Color as a USP
The current conventional finbox market relies on cheap, mass-produced, injection molded products. The belt and road initiative laying track running from Peking to places like rail ports in Duisburg have meant that Europe is being flooded by cheapness exported by a region that pegs its currency to make sure its manufacturing is less expensive. If you don’t realize why VW is slashing tens of thousands of domestic jobs in Germany, then you’re not paying attention. For surfboard builders adn their customers it means cheap product manufactured by workers who are not surfers. Workers who likely don’t care about surfing, about your finished product or about your clients. As surfboard shapers/builders, we never intended to participate in that. But many of us are, and it’s time for that to change!
It was not my intention to be the first to offer a conventional fin box in a variety of colors. I had always asked myself though why the only options we ever had were either [only] black or white. The television had gone the way of color long ago! Why not fin boxes?! But it wasn’t until recently that I recognized my own ability to make a change and to give our industry something it had never seen before. The idea came to me while learning 3D design and while printing prototypes and mold-masters for other surf-related concepts.
The act of creating is powerful. Like a battle or a conflict, it can have myriads of unintended consequences. Creation forces you to struggle with your own mind; to overcome your own limitations; to ask and answer questions. As can happen in the creative process, serendipity grabbed me by the shoulders and altered my direction slightly. The questions I was asking myself forced me to seek out family connections who are experts in the plastics industry, particularly in injection molding. My path was set after one meeting: I realized that I wouldn’t need to use or invest in large, expensive machines to accomplish my goal. I began building a small workshop adjacent to my shaping room in a barn in the countryside.
Beyond the creative process, I couldn’t possibly have arrived at a colored box idea if it hadn’t been for the oversaturation and influx of cheap products arriving from those aforementioned, disconnected places abroad; it’s the sort of situation that basically creates the void (the niche) for you. I am actually a little thankful for the existence cheap product. They are the inspiration me sends me looking elsewhere. That journey has taught me so much and has made me more resource independent.
Anyway, to the point, the USP (unique selling proposition) of color was just one aspect of exploring a finbox as a new product range. It didn’t come from some singular, lightbulb moment, but rather from a series of influential occurences within the market, which easily span several decades. Furthermore (beyond color), taking this project into my own two hands gives me 100% control over the product: its strengths, shortcomings and (maybe more importantly) future R&D. It has allowed me to play with composite reinforcements that make my finboxes stronger and easier for shapers to use; because as a shaper myself, the last thing I want is a surfboard component that melts under my grinder or flings chunks of material around as I sand it flush. It has brought me to a product that creates an opportunity for better mechanical and chemical bonding in installation.
This path makes me excited because it means that I, as a shaper, control a significant aspect of my own destiny. It also means that similar approaches are within reach for other shapers. It challenges our industrial order and helps it evolve.
