Modom Surfboards Review

[Joy Wida]

Themeeting was in a building directly opposite the Australian Stock Exchange. Walking towards the building I reflected on Darren Handley, and it hit me like a stray golf ball that the last time he featured on Swellnet was when he crashed the PWC on the Gold Coast. Ho ho ho...we gave him a bit of air time following that incident!

Not that I would invest here but if I did I would like to know more on Fanning's understanding of shaping and design as this is key risk no. 1. Sure he is an outstanding surfer, but can he make curves that work?

Perhaps a clear sign that the epoxy tech limitations have finally caught up and are overtaking poly for pole position in high-end surfing. Slater buying Firewire was surely a huge step but felt to me to be a leap of faith.

oh boy, yeah there are enormous amounts of stock Asian EPS/Epoxy's every where world wide , the customers are slowly but surely returning to PU/Polyester/Epoxy....so the Asian made EPS's have had there day......also I just saw Mick Fanning Soft tops with a DHD logo , to be delivered next year!

DH has had a rather chequered career , and easy to say that he has burnt his markets in Japan /France/Portugal and the USA......not sure how much growth he can get in Australia...but I reckon that's it!

You have bought the most sense to this whole crowd funding thing.

I think surfing neededs a new company/ brand. Feel a lot of the older, more established brands are pretty tired.

If managed correctly and priced right it could be a more "fresh and value orientated " brand for the next generation of surfers.

Surely it would come down to DHD becoming a cheap asian pop out brand and lose consumer respect for his products.........maybe seeing Mick pump out his soft boards has made Handley greedy.......anyway anyone who drives a jet ski like he did is a risk i recon.

Then I went back again in my early 20's and saw the reality - most of them are barely out of uni, barely able to tie their own shoelaces, and barely able to do their job, let alone choose a suit that fits. And they're willingly signing up to a lifetime of pen-pushing in a cubicle. Any suit you see on the street between 8am and 6pm is probably somebodies glorified errand boy, because all the people who've actually "made it" are permanently chained to their desk while not being paid for overtime.

The DHD PU boards are all Australian made. Only epoxy are made in Thailand and the same goes for JS, the factory those epoxies come out of(cobra) is the biggest epoxy factory in the world. And have more trained people to do that job. If you get epoxy made in Australia it takes 12 weeks with outsourcing labour.

I don't think this aussie/Thai argument is really one that is worth having, who makes your televisions, iPhone, cars, almost everything in the world and does it well?

Also, it's surfers that come in to shops saying, oh that's too much for a board, I'm not paying that. That leads to production being made over seas. So you can afford it. It's a 200 dollar excess for Australian made epoxy purely for the labour and outsourcing.

I think where you want to be with surfboard manufacturing is where Apple is at with their iphones. The vast majority of the profit for them is in the design, software and intellectual property. They just get people in China and Thailand to do the donkey work for them.

The idea of paying people in Australia to build mass produced surfboards is foolish in my opinion. Australia has near full employment so why try to protect low paying manual jobs that can be done better overseas? Do the higher paying design and maybe the shaping in Australia, make the money from that.

This discussion reminds me of a quip from Milton Friedman. He was in Nepal being shown some roadworks that were part of the development of the countryside. He asked why the workers only had picks and shovels. Why not get an excavator in? The reply was that an excavator would put some of the workers out of work. His answer was "Why not just give them spoons instead of shovels then?"

"The idea of paying people in Australia to build mass produced surfboards is foolish in my opinion. Australia has near full employment so why try to protect low paying manual jobs that can be done better overseas? "

There are not much margins in surfboards though.

Through materials and labour its really a head scratch to figure out if it would be a viable business venture. (I have shaped a lot of my own boards on and off for the last fifteen years.)

Whether boards are made in Australia vs Asia .I think it really comes down to quality control.

Overall quality materials , working conditions, convenience of getting your personal board designer.

Once things start being manufactured overseas things can go downhill pretty quick.

Their is no epa or health standards. No one really watching the overall quality of materials and production techniques.

Then you have wear the burden of transit costs and damage to the environment .I.e board miles( resources used for materials and transport.) Then you might realise that very little or no money goes back into the local economy.

How many wealthy shapers do you know? It's pretty low paid man. It most certainly should be better paid, but that's just the way it goes. It was like that long before they started making boards in Asia. I have made fifty surfboards over the years, and one thing I can tell you is that it's not something you would do to get rich. People in Australia make boards because they like doing it. That's about the only reason I can think of.

In regards to the manual labour thing I admit I was a bit fast and loose with that term, however other than the actual shaping, you can teach someone to specialise in any one of the processes involved in a few months; hence why some of the glassing coming out of Thailand is of a reasonably high standard.

What I was really driving at is that we should be leaving the mass production to the Asians. It's a mug's game trying to compete with that. Destined to fail. Where we can compete is in the personal relationship you have with your local shaper. If they are producing finely tuned surfboards that go well for local surfers in local conditions then there'll always be a place for them. People don't mind paying a bit more for the personal touch. That's their competitive advantage.

In regard to the market as a whole, its only a negative if boards made overseas are sold for a cheaper price than the average local board price, but if it is priced higher than the average board price, then there is even an argument it is helping readjust the value of surfboards and help lift the ceiling.

In regard to damage to the environment (carbon footprint) that's also not so simple, it really depends on the materials and process for example Firewire boards are made in Thailand but due to the materials they use their boards have a very low carbon foot print.

Shipping is actually a very very small part of the overall carbon footprint.

Regarding quality, location has nothing to do with quality some of the worse glass jobs I've seen have been boards built in Australia, and these days you an get very high quality materials and workmanship in Asia.

Get off the internet Robert.

Board miles suck .........no question.

Good luck finding a local shaper in twenty years time. When all you wanted was a cool logo and you didn't care where it was made ECT ; ).

Anyone one can surf and that's great. How many surfers do you know who can surf then build you a board start to finish? Within 20 kms of your house or local beach ?

But when you are comparing a PU/PE board to a more eco friendly EPS/Epoxy type board using bio resins etc even if its made overseas and shipped to Aust or USA etc the carbon footprint from shipping is tiny and barely factors into the overall carbon footprint (and thats not taking into lifespan)

Shaper DH doesn't show because of dust....sounds a bit amateur hour right from the start. You are asking for peoples cash, surely you would have flown down the day before to prepare, check the venue etc

Sound advice, noting he purchased his own company from liquidation... the one that was going to change surfboard manufacturing forever. It has been said 'if you want to make a small fortune in surfboards start with a large one'...

....as for modom I'd be highly sceptical of a company prepared to flog a magnet as a shark repelant when absolutely zero real evidence exists that they work. That's just selling hope and putting people at risk.

Finally they have only raised $63k so far which isn't going to turn the dial at all for the company. In fact even if they raise the full $2.5m which immediately becomes 2.35m ( after fees) and it's hard to see how that money will mke any difference

I really think he damaged the personal brand with the whole jet ski incidents.

This is a very interesting situation, I agree with lost.Not turning up to the shareholder launch regardless. That stems from poor planning and lack of professional standards. Which seems very common in the surf industry.

In this time of the internet, playing quite doesn't work. Even if he did not make it to the meeting. He could have Skype/ live chatted / facebook live / FaceTimed the meeting.

Seriously .......five p's .DHD and

Tony I hope you're reading this .

Anyone thinking of buying a board made overseas should go and take a walk through a modern Australian board factory. Guys on the computers refining a shape, Great aussie shapers and ghost shapers putting the final touches on some ones dream machine. The glassers and their steely stare as they apply their craft. Boards being built, packed, freighted by the hundreds and all the while there is a buzz in the air, dozens of guys laughing and some cussing as they produce their different brands, incredible order in the chaos, but these guys all love surfboards, they just love surfing and everything about it. I couldn't picture myself contributing to closing my board factory down. I have said before that I don't care if a parent company is based overseas, as long as my board is made by these guys. My Aussie guys are actually refining and improving on some "wonder " shapes originally designed overseas. I'll just continue to rock up with cash in hand and custom order or rack buy my new sticks with that factory always in the back of my mind.

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