remember when Andy Irons rode Arakawa boards under HIC (I remember when he had an undercut, too, the poor guy). The appearance of his now-familiar, scripted Billabong label circa 2005 was a bit confusing, since Billabong made hats and fleeces – but not surfboards. And they still don’t make surfboards, per se, but as Stab explains on its website, clothing companies like Billabong have entered the board market by contracting with independent shapers and distributing their wares among surfers both pro and public. The idea is that Mick Fanning, riding for “Rip Curl Surfboards,†can source his quiver from Rip Curl’s team of private foamsmen: Darren Handley and Wade Tokoro, for instance. Rip Curl gets to grab some more of Mick’s deck space for its name or logo, and the shapers get paid handsomely as their RC crafts jet off to a thousand global retailers. It sounds like a nice little equation… More info
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