Every Surf School In the World Will Want This Board

The biggest annual expenses for surf schools are new wetsuits and new boards. Some schools have a greater need for wetsuits than others, but they all buy new boards at the end of every season. Surf schools typically use soft-top boards to teach beginners, and the boards, most of them made in China and costing between $100 and $400, don't last long.

"Depending on the brand, I can get a few months to a few seasons out of a board," says Cannon Carroll, an instructor at Clint Carroll Surf School in Huntington Beach, California. "We buy between 10 and 30 new boards a year, and right now we have about 25 good, usable boards… If people bottom out or nose dive, the boards can snap. "

But two brothers from Northern Ireland may have a solution to the short lifespan of soft-top boards. Chris and Ricky Martin, founders and owners of Skunk Works Surf Company, designed a board that, they say, is stronger and longer-lasting than conventional boards. Skunk Works has produced several prototypes of its boards for use with surf schools this summer and has garnered the attention of some high-profile surf companies in Southern California.

"Our testing results suggest our boards can last up to five times longer than other soft boards," Chris says. "The guys from the university in our town took a spear to the slick bottom, and the end [of the spear] snapped off."

The added durability and strength come from unconventional materials. The bottom of the board is high-density polyethylene that's heat-bonded to a polyethylene foam core. The heat bonding replaces adhesives and eliminates all seams and joints. A two-centimeter-thick layer of hardwearing foam wraps the board's edges. No material in the board will absorb water; no part of the board will be affected by heat, cold, or extreme temperature changes; and delamination of the different materials is nearly impossible because of the board's internal structure and the heat-bonding process. The top of the board is EVA foam, similar to a yoga mat.

Skunk Works plans on offering boards in four lengths, from six feet to nine-feet-two-inches. The longest board is intended to double as a stand-up paddleboard. Skunk Works' boards are fully recyclable and use environmentally preferable materials to current models coming out of China. All materials for the boards come from within the U.K. or Ireland. The estimated retail price for a surf school board will start at about £220.

"Richard Branson says that a successful business is one that makes people's lives easier," Chris Martin says. "Well, our's makes people who run surf schools lives easier."

Richard Branson is in the conversation because Skunk Works has been shortlisted for a Virgin Media Business grant worth about $77,351 and awarded through a program called Pitch to Rich. Among 906 businesses in the first round of cuts, which was a popular-vote contest, Skunk Works received more votes than any other company. The short list contains 30 businesses, and the next round of ten will be announced Tuesday, June 2. Through popular vote, three finalists will be selected from the ten.

In December last year, Ricky took an unfinished prototype Skunk Works board to several Southern California surf industry leaders in Santa Barbara, San Diego and Los Angeles. Ricky, who runs the largest surf school in Ireland, Alive Surf School, handles the marketing and sales for Skunk Works; Chris, a self-described, self-educated foam nerd, handles the production side of the business. Ricky's trip to the U.S. could lead to licensing opportunities overseas, but the more immediate target is the market close to home.

"We want to make all the boards for surf schools in Europe," Chris says. "Our main focus at the minute is to make sure the boards are performing exactly the way we want them to. We need to absolutely trash the shit out of them."

Skunk Works was born of necessity. A year and a half ago, the brothers, frustrated by poor-quality beginner boards being used by Alive Surf School, thought a better, stronger board was possible. For the next three months, Chris buried himself in the uninteresting, highly technical world of plastic foam. His research landed him on materials that hadn't been used in surfboards and that hadn't been heat-bonded in the way he envisioned.

Skunk Works now employs two men, in addition to Chris and Ricky, in the Portrush, Northern Ireland shop. They use custom-built equipment to manufacture the boards.

The Martins are working with an organization that supports "innovative technologies and early-stage companies" in Northern Ireland, called NISP (Northern Ireland Science Park) Connect. Steve Orr, founder and head of NISP Connect, developed the organization based on his entrepreneurial experience in Southern California over the past 20 years, where he also learned to surf.

"It's clear that the marketplace is keen for it," Orr says. "Where they have an advantage is that they know the pain their customer base is feeling. They're avid surfers, and Ricky has the surf school, and so they're well aware of the problem they're solving."