.
Secondly, in my industry of residential construction, there’s this thing I call Cocktail Party Negotiating. The guy can afford your price, but he wants to brag to all his friends at the next cocktail party how he screwed me! I know this first hand how these rich bastards think! I’ve seen it in action. The secret lies in giving him something else to brag about. Let them talk about how he’s friends with the world famous shaper; how he got the board just for him; how well he surfs on it. On and on!
On his next board, kill him with your knowledge. Why the bottom contour is a certain way. Why these fins are perfect. Why this length is just right for this wave at this size. On and on. Strike his ego and make him feel special. Jeez mate take your hand off it. If you can’t find an experienced shaper who can explain to you the features of your custom board then again it says more about you.
Understand that this won’t work on all customers. There is the oaf out there who is stoned half the time who wouldn’t appreciate it anyway. Blow that guy off! Complete and utter arrogance. Do you surf?
One thing that everybody wants is speed. Nobody like waiting a month for their board. If you blow off the cheap bastard, you will be able to take better care of the real customer. Cater to the good customer, and you might loose two thirds of your sales, but you’ll make three time more per board! This business model is used by experienced shapers who offer quality and durability…no-one can just lose two-thirds of their customers, charge twice as much and stay in business. Absolutely laughable. If you are only making $50 to $100 per poard, and it takes a month to get it done, Cut your sales in half, double your profit to $100 to $200 per board, and enjoy the free time. At that point expand the business because you might get a good reputation.
I remember in the 1980’s and before, when Al Merrick charged $150.00 more for a board than anyone else. This was before Tom Curren made him world wide famous. He could do it because his boards were better than everyone elses. This means that you really need to understand the physics of what’s happening under your feet. To those of you who think the spoon under the faucet trick is relevant, think about the direction of waterflow. You are riding a flow of water that is rising under you and moving perpendicular to you direction. To those of you who think a sand finish is better for speed, any turbulence causes drag. The idea of a board or fin storing and releasing energy is ridiculous! Again complete and utter arrogance. Tell that to George Greenough. Who are you to make statements like this? Are you a design guru? A fin doesn’t snapback causing some magical effect. The fin is pushing against water, not an immovable object. As soon as you release the pressure of a turn, it gradually returns to position. Regarding flex, A board doesn’t feel alive because it flexes! Flex changes rocker, that’s all! If the board flexes it will carve a different radius only when it is on a rail. It will let you land a floater easier by the nose bending upward to increase nose rocker. It may help with tail rocker (behind the fins only!) and your bottom turn Too much flex and you loose control because your movements don’t translate quickly enough to the working parts of the board (rails and fins). Some of you need to market flex not as something generic and magical, but in specific zones on the board and why the customer wants your design! Firewire, Coil, Sunova, TL2, Outer Island Flextails, Compsand Guys etc etc…all utilising this tech and charging a premium for it.
The key to your success is in making a better board than anyone else and selling that idea to the public. Wow.Your kidding me? With marketing savvy like this you could get a job with Surftech. There are so many bad ideas being passed along from one to another that yield bad designs. Total BS. Surboard design has never been better. Even crappy design ideas from the seventies are usually reworked to make them work. If you choose correct volume/dimensions it’s almost impossible to get a shit board nowadays. If you want to get beyond the average, education is the key. Get to the library and read! Start with engineering designs of brigdges. Your kidding right? Bridges. Not the best example. There’s plenty of expertise in modern materials right here on this forum. What would happen if you changed stringer material in different areas of the board. What about drilling holes in the face of the stringer. What about parabolic stringers that stop at your front foot, and a carbon fiber skin from there. Wouldn’t snap, and would let you land those drops. Popular mechanics will teach you more about engineering than Surfer Magazine. Take a tiny look around at whats happening mate. There’s never been more experimentation with surfboard engineering/materials. it’s now incredibly easy to get a light, durable hi-tech board if that is what you wish. Good luck finding a good board. Steve
Complete and utter BS assumption. Most surfers know good boards and that is why good shapers are in demand and new tech is attracting a premium in the marketplace. - No, most don’t. Take a survey of a group of surfers and ask them WHY their board does what it does. Over half won’t have a clue. Why their board has a certain amount of rocker. They have little understanding of what’s under their feet.
Word of mouth works fine and a lot of those longboarders are lifelong surfers. Unless the guy talking to you knows what is going on, his advice isn’t going to help. Sadly, most of those lifelong longboarders aren’t tring to push their abilities, they just want to have a good time and relax.
Jeez mate take your hand off it. If you can’t find an experienced shaper who can explain to you the features of your custom board then again it says more about you. No, I have a pretty good understanding of the dynamics of water acting on the board. What I can’t find is the shaper who will 1. Shape the board I asked him to. 2. Complete the board by the time He promised. 3. Not Fk it all up by letting some inexperienced sander/ polisher ruin it after everyone else did their part.
Complete and utter arrogance. Do you surf? Arrogant to think that some of your customers won’t appreciate all you are doing for them. And yes, I’ve been surfing quite well for 35 years and sponsored for a portion of it.
This business model is used by experienced shapers who offer quality and durability…no-one can just lose two-thirds of their customers, charge twice as much and stay in business. Absolutely laughable I’ve got my degree in Business Administration/ Finance and 20 years as a business owner to back me up. Also some of the successful small time builders who have commented in this forum might agree also. "I loose $20 on each sale, but I make it up in volume!
Again complete and utter arrogance. Tell that to George Greenough. Who are you to make statements like this? Are you a design guru? No, not a design guru, just someone who works with engineers on a daily basis. I’ve spoken to enginers with their Phd. in fluid dynamics about it; I’ll trust their word on what I’m saying about sand coats and friction. Why do the million dollar racing yachts have a gloss coat? Because they want to loose the race? I’ve also spoken with the engineers who design jet fighters. I’ll take their word when I talk about the potential energy stored in a foam cored surfboard with a fiberglass fin.
Firewire, Coil, Sunova, TL2, Outer Island Flextails, Compsand Guys etc etc…all utilising this tech and charging a premium for it. I said some of you need to think more about flex. Last time I looked around at the beach, most boards were still pretty primative. I’m talking to the guys who want to increase their sales, and giving them an idea how to step up. Secondly, those companies that you mentioned who incorporate flex patterns into their boards are doing pretty well. Something to think about when considering your marketing strategy.
If you choose correct volume/dimensions it’s almost impossible to get a shit board nowadays. Maybe that last thought says more about your standard of quality than you realize. But don’t worry, I won’t be looking you up when getting my next board.
Everysurfer…I’m not a shaper. Just a 30 year surfer who has no problems getting good equipment.
Don’t know about where you live but round here the standard is high, most surfers whilst not being technically articulate enough to explain why something works, certainly know empirically what works. Most of the shapers seem to be very successful at providing equipment to surfers of a whole range of abilities. I can’t believe experienced US shapers would be any less successful.
That includes longboarders, shortboarders whatever.
As far as the design contributions made by engineers with PhD’s…ummm, sorry I forgot what they were. What exactly have they contributed compared to George Greenough, Geoff McCoy, Loehr, Burger, etc etc ad infinitum?
Looking round the racks of my local surfshop today I saw stock JS’s, Merricks, Simon Andersons, McCoys etc etc.
I could have easily walked out of there with a perfectly functional surfboard.
The more durable MCCoys were the most expensive, the others less so.
The reason surfboards have remained “underpriced” is simple.
The standard stock shorty became a disposable item and was priced accordingly.
That is now changing , thanks in part to the much maligned ST ; which has allowed new pricing regimes for surfboards.
Whether shapers can take advantage of these new regimes is not for me to answer.
Steve
PEOPLE!
We are falling for Mr Bonkovich"s trolled lure quite well don’t you think. Well done Deanbo.
Here are 2 simple questions
For the shaper… what would you charge for a 7’0 semi gun whatever thickness sanded finish with fin system, 6x4x6 glass job
For the non shaper…what would you expect to pay for the same
so far no one has said a price , just aimless pissing
$680
between $750 and $850.
edit: from a known shaper with a proven history of shaping good tube-riding semi-guns.
ie…Jim Banks, Peter McCabe, Wayne Lynch, Malcolm Campbell, Brian Ingham, Gunther Rohn, Geoff McCoy etc etc
"PEOPLE!
We are falling for Mr Bonkovich"s trolled lure quite well don’t you think. Well done Deanbo."
Somehow I resisted posting…something fishy going on…Well done Dean , you even left some very easy clues…
I’ve learned quite a bit from this thread.
You never know what will happen on the internet…
Ray
Seven hundred dollars… and they’re stoked.
What do you pay for shipping? That’s what kills me… Four blanks to a box, and I pay for shipping, hazmat fees, and the box to boot. That adds significant costs to each board. And because I don’t work for free (my wife would kill me) I need to charge slightly more than an off-the-rack stock board. My justification is that you get what you want with no compromises, and you can get some information from the builder that might help improve your surfing. Information is powerful. I need it to build a suitable board for somebody, and they need it to decide what they want, because most people don’t know much about design. They might no what works, but they don’t know why. So a simple conversation with the guy lets you tweak the design and he gets a board that works better for him than the off-the-rack boards he’s bought in the past. That’s why they pay more… for a better board.
Doing production work may not permit this approach, but it works for us small-time guys.
Also… I tell people I make more teaching board building than building boards. And it’s true. Sad, but true.
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Here are 2 simple questions
For the shaper… what would you charge for a 7’0 semi gun whatever thickness sanded finish with fin system, 6x4x6 glass job
For the non shaper…what would you expect to pay for the same
so far no one has said a price , just aimless pissing
Ok, as a “in house” SHAPER for the last 30yrs my current wholesale price is $10 foot, specialty items tailblocks muliti-stringers etc are extra. As a in house shaper I only pay for my tools sandpaper masks etc. This price is considered high by the last place i worked. After raising my prices my work load was cut.
The retail price of the board you describe would be around $475-$500.00 in the shop i am currently located. you do the math on glass job, blank cost , shape fee, overhead and employee cost AND RENT. We are making a killing $$$$$ The area I live in is VERY EXPENSIVE TO LIVE WITH LOTS OF WELL OFF PEOPLE and they still bitch about the price. I would definitely consider myself a "qualified" shaper based on my experience.
I keep hearing about people getting way more for boards out of my area. Maybe I should move or something cause around here that’s how it is. Or better yet come on down to OB and take advantage of the “price getto”
…the fastest race saling boats like the ones in the formerly Whitbread race (now with other name) sports speed finish on the bottom
…the analogy with the engineer is not good
because not so much time ago was a test between differents types of fins
the ones that the engineer think were the best are not the chosen for the surfers in the water (the guys picked up the boards without checking the fins)
we as a surfers needs a not so “perfect” fin like a tuna fin, due to the waves interaction, surfer stances, constantly changes in strength, positions, etc
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As far as the design contributions made by engineers with PhD’s
A brother-in-law had just finished a hydrodynamics course in an engineering program…it was summer and we were in a well known surf shop in my part of southern California…that whole tucked-under edge thing was “new” and hot and we were looking at boards and he was interested, telling me the theory behind that and discussing things like edge severity and where on the rails it made the most sense etc. enjoying all the tech we were seeing, shop “salesman” sauntered over to explain “surfboards” to us because at age 24 or whatever it was we were obviously too old to know WTF was going on…
There’s not a whole lot of trained engineering in surfboard manufacturing because it’s one of the few things that can pay less than their chosen profession…
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The reason surfboards have remained “underpriced” is simple.
The standard stock shorty became a disposable item and was priced accordingly.
That’s probably the major thing, for many reasons. The inadvertant “standardization” for one, the fragility for another. General knowledge of close tolerance blanks and then shaping machines makes consumers loathe to pay increased fees for what they see as less work. Modern western society is choking on that concept right now anyway…the most you can possibly get for the least you can possibly do. The manufacturers who added art or logo/Brand “soul” (a joke, come on, relax) maybe got a bit more…
The ST/manufactured boards thing is no doubt shaking things up for domestic manufacturing. Current world economic chaos is shuffling the decks. I believe the current recession in the U.S. was effectively called in a Swaylock’s thread last fall. Signs are there but it takes time to develop. The Asian pu/pe board business may not exist in meaningful numbers next North American summer or the one after because what they make is not much different from what can be made locally, if local board makers use their heads. The ST/mfr thing will remain. For any lost income they have in major established markets I suspect they will make it up in various established surf destination markets, to take advantage of the increased airline baggage fees.
It isn’t enough to just make it - you have to sell it too. I can’t imagine that the next couple of years will be as easy as the past 7. There may be a cool wave of color, but it won’t be nearly as $$$ green as before.
Nels
like i said whingeing
i break it down like this
7 ft gun plugs only
500$ nz cashsale, thats about 250 US
cost is about 200nz
takes about 6 hours for a preshape
thats 50$ cash in hand gents
twice my wages
and 4 times what they pay the dumb local surfer that works at the local surfshop
boards are a firken rippoff
you buy a beautiful guitar for 500$
i hear you can buy chinese glass for 50cents a meter
…jeez man,
dont start again with the guitar thing…
Im a music lover. Im a surfboards fan too
I actually buy records!
I have been studying musical theory, improvisation, etc among play in bands, solo
do home recorded, recorded in bad studios and in top of the line ones
be stage manager for several bands, have records from antique music, to death metal and lots in between,
etc
all to say that I understand a bit about music
and had the opportunity to play REAL guitars and up-basses dated from XIX
so, you CANT buy a FINE guitar for 500 Dollars
is like cars
like motorcycles
and like boards
the difference is total
for cheap to medium you can buy good boards and good guitars, etc
but not fine top of the line
edit to say that I forgot to mention that there s no any comparison in those cheapo guitars and for example a Contreras guitar
made for the man himself
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Quote:As far as the design contributions made by engineers with PhD’s
A brother-in-law had just finished a hydrodynamics course in an engineering program…it was summer and we were in a well known surf shop in my part of southern California…that whole tucked-under edge thing was “new” and hot and we were looking at boards and he was interested, telling me the theory behind that and discussing things like edge severity and where on the rails it made the most sense etc. enjoying all the tech we were seeing, shop “salesman” sauntered over to explain “surfboards” to us because at age 24 or whatever it was we were obviously too old to know WTF was going on…
There’s not a whole lot of trained engineering in surfboard manufacturing because it’s one of the few things that can pay less than their chosen profession…
Long-term Sways readers will, I hope, forgive me for going off on my standard rant or at least ignore it. Sit down, relax, have a cold one, it’ll be over soon. I promise.
The thing is, engineers deal with numbers, quantifiable things. Not "whhhoooow, duuude, it goes so bitchin’ ". With one, count 'em, one exception, NOBODY has measured stuff in this biz, how surfcraft perform. That one exception…well, we know who he is and he knows who he is, and he’s my hero, really. I want to be him if I ever grow up. And…he is an engineer with a Ph. D.
So there. Nyaah nyah nyah nyah nyaaaahhhhh.
We DON"T BLOODY KNOW what really goes faster, turns better, stalls at a higher or lower speed, does this and that, tracks better or worse. Grrr snarl, snort, growl. It’s all empirical, anecdotal evidence, with no real proof.
That is, we don’t know even what. Let alone knowing why!
It’s 24 year old halfwit ‘duuudes’ explaining it, with much waving of hands, nothing like you’d get if, say, you bought a rod and reel to catch fish with ( yards of fishline, of a given weight test, and what sort of weight lure it’s good with) , or a car ( zero to 60 in…, gets X miles per gallon, turning circle of ) . It’s, basicly, bogus. I mean, pick a number between blue and orange… you can’t, cos it ain’t numbers. Welcome to the surf biz. Would you buy a car if you didn’t know how fast it went, the fuel it burned, how it cornered, whether or not it stopped in a reasonable distance? Or, using a cheaper example, buy a digital camera, say, if there were no numbers like how many pixels and how good the lens was and how many pictures it could take before the chip was full?
Of course not. You’d be out of your tiny mind if you bought something like a car, or digital camera, with no information that had numbers in it. You’re spending hundreds of bucks on the say so of a knucklehead who …well, I dunno if I’d take his word on what kind of socks I should buy.
And I know…I used to be him. Spent over thirty years at it. The handwaving got me tennis elbow.
Granted, testing surfcraft is technically difficult. You need a standardised wave ( see those spiffing wave machines that have 5000 HP of pumps running? Time on those ain’t cheap. The electric bill is a killer. ) and standardised measurements. It’s not just testing boat hulls in calm water with a long string and a cheap scale, it is at least two orders more difficult. Vectors, angles of attack, I mean, you could go on for quite a while here.
But for the real progress of surf vehicles…and I am saying surf vehicles rather than ‘surfboards’ 'cos I ride a kneelo and so does my hero ( Major hint here for the long term Sways readers who didn’t step out for a cold beer ) we really need to go beyond 24-year-old- duuude and into the numbers. What really-oh-truly does go faster, turn better, keep a line on a slanted, curving, upwardly flowing wave face? By the numbers.
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It isn’t enough to just make it - you have to sell it too. I can’t imagine that the next couple of years will be as easy as the past 7. There may be a cool wave of color, but it won’t be nearly as $$$ green as before.
Nels, I hope you will forgive my somewhat capricious editing here.
The close tolerance blanks, machine rough-shaping and so on…wayull, this can make for some interesting stuff. Granted, the Joe-average surfer should probably be on a machine shaped board, 'cos he is prolly never gonna notice what’s different betwixt that and another board. If it floats him and the color is cool, he’s happy. 'Cos 24-year-old-duuude told him he should be.
Those close tolerance, this is just like the one before it surfcraft, those can tell us things. If you have identical things, they will do the same things. That is a good thing. We can test stuff that is the same.
For real performance improvements… we need real information. Not just ’ Maaan, the duude was soooooo hot out there.’ Numbers. Accelleration, G force in a turn, actual for-real speed instead of warm and fuzzy feelings. Pulling in cars again, auto racing ( versus, say, the pro surfing circuit ) brings in new tech and it percolates into the family car sooner or later. The pro surfing circuit brings us boards that one in a thousand can surf effectively and well…and even that one doesn’t know why the hell it works or doesn’t. He can just wave his hands and say ‘duuuudde’ a lot. Kinda sad, really.
As a comparison, test pilots, real ones, fly stuff with more instruments than a symphony orchestra. Everything gets measured. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, but when he did it the instruments aboard measured everything but his shoe size. And he, by the way, flew a precisely defined flight profile that was designed to meaure stuff. So we now have aircraft that’ll exceed Mach 1 without that annoying habit of becoming aluminum confetti. We need test instrumentation …and have a look at this - it ain’t exactly rocket science… to give us real information…
Not 24-year-old Duuude, waving his hands and professing knowledge but describing nothing, really.
So, the mainstream surf industry is in bad shape for a while. Impulse toy buying is in equally bad shape. The smart move ( though when has that ever worked for the surf biz? ) would be to generate and work with some real stuff, to make boards that perform better and can be proven to perform better. But ya know, I’ll bet they do idiot stuff, like how to get your dog’s picture on the deck. Shame, but why do something real when you can do something meaningless and peripheral.
Anticipating the firestorm. Ducking a little. Asbestos undies at the ready…
doc…
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It’s 24 year old halfwit ‘duuudes’ explaining it,
Shoot doc, we were the 24 year olds …the shop guy was maybe 18 at best (left that out)…I had a decade of hardcore experience at that point and the brother-in-law had background and yes actual book and hands on new knowledge for him and me…key point being the snot-nosed salesman shit surf shops can’t seem to get past. We weren’t ragging on “something new” or “change” or “what ruined surfing”.
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Nels, I hope you will forgive my somewhat capricious editing here.
The close tolerance blanks
Always good to hear your take on anything, doc. My point being on the close tolerance blanks that “the average consumer” is going to expect lower cost from less labor, and close tolerance blanks and machined rough shapes seem to point to that. Lots of grownups around here who may point out everything from labor to transportation and carrying costs…but will Junior who has been chaufferred to every activity of his entire young life have a clue about that?
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But ya know, I’ll bet they do idiot stuff, like how to get your dog’s picture on the deck
Laugh at that notion if you want, but if you find somebody who has the process and wants an investor, p.m. me. I’ll probably turn down the opportunity, since the real money in surfing is usually in the t-shirts, but I suspect barring some real magic design development candy coating will make or break a lot of bottom lines in rough times.
Nels
I’ll throw this out.
“Guru” Ambrose told me, “$100.00/foot” and that was over a year ago before things got weird.
I, for one, and I think I’ve mentioned this, have a variety of reason for not even making boards for people. A primary one, in relationship to this thread, being unless I charged about $50.00/foot it wouldn’t be worth my time, and, on the personal level, I’m still not interested in making what someone else wants.
And - I have seen some weird “Blue Coil” surfboards made in, what I’m guessing are old, Slovakia, sailboard factories, and these are some of the more ridiculous boards I’ve seen. Machined channels put in in strange places with abrupt edges fore and aft, etc. Like it was left over design, or put in the program but never hand finished… There going for @ $300.00, and I’ve seen people talking about them being great because they’re epoxy…
Well - I feel semi-ridiculous for bothering to continue to write the above and post it, as I feel I’ve said most of it before, but I got some good stuff out of the read, so…
“So, the mainstream surf industry is in bad shape for a while.”
Let me just say, HOORAY. I for one wish the “mainstream surf industry” would just dry up and blow away, along with the surf mags (or should I say the shoe ad mags), the “lifestyle” and all the rest of it…