SIMA brings in experts for board builders' boot camp

Transworld Business has an excellent review of SIMA's Boot Camp for board builders held recently in San Clemente.

The boot camp included intensive training in EPA compliance, accounting and marketing.

The caliber of the presenters at these boot camps is world-class. For example, the EPA compliance portion featured an expert in the environmental, health, and safety field with degrees public heath and epidemiology from Princeton, UCLA, and UCSD.

The other two sections focused on bookkeeping and marketing on a shoestring, as taught by “PT” Townend, founder of The ActiveEmpire.

Read the whole story here.

For Galveston surf shop owner, it's back to basics

James Fulbright, owner of Surf Specialties in Galveston, is returning the shop to its roots.

He's adding an expansion to the shop, which will be known as Strictly Hardcore Surf & Shape, where customers will be able to see inside the shaping bay as he does his work.

Fulbright told the Galveston County Daily News in a story that ran this morning:

“It goes back to that original concept of the surf shop,” “I want this to be a place where surfers learn, share and grow — a place where they can return to the roots of what surfing is all about when they’re out of the water."

“The first surf shop was a place where the surfboards were shaped out back and sold in the front of the building. There was a genuine interaction between the shaper and the shop visitor in terms of really understanding and explaining the art of surfboard-shaping. It was a place to not only purchase what you needed but also to learn and to grow as a surfer by learning from others in the community.”

He said, rather than being secretive about the shaping process, he wanted to create an environment that welcomes and opens the shaping process to anyone who’s interested, and that he’d eventually like to conduct clinics for aspiring shapers.

By the way, Fulbright is the guy who is featured surfing the wake of supertankers in Step Into Liquid.

Check out this YouTube clip to see what the folks in Galveston have to endure to get to their stoke...