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Unsteady Freddie
Surfing Industry Looks to Rebound By BERNIE WILSON, AP Sports Writer
Tue Jan 31, 1:45 PM ET
The wipeout might not be so bad after all.
For sure, the surf culture is still shaking after Clark Foam an
icon among surfers suddenly closed its Orange County factory after
producing an estimated 90 percent of the blanks used to craft custom-
made boards worldwide.
"It's kind of like saying Microsoft just pulled Windows off the
shelf. Uh oh, that's different," said Sean Mattison, a former
professional surfer who's now a buyer for Surf Ride, a shop in
Oceanside in northern San Diego County.
But the latest forecast is for foam lots of it pouring into the
$200 million surfboard market from small manufacturers around the
world anxious to replace the estimated 250,000 blanks that Clark
produced annually in a near monopoly.
Making custom boards is a painstaking process that holds special
meaning for surfers. Foam blanks which resemble rough surfboards
are smoothed and shaved before painters add designs and color. Boards
are then covered in fiberglass and polished.
At a recent action-sports trade show in San Diego, manufacturers from
surfing hotspots such as Southern California, Australia, South Africa
and Hawaii promised that by June, they could fill the void by ramping
up production.
"Going from underdog to top dog is exciting, but it comes with
problems," said Gary Linden, general manager of Walker Foam in
Wilmington, an industrial area near Los Angeles.
Manufacturers like Walker are pushing equipment to the limit and
hiring more workers to be the first to get their foam to anxious
board makers.
In the meantime, surfers will see dips and curls tight supplies and
higher prices.
At Hansen Surfboards in Encinitas, Mark Dastoli said he expected to
pay as much as $200 more for a new board than he would have before
Clark Foam shut down. The Australian transplant, who tries to surf
every day, shrugged off the cost.
"They don't charge me to go in the ocean," he said.
Indeed, if any industry can ride out a crisis like "Blank Monday," as
the Dec. 5 closing of Clark is called, it would be the laid-back
surfing sector. Many people in the business say surfboards were
underpriced anyway and might never return to previous levels.
"In the long run, everything will be fine," said Craig Hollingsworth,
49, who's been using blanks to shape boards in northern San Diego
County since he was 16. "Most customers have been patient about it. A
lot of customers are starting to appreciate a custom-made surfboard."
At Mitch's Surf Shop in funky Solana Beach north of San Diego,
shoppers are greeted by a sign saying: "Blanks Not For Sale To The
Public." At the bottom of the sign is a skull and crossed surfboards,
like a pirate flag.
Hollingsworth is a longtime customer at the shop and recently stopped
by for his ration of 10 blanks. Half were from a batch of Clark Foam
that had been in storage. The others came from Walker Foam.
Hollingsworth also has chipped in with friends to split the cost of
buying and shipping 650 blanks from South Africa that are due to
arrive in California in early February.
The market for foam remains strong because surfboards are like tennis
balls: They eventually wear out and feel dead. A high-performance
short board ridden every day might need to be replaced after four to
six months.
Hollingsworth said he liked Clark Foam because the shape of its
blanks were refined and he could custom-order certain curve
characteristics.
Other would-be suppliers will have to make adjustments to offer the
same features. he said.
"Right now they're just trying to make as many as fast as they
possibly can," Hollingsworth said. "We're happy they are. We're
getting blanks."
Industry leaders already have warned that some of the new foam might
lack the quality of Clark products and not offer the same performance
or longevity.
Clark Foam founder Gordon "Grubby" Clark began making blanks in the
1950s and became a legend over the years. He closed his factory in
December amid increasing trouble with state and local governments
over his nonstandard production machinery and his use of toxic and
polluting chemicals.
The resulting upheaval has been good and bad for companies like
Walker Foam. Before "Blank Monday," Walker had five employees and
produced only 80 to 100 blanks a week.
In two months, it has hired 20 more workers, many from Clark Foam,
and now pumps out 600 blanks a week. The factory will max out at
2,000 a week in a month or two, Linden said
By comparison, Clark Foam was believed to churn out more than 1,000
blanks a day.
Linden estimated the cost of speeding up production, plus building a
new factory in the desert, will easily exceed $1 million. He says the
moves could help the company capture as much as 70 percent of the
wide-open market.
"We have a market all of a sudden," Linden said in a phone
interview. "The downside is, we don't have product. It's not fun not
being able to help people in their time of need."
