Post
by ric_vidal » Sat Jan 28, 2012 12:12 pm
From the Surfboard Shack website talking about Costco boards being direct from China:
“I am a “local shaper” in California. I’m in my mid-30′s, have a wife and kids and bills like everyone else. The truth is GSI (the biggest surfboard company in the worl (Blue NSP, 7S, Weber, Modern, Walden etc) changed the business landscape forever. (GSI make about 120,00 boards a year in Thailand, Surftech makes about 30,000 in the same factory) Surf shops WANT to do business with companies that produce a consistent product, deliver on time, and offer good terms with better margins.
In the old days guys like Velzy and Noll ran their companies like real businesses, they had large factories, tons of workers and accountants in the back room. Clark drove the hippie-guru, backyard movement and made surfboard building very unprofitable (but made Grubby millions).
I have been to China almost a dozen time, staying from one week to two months. I have visited and even worked for several Chinese factories. Some suck and some are better than anything in California. The truth is ALL the major labels have Asian production. The most high quality, high performance, name brand boards on the surf shop rack were most likely made in China, Thailand or Viet Nam. The factories are well run and the craftsmen are top-notch. Meanwhile there are very few American high school grads looking for a dust, itchy, low-paying career in surfboards and most of our factories are poorly run and face ridiculous red-tape from local hippie governments.
People who go on and on about how “awful and oppressive” China is have probably never been there. It is pretty much just a regular place (but with TONS more people!). It is industrial, and there are elements of industry that Americans find distasteful (no wonder they gain industry while the USA gives it away!). I have been to a Mosque, Christian churches and Buddhist temples in China. I have read newspapers critical of the Chinese government. Their culture is not one that equates going to college with getting stoned and protesting the trendy cause of the week. China is 5,000 years old, it is not the USA, okay? Besides, saying you won’t buy a board from China because you don’t like the governments policies would be like an Aussie saying he won’t but a Channel Islands because he disagrees with the US role in Iraq.
The truth is that most of the production happening at the better factories in China is for large to medium size, well established American and Aussie brands that are simply trying to survive in the post GSI market. The quality is generally as good or better than the average board made in the US. As for “soul”… seriously, it’s a piece of plastic, bro. Trust me, I’ve hand made thousands of boards, they are just plastic. Worry less about where your board came from and more about where you will take it!”