Burton’s surf division (Channel Islands Surfboards) got a write-up in Businessweek thanks to Dane Reynolds best-selling surfboard shape the Dumpster Diver.
What Reynolds really wanted was to take a standard, lance-like shortboard, cut out the midsection, squash the nose and the tail together, and fatten it up. . . He fished a foam scrap out of a trash bin, and the two repaired to the shaping room. As Smith tells it, the whole time the shaper was planing the foam, he was muttering, “Dude, this is ugly. This is really, really ugly.”
For those who may have thought Dane is getting paid a little too well to be dropping out of J-Bay and Teahupo’o, it should be mentioned that according to Businessweek his ugly boards now account for 15 percent of Channel Islands’ total board sales.
[Link: Businessweek]
