Sea change for surfboard-making industry

Six months after losing one of its largest suppliers, the surfboard industry is showing its resilience. Some insiders even think the change has been good for surfing.

Dozens of start-ups are working to fill the void left by the Dec. 5 closure of Clark Foam, a Laguna Niguel company that manufactured nearly 80% of the world’s polyurethane blanks ? the lightweight foam cores that are later hand-shaped into surfboards.

No one knows for sure what led to the sudden demise of Clark Foam. On the day of its closure, owner Gordon “Grubby” Clark faxed a seven-page letter alleging that a crackdown by local, state and federal environmental agencies was forcing him to close his doors.

Those agencies denied Clark’s charges, but the news set off a wave of panic among shapers who depended on Clark’s supply of foam blanks to make boards for their customers.

Some small shapers went out of business, but many began to look elsewhere for blanks.

The first couple of months of searching were chaotic, said Ryan Reynosa of Russell Surfboards in Newport Beach, who has been a Clark customer for years.

“It was really hard in January and February,” Reynosa said. “We’d drive real far and get like five blanks, or you would get no foam. It was hit or miss.”

Besides Clark, there were only a few foam providers operating in the United States at the time. After the closure, however, the number of companies selling foam nearly quadrupled.

What was once a monopoly became a free market free-for-all, and many shapers have enjoyed the benefits that came with open competition, said Sean Smith, executive director of the Surf Industry Manufacturers Assn.

“Now they [the blank makers] are going to be listening very closely to the shapers,” he said. “When you have 25 to 30 guys competing, as opposed to one bully and a few small guys, there’s going to be a lot more innovation.”

And setbacks, too. Board prices shot up between 20% and 40% as surf shops realized they might have a limited stock on their hands until new manufacturers stepped in. Prices aren’t likely to drop anytime soon, said distributor Mark Kelly of Global Surf Industries.

“The costs have gone up, and all new players in the foam game will be investing millions of dollars that Clark didn’t have to,” he said. “The money guys will be looking for returns, and the need for profits will make many of the new foam entrepreneurs go belly-up pretty quickly.”

Although Clark Foam may have been a monopoly, its sales reps did take care of all the shaper’s ordering and deliveries. Now shapers have to handle such things on their own, and sometimes they come up short.

Sometimes they find the new blanks are too long or not sealed together properly or have strange reactions to resins.

“On some, the resin will sink in a bit and make them a little heavy,” Reynosa said. “The newer blanks are coming out weird.”

Smith thinks the manufacturing process will smooth out as the new market develops, and he expects materials other than the polyurethane used by Clark to emerge. Surfboard blanks made from carbon fiber and foam that respond to epoxy resigns are capturing a larger chunk of the market, while Surftech is seeing the market share of its Tuflite EPS ? a durable blank material ? grow larger.

According to Smith, those innovations were previously stifled by Clark, which sometimes used its huge market presence to bully shapers into avoiding new materials.

“There was definitely pressure from Clark Foam if you wanted to keep using Clark Foam,” Smith said. “You didn’t come and put out other types of boards.”

Smith said he envisions a day when polyurethane’s market share is so diminished that surfers use different composite boards for different conditions, just as they now keep various sizes. They could use a polyurethane longboard for small waves but switch to an epoxy for high-performance surfing in larger surf.

“The pressure to ignore anything but polyurethane boards is no longer there,” he said. “They’ll continue to be the majority of boards out there because it’s going to take time for any type of shift to happen, but eventually you’re going to see a guy with a quiver that includes different types of manufacturing processes.”

Ultimately, Kelly said, surfers just want to get out there and ride waves.

“If a new board, no matter where it is made or what is made from, will get you 10 more waves an hour, it is going to sell,” he said.dpt.29-bizcover-CPhotoInfo071RE7V320060529izwr4xncDON LEACH / DAILY PILOT(LA)New Russell Surfboards rest on a rack in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors in the company’s Newport Beach shop..