Psychology Of A Surfboard Customer

I thought that only the Japaneese made a big deal out of the last 0.75" of the nose tip.

Well you something 30 white kids are equally anal.

1/4" nose clip on the very tip was the main concern last order?

HAHAHAHA.......I don't shape, but this is a great topic.  I'm in sales, so I can relate in an off beat kinda way.   My rule of thumb, which gets me through the majority of my days, is:

You spend 95% of your time bitching about 5% of your customers.  It's the cost of making a buck. The percentage might be more in the surf community, as everyone has an opinion, and that opinion is typically better than yours.............hahahahaha.......great thread.

Funny!

Try to build something that doesn't get on the radar of #1, 2, or 3.

DS' #5 is classic, I tell guys if they're getting their info from the mags, they're living in the past.

I love that type. When I was operating out of the Radon Boatyard (80's) customers would bring me 'tips' that included lobster, abalone, scallops, just off the boat rock cod, avocados, lemons, oranges, almonds, beer, and wine from a local winery. 

Not a bad way to go. All the shellfish and cod were from commercial divers and fisherman. A gr8 group of guys.

I also had a fertile barter system going which included an auto mechanic, chiropractor and dentist..... they all had beautiful quivers and I had a tuned truck, a flexible body, and great dental work. I also traded for plumbing, drywall, and electrical work.

Had a guy complain that the board was hanging up because the nose was 1/8" too wide.  Gave me expicit instructions about nose width.  I rounded the nose back in the final shaping so it wouldn't put out an eye and that 1/8th inch tip rounding was essentially what was causing the hang up. At least in his mind.  Too bad he couldn't surf on anything I ever shaped him.  Must have been my fault.  Fortunately the next board he went to someone else. 

You should have factored in the price to have some flunky pull a quarter panel off his car and take it down to Lowe's or Home Depot or somewhere that their computer could match the color. 

"Don't worry about dings or scratches Ernie, just rip that fender off and throw it in the back of your pick up and "get er' done"!!!

Hindsight is always so crystal clear!

Ya gotta love those colors ripe for debate and chronic complaining.

Colors like taupe, doe, salmon, sage, apricot, mauve.......sand?

If it's not out of the can you stand to be in trouble. But in your case you were doomed the first step this guy made thru your door!

Damned if ya do, damned if ya  don't!

P.S.

Agreed, better to baste and sand that edge in then to have the glass crack in 6 months.

Go figure. My primary color for my EPS epoxy boards are white, but for my guns it's all about red. 

Red is my 'signature' color for guns. This has been going on for years. Someone asked me why, and I told them it comes from the age old practicee of making Hawaiian guns red so they could be spotted if lost in big surf. 

A white one headed out to sea for Fiji or Japan could be mistaken as a whitecap from a helicopter, and blue and green just blend in. Orange's are notorious for fading. 

C'mon man, what looks better than a guy at full trim or squaring off the bottom on a red board and an aqua wave?

Remarkably, a lot of good surfers really don't know the process that a highly experienced shaper goes through for a demanding one off custom shape. Particularly a hand shaped board that demands deck and bottom rocker adjustments, specific thickness foil and individual deck and bottom contours when not inherently in the blank to begin with. IOW envision chipping perfection out of a big block of foam. 

I had a close friend and very good surfer get in the shaping room with me this week thinking I was going to whip out an 8'3" in half an hour that he wants to take and leave in Hawaii. We do regular business producing a design he conceived,and I have a private stock of blanks for that particular design. Then he comes and throws me a curve ball with something else. Hey, that's the nature of custom. So once we get into the room he starts to try to direct me in ways that I never do and I have to engage in what I call "potty training". For instance, his big focus was on fulling out the nose curve compared to his 9'0" semi that I made him. He wanted me to maintain the back 60% of that board and widen the front. 

"Let's draw out the nose that I want first" he says.

"Let's not" I reply.

Then I explain to him that my method is to always work from the back end first. It works for me and I am very methodical which I prefer to call "disciplined". We draw the aft section up to where he wants to bring the curve out fuller. I measure a couple widths on the nose of the 9'0" (at 12" & 19" back - the area he wants fuller) and put a couple dots on the blank. Then instead of drawing a bunch of different lines that will get confusing after the 2nd or 3rd try, Instead I grab some green 3/4" tape and pull the curve he's asking for.

"Is that what you want"?

"Wow, that's perfect"!

I recognize that curve, and pull one of my templates used a lot on sailboards in the 80's. I place it on there and they are spot on to each other..... I mean spot on. No flats in the tape off, and positioning the template a little bit and they are a perfect match. So now I can draw both sides and have at it. 

He's now getting excited and wants to hurry, except for one thing:

I point out to him that the blank I use on his other 'model stuff' has a considerably flattened rocker at both ends and results in deck distortion (camel hump) that I have to correct before anything else. Especially if he expects me to net the thickness that he is asking for. I also make him slow down so I can pick his brain to find out what he wants to change from the 9'0" to the 8'3". I explain to him that the flattened blank will require me to build that rocker he wants into the blank, I have to measure the 9'0"s tail rocker in several specific intervals then compare to the flattened blank to look for a correlation and ratio if there is one. I find a 3:1 ratio in 3 of the 5 measurements I take, the other two are less than a 2:1 ratio.

Comparing curves from one length to another in order to translate that into a desired curve into a different size board is both complex and challenging..... and it also goes completely over his head, even as experienced as he is in working with many different luminary shapers over many years.

So finally after I make him slow down and explain I have to map out all the features he wants in this newer counterpart to his 9'0"..... only then do I even know if the blank we have will net what he wants. 

3 and 1/2 hours later of complicated and intensive restructuring of a blank that was never intended for this type of shape, I have a super fine tuned board that would have been much easier to produce if I'd known first hand what he was after before I started.

But that's the nature of custom.

And that's also why throughout the years I made fewer boards for less money than how I approach it now. Yes I still do one off customs. In fact I have to dupe a 7'11" Surf Prescriptions (albeit in EPS) next week. And it will be about as exact as you can imagine (I scribed the deck & bottom rocker and thickness flow aka foil for this and the blank was made from those templates). Get out the contour calipers for rail shape replication, etc.

Anyway, I make more money and produce far more by offering models. It has become a necessity of our times. Otherwise you make very little, if a living at all. That's why replicating someone else's design COSTS EXTRA. It would cost even more if you scanned it then found the correct blank to have it machined......

The "Psychology of a Surfboard Customer" is whack. If you are a no name shaper bending over backwards creating one offs that are someone else's idea of perfection (which if their idea doesn't work and you shape it... then it's your fault and your name is on the board...)

Well,, I'll just stop here. You get the point!

It's all about branding!

would anyone be suprised to know that I was all of those nightmare customer types wrapped into one?  hahaha!  thank your lucky stars that I am not a consumer anymore!...Funny thing is that I know a lot shapers that started shaping from the same mentality...they were anal about their boards and thought they could shape something better than what they were buying at the time.

Then there are some pros who rarely try something that is new and when they do they dismiss it the second they see it.  Then there are shapers that complain about customers that want to know everything about the board.

I think it is the nature of loving something(surfing) so much that no one can ever live up to its greatness.  Like christians trying to live up to Christ.  Everybody always judging eachother, people complain about hypocrisy of their church (surf industry).  Church(surf industry) thinks its the center of spirituality(surfing), when really its not.

We're all a bunch of douchebags!  I don't care what kind of douchebag you are.  If you give me the 'go' in the lineup you're a friend to me.

ok, I didn't mean to throw in labels carelessly.  If I could edit it I would say:

"We're all fallible! and I don't care.  If you give me the 'go' in the lineup you're a friend to me.

I was referring to "some pros"...pro surfers.  And I don't mean to generalize pro surfers either.  What I was getting at is that all individuals have annoying quirks.  And to me it is more humorous than irksome.

BT, thankxxx for the clarification.

You have one edit left for this week.

Please buckle up.

I brake for pigs.

That's was a heavy story!

Psyco Babel is what we call people like that.

Here is his picture:

SD

Clean simple doesn't need fifty million logos to work.

More taste less filling. ;)

...we don't need no ed-u-cation.... we don't need no thought control!

I do. You are following the 'magic' formula.

You get the work out.

We both have work ethics and business backgrounds (to be immodest about it). 

What do you get that other guys don't seem to? 

Obviously qualty and a competitive price for the segment(s) of the market you are addressing is critical, esp. in a soft economy. But I would say even more than that, you realize you have to deliver on your promises. Some craftsmen just don't perform on the above points, and quite often it is in the delivery department.

Surfer 1st, shaper 2nd, businessman last........ that's fine if you have a ten digit trust fund or no wife, kids, and living in your van or with 4 other guys in an A frame on the North Shore or in Indo. 

Every board builder that takes  three, five or eleven months delivering a board just fuels the fire of extinction.

Can't say I blame the customer that doesn't want to miss half of a good winter waiting for a new board. No wonder I have chosen to stay small and do all my own glass work. The longest I have taken for someone in the past half year is three weeks, and that was the exception, only due to waiting on blank delivery which I am now fully stocked on.  For special order blanks, I took your advice and added a 2nd foam supply source that delivers quickly. Most of my customers are getting their boards in 3 to 10 working days depending on current work load. Some rush orders I did the boards overnight but don't want to make this the rule, I wanna have a life too and will be off to Mexico for another week break, then back on it. One of my retail accounts said "I hope you are having some fun too, not just al work"? To which I replied "how many people do you know that are passionate at their jobs and spent 6 weeks in France last year"?

You get my point. I work hard and play hard.... always have. Glassing my own is working really well.

Contrast this with the 60's label I am now shaping for. I did the first one, a 10 ft. wall hanger, and after 5 weeks it was still not finished in a professional glass shop of many decades with a full crew, not to mention that the board was to have a glassed on fin and they put a fin box in it.

My friends say "oh they must be really busy"...... I'm not buying that. They ain't that busy! They wish they were that busy. I say you want to be busy and make more money? Do more of the work yourself. Oh, and do the work right, read the order card.

I'm done here.

I have in house glassing. When I use to send boards out for glassing it was a nightmare. I would have to wait in line for 3 weeks some times. I can turn a board in 2 days if I have to. Some of the old timers think i'm crazy and you are supose to make people wait? 6 weeks is the norm.

When an order is out in 5 days the people freak. It's really not that difficult?

There are some really good board builders in San Clemente that do all there own glassing because of the waiting period. In our glass shop if someone wants it fast and they pay their bills they will get first priority service regardless if they are a seasoned board builder or a first time board builder. We actually prefere the smaller board builders and love to help them get their boards done fast.

Surfding

hah... fictional?

isn't this Kevin A. guy too odd?

"Do you think your board can handl my cutback? I cutback Hard!"

Too funny. I know a guy that could spin out any board, even a 9" pintail I let him try. He was the spin out king.

Of course it was every shapers' fault! LOL.

I have a friend that I decided never to shape a custom for again. Told him "it's no fun". 

A self professed expert from 'studying the magazines' and Surfline.

Instead of dealing with his neurosis, I told him "I make rides, lots of different rides to appeal to all different types of people and their needs. Try a demo, if you like it, buy it, if you don't, try something else.

He has a demo I loaned him and when I delivered it to him he started in on his preconceived ideas of what everyone else rides and how it looks under his arm. I told him "just go surf the board"

He reports that he's loving the board and has a bunch of positive feedback for me from the boys at the Con.

Thanks, great, bitchen, now let me get back to work.

Hey Deadshaper, I had to laugh my a&& off reading your rants because they remind me of myself. I'm in the middle of my third decade building/woodworking and for a lot of the same reasons I'm pretty burned out on the business (clients). Try dealing with a husband AND wife and trying to satisfy. But it was the following post that made me reply. The statement about stagnation told me everything. The DESIRE is still there and it's the continual learning that keeps the fire alive. Thank God for that! You still Dig It! So do I, so it's not just the business that drives, it's the want to know. That is what got me shaping to begin with. I knew what I wanted and had to figure out how to make it so. IT'S THE QUEST  IS IT NOT??? My hat is off to all those who do it for a living.

ps. Propers to all the innovators!

Hey S'Ding, Rail Formula??? I'm NOT asking but it sure sounds interesting.

Thanks for the explanation S'Ding, what you said is what I've been doing all along and didn't know it. I try to template everything but ( and this may be wrong) end up relying a lot on the eye. If it doesn't look right...it usually isn't. Still, templates are a must for me,you guys have better overall vision probably.(Definitely)

A side note: for copying a certain rail shape the cheapie plastic contour gauges are much better than the wire ones. Harbor Freight sells them. Thanks Again.

Just back from Mex and reading your comment and formula. 

YUP!

Of course when guys start telling you that the deck contour has gotta be flat, less dome, more this than that, AND WANT A LOOK that doesn't fit how the board they are asking for actually works.

Physics or fashion?

Aye, there's the rub!