There are pluses and minuses to everything, but if you break it down, glass-ons sometimes feel a bit more solid, but you can’t change them. It might be the wrong fin for the board and you’re stuck with it. It seems like glass-ons break a lot more and have a lot more problems though, too.

Custom orders or off-the-rack?

I think that's interesting. If I were the consumer I think I would buy half of my boards off the rack. I think people can tell a lot – maybe even more than they think they can tell - just by putting the board under their arm. When people come in here I tell them to put it under their arm and get a good feel for it. You can feel the rails and the volume, and I think that's really cool. You see exactly what you get.

If you custom order, you might want a certain shade of blue, but it might not be the exact shade of blue when you get it. When you buy one there you’re buy exactly what you see.

So you do that half the time and the other half of the time you get one you really like that’s a little too thin, but it rides insane. So you come in and make adjustments and that’s how you can really improve. Both ways are solid and you shouldn’t do just one or the other, but I don’t see any problem with grabbing a board off the rack.

How is the overseas market affecting shaping right now?

I think the pendulum is swinging on that. It was really hard on us. It was a weird time in building boards. I’ve been shaping for 25 years, and it was the perfect storm with Clark foam closing down and Surftech picking up steam and Firewire and other molded boards - then the Chinese boards came in – and right as Clark Foam came out, surfing was probably more popular than ever. People started to get the idea that they could make bucks, which I don’t think has ever happened in making surfboards; it's not the best way to make money, but maybe if you middle man some container company and you’re all epoxy and you have a good idea of where everyone in the world is surfing then you have a shot.

Now, I don't think it's the coolest thing to do anymore. We reached a point where there were too many boards available for how many surfers there were, and it affected everyone. So it's been tough, it was the hardest year ever for us last year, but like I said I think the pendulum is swinging.

I think it's starting to matter again what’s legitimate and what’s a real brand. I think a lot of people that came in and got a cheap board who thought, "I want to be a surfer," either became surfers and now they want a legitimate brand - or else they quit and they got their board and they’re done.

I think the shops have felt it too and these shops that have been around for a while and have some history and authenticity that went and brought those boards in hurt their image. It hurts their authenticity and I think that’s why those people came back.