I recently had a conversation with a friend about surfboard prices. Actually the two of us have had these conversations a few times now. Since I’m looking at new local representation, pricing has been on my mind.

In the early days of the surfboard industry… this would be when boards started being made with foam and fiberglass… the guys that made boards dealt directly with their customers. Eventually a handful of guys, mainly in California, had full fledged businesses. These businesses did everything in house. With the exception of blowing foam the process of building boards was done start to finish at one location and this even included a sales room or store front. That’s what we call factory direct now.

Because surfboards were factory direct the finished boards were never given a traditional retail markup. That factory direct price became what the market would bare for the retail price of the surfboard. Then as the various board builders began distributing surfboards beyond their own stores the retail price remained at the factory direct price. That’s what everyone was accustomed to. Consequently the surf shops that sold boards they did not make could not work a normal retail price for the surfboards they sold and had a difficult if not impossible task of making any kind of margin via surfboard sales.

That price dilemma remains today, except for boards that are made overseas. Because the cost of making surfboards in a country like China is so much less than domestic costs the imported boards can and do have a more inline retail mark up. That’s a good thing for the retailer, finally being able to see a decent margin in their surfboard sales.

The domestic builder now being faced with inexpensive imported surfboards and the retailers turning to these boards because of the margins has to show the value of the hand made, domestically made surfboard. With unsurpassed craftsmanship and staying on the cutting edge of design and performance. Offering what can not be made over seas.

D.R.

Surfboard performance is greatly affected by fins. I began learning this after I started working at Morey-Pope. They were once the main supplier of fins to the surf industry and in the mid to late sixties a major portion of the industry used the Morey-Pope fin system.

They were Polypropylene molded fins secured in the boards laminated fin cavity via the wonder bolt. My friend Peter Robinson prepared and package the fins in an area behind the sales room at the old Front St. shop.

I can’t remember all the fin shapes, but I do remember the Greenough stage one, the Yater fin and the Weber Hatchet. I’d experiment with these fins in my boards back in the day. They were easy to change out so when I got the urge after surfing for an hour or so I’d run in and swap out my fin, then go back out and surf again to see how the different fin would work in my board.

We weren’t able to change the fin location… forward or backward… which can make a big difference in performance as well but, just changing fins was enough at the time. I didn’t really like the hatchet so I reshaped one into a long sweeping curve. The fin was quite long and because the end was pretty tapered it would flex a lot. Turning on a wave with some juice would get somewhat mushy feeling and when driving in white water the board would drift as the fin flexed and then the board would jerk and bounce as the fin would return. Interesting.

During my Greenough days we worked on fin placement as well as flex. We only did glass on fins and sometimes would grind off our fin and reposition it to get our boards to work in a way we thought would be better. As well fine tuning the flex, sanding a fin until it had just the right flex and snap.

Most recently I’ve been working on quad fin set ups. And very pleased with the results I’ve gotten on my quad long board. I’m now working on the mini tanker 8’0 I’ve got. Originally I was going to make a new board with a quad set up but, changed my mind and retrofitted my 8’0 instead. Today I took it out in some head high surf, first time with four fins. It’s amazing the speed that is generated from these fins.

I made the mini tanker as a tri fin at first. Then started doing 2 plus one set ups. Now… testing how the quad set up will work with the same model. It’s a good all around board and with each fin set up the board works differently.

Get a good outline, put the outline into a good foil, rail line and bottom contour. Add fins to taste.

D.R.

My story post 22

During the summer of 1967 I found a nice 3 stringer blank at the Morey-Pope shop and claimed it for a new board. Morey didn’t make any 3 stringer models at the time so I grabbed the blank and shaped myself a new stick.

The board shaped into a thinned out 9’2 with out a snubbed or wing nose. I had it glassed with a yellow tint and had the MP label… which I cut so it was only the 2 letters MP… put about in the middle of the board between the rail and the outside stringer. So it looked nothing like a Morey-Pope board. Man did it surf good, I really liked that board.

So then I shaped another board for my friend Peter and had it glassed red and yellow tints. It looked nothing like an MP either. Then I started talking to John Peck about going shorter and lighter and made him a Penetrator that was not quite standard issue.

The result of all this new stuff was a shop wide directive from Morey that in effect said if shop personnel wanted a new board they would have to go through the front sales room door and order a stock MP board. No one could go make them selves a board, you’d have to order one just like any other customer.

Even today I remember the sad feeling I had when that happened. I remember talking to Blinky about it and how disappointing it was. Blinky, by the way, was the guy that invented Slip Check. I was so excited about making new and different boards that would get you to different places on the wave and now… I felt like a kid that just got his balloon popped.

Blinky and I started talking… ‘what are we going to do, we want to make some boards that aren’t like MP’s… how we going to do that?’ Then the light came on. ‘Why don’t we go start our own shop?.... These guys aren’t going to hold us back… heck with them, lets go do our own thing.’

The embryonic birth of William Dennis.

D.R.

In 1967 the boards I made for myself and friends were getting shorter and shorter. Still by short they were like 9 ft. but were also a bit narrower and thinner than what was considered a more standard size board.

There was concern that the smaller lighter boards wouldn’t float good enough for knee paddling, or make knee paddling difficult. I think the reason we all liked to knee paddle was the knee paddle position kept you up and off the water. Which meant you’d stay a bit warmer, if you didn’t get wet by prone paddling… there wasn’t much in wet suits back then.

The sacrifice in paddling was replaced with better performance. Snappy turns and turn backs, and what we used to call roller coasters… or rolacoaster. But, by the beginning of 1968 the surfboard dropped to sub 9 ft lengths… actually I was shaping sub 9 ft. boards in the fall of ’67. My first board in ’68 was 8 ft. and my second board was 7’6. Both of them Vee bottoms.

When Vee bottoms came in longer boards were done. There really wasn’t anything called a long board before boards started getting smaller, there were just surfboards. But, it’s pretty safe to say that when the Vee bottom era came there were new and different things going on… the long board era was gone.

It happened fast and a number of labels were unable to make the change and died right along with the long board. The surfboard industry as a whole went through a big shake down. What was once dominated by a handful of California labels that made hundreds and hundreds of boards per week all but disappeared in a matter of 2 years. The young guys that wanted to keep pushing the limits in their surfing had to start making there own board because the labels couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up. The industry became very fragmented and localized and birthed what we now call the local shaper.

D.R.